Wild Mustangs are one of the most fascinating species on the North American continent. They are the living symbols of freedom. They make us dream of open lands and times long past. As Federal lands are encroached upon further and further, the pressures of development are depriving these animals of the very freedom they stand for, and for many even their right of survival. The Mustang Rally's goal is to assist you to stay on top of the development and to provide an easy guide for you how to be and stay involved. Since we started the Mustang Ralley Campaign 40,000 horses have been caught by the BLM and now only about 22,000 are left. They are getting ready to kill 33,000 horses for various reasons. Only people like you, people who care can stop the senseless slaughter. Why do the rest of the 22,000 have to die? Montana alone home to barely 1 million people and contains 2.4 million cattle - mostly on public land. Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming has 675,000-700,000 elks.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management Deputy Director Henri Bisson said in June there is an overpopulation of wild horses on public lands and the agency can no longer afford to care for the numbers of mustangs that have been rounded up.The number of horses adopted by the public has dropped off, leaving the BLM with more animals than it can care for, he said.One option would be to stop all roundups — something the agency said would lead to "ecological disaster." "The other option is to use some combination of the (adoption program) and euthanasia, which would be really difficult to do," Bisson told The Associated Press."Our goal is supposed to be about healthy horses on healthy ranges. But we are at the point we need to have a conversation with people about pragmatically what can we do given the financial constraints of our program to meet the goals we have," he said before meeting with area horse advocates.Bisson was in Reno to brief the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board. He said there are 32,000 wild horses on the range in 10 Western states. About half of those are in Nevada. BLM has set a target "appropriate management level" of horses at 27,000. Some 33,000 more horses are in holding facilities, where most are made available for adoption. But those deemed too old or otherwise unadoptable are sent to long-term holding facilities to live out their lives — some for 15 to 20 years.Last week the BLM said it was seeking bids from people around the country to provide pasture and care for 500 to 2,500 horses taken from the range that are considered unadoptable.Caring for so many animals is crippling the agency's budget, Bisson said.Last year about $22 million of the entire horse program's $39 million budget was spent on holding horses in agency pens. Next year the costs are projected to grow to $26 million with an overall budget that is being trimmed to $37 million, Bisson said.

Continuing current practices would require a budget of $58 million next year, escalating to $77 million in 2012, BLM estimated."We have a responsibility to balance the budget, so we are going to have to make some tough choices," Bisson said. "We don't want to do this at the last minute. So we need to have a conversation with horse advocates and try to share the pain a little bit so people understand that if we have to make those tough changes it's not because we want to."If roundups are ended he expects an outcry from sheep and cattle ranchers who see the mustangs as competition for feed on the open range. If horses are euthanized, the outrage will come from horse protection groups, he said.At least three roundups are planned in the coming weeks to remove about 1,700 wild horses in Nevada, where the BLM says ongoing drought has left dwindling forage and water for an overabundance of animals.

Managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which controls 261 Million surface acres of public land, the population of the Mustangs has become a controlled value determined solely by statistics. The once free-ranging Mustang herds are now being rounded up, and individual animals are being sorted for either adoption or for sale to the highest bidder. Since January 2006, the BLM has sold more than 1,500 wild Mustangs and burros of the 8,400 that were captured under the Sale-Authority law. What that means is that all of the Mustangs that were not adopted after three attempts or are over 10 years old can be sold for any use, most of which go to slaughter houses if there is no higher bidder.

Tens of thousand have been killed the last few years. As more and more public land is sold or leased out, the space available for the wild Mustangs is getting smaller and smaller.

The approved management level, which is the level the land can carry while remaining in good condition, has been identified as 28,849 horses. Ranchers complain that the Mustangs compete for the valuable grasslands, thereby reducing the grasslands available for their herds.

In reality there are far fewer wild Mustangs than livestock on Public Lands, it is estimated that there is only one Mustang versus 100 to 200 livestock animals. When compared with the Elk population which is introduced for recreational hunting the elk to horse ratio is out of balance. There are plans now in place to round up an additional 4,000 Mustangs and Burros on BLM managed lands in the 10 Western States. As a trustee of our Federal Lands, the BLM has declared that the wild Mustangs cannot exist at current population level and remain in balance with other public land uses.

Herds in specific areas are already smaller than the defined number required to maintain a healthy population, yet the round up continues on. During the past year alone the wild Mustang population dropped from the 20,000 Mustangs who lived in BLM holding facilities to 7000 in February 2006. In 2004 only 5,699 Mustangs were adopted and found new home while 9,252 remained in BLM facilities. In 2005 an additional 11,000 horses were captured and removed from our American Public Lands. Now there are only 7000 left in the holding facilities and another 4000 will be captured if we don't do something about it now! The bill that was signed into law makes it possible to sell every Mustang that is more than 10 years old, or those that were rejected from adoption three times regardless of their age, and without restrictions on how the animal is used. The BLM states that very few older horses are being adopted. The natural life span of a horse is approximately 20 years and it is often longer. Because so few are adopted, it is possible that an additional 11,000 more Mustangs could be sold to slaughterhouses for meat production in the very near future. Although the BLM would prefer adoptions of the animals, all those that are not adopted will continue to be sold to the highest bidder. Most end up at two Texas slaughterhouses who sell horsemeat for profit. Congress is moving again to put a stop to the slaughter of horses even after legal rulings that have shut down the country's three slaughter plants. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved a bill banning horse slaughter for human consumption on Wednesday. The vote was 15-7. The U.S. House was expected to vote Thursday on a bill restoring a ban on the slaughter of wild horses and burros. The ban had been in place for more than 30 years, but Congress changed the law three years ago to permit older and unwanted horses to be sold for slaughter. We found an article by American Herd that provides detailed information about the motive of killing and/or eradication all the Mustangs. The author writes: Turned out there were a lot more water sources around than BLM was counting and much of what they were telling the public was convoluted at best.

Finding out the truth began with asking a question about hundreds of thousands of acres that disappeared from the Herd Areas and it took a couple of months before BLM finally responded. Turned out, this acreage went to U.S. Forest Service in a land transfer two decades ago. Following the trail back, it also turned out the U.S. Forest Service just happened to get the majority of the springs in that land transfer leaving BLM – and the wild horses and burros – with very little left under BLM control. (1) Then U.S. Forest Service made a few changes. The first was to completely exclude wild horses and burros from the top 100,000 acres in the area where the majority of these springs occurred and no wild horse and burro use became the new “policy”. Then, for the areas wild horses and burros were still allowed, U.S. Forest Service gave them a water allocation, 7% to be exact, while the transplanted elk population was issued 15%. Sure, BLM is still the “lead agency” in management when it comes to removals but USFS sets the majority of the land use policies and resource allocations - then BLM just mostly handles the removals from there. (2) I began noticing an emphasis on the “thriving ecological balance” wild horses and burros were removed to protect was heavily weighted towards the “native” wildlife, often the central focus in decision after decision where wild horses and burros kept getting removed or disappearing altogether. So began the journey of looking around at just what exactly comprised this “thriving ecological balance” they kept getting squeezed out from and that led to checking out State Fish & Game big game statistics on the other “major resources users” within the areas. That led to the realization that hunting was big business and successful “educational programs” conducted by the stewards of hunting, often the scientists that produced the studies that justified their conclusions - Horses and burros bad/native wildlife good - somehow managed to turn wild into feral in the minds of an increasingly environmentally conscious public as they exploited people’s concern about wildlife habitat loss due to mankinds resource exploitation to favor these big game species instead. So now when I hear wild horses and burros must be reduced and removed to protect the “native” species, the first thing on my To Do List is to check just what are the actual populations of those native species, something I might add is often not easily found. When Montana announced that there just wasn’t room for any more wild horses in the “thriving ecological balance” regarding the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, even though Montana is now down to their last herd out of the six that were originally protected in 1971, I decided to go check out what Montana DID have room for. Turned out, Montana has a lot of room, just not for wild horses. Here are some current statistics: Montana stretches for 2,000 square miles, is home to barely 1 million people(3), contains 2.4 million cattle, 290,000 sheep and 180,000 pigs(4), 130,000-160,000 elk, 5,900 Rocky Mountain bighorn, and so many mule deer and pronghorn antelope Montana State Fish & Game can even count them all. (5) That’s right, up to 160,000 elk and 5,900 Rocky Mountain bighorn. Apparently the habitat is a little more abundant everywhere else in Montana except in the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range where the “allowable” maximum number of wild horses in the entire state is 105 - anything more is deemed excessive and begins to endanger the thriving ecological balance. So just within the State of Montana, if you substituted wild horses and burros for elk, you could fit the entire current national “appropriate management level” of every single wild horse and burro throughout the West (27,500), PLUS every wild horse currently being held in long-term containment that was deemed “excessive” (30,000), three times over. So here’s some other fun facts about elk populations and wild horses and burros. Montana Fish & Game estimate that 60% of their Elk Management Units are above population objectives. Colorado recently saw BLM declare the West Douglas Herd in Colorado, which spans 128k acres with an estimated 120 wild horses, as “unfit” for wild horse use. Only 4 herds remain out of 8 with a state “appropriate management level” of 812 wild horses. Meanwhile, Colorado’s 2007 estimated elk population is 250,000 to 260,000 and reports that the elk herds have been 10-15% above population management objectives for over 20 years. The White River-Flat Tops region is home to the largest migratory elk herd on earth – 40,000 elk, which just also happens to be about 12,000 more than the “approved” population throughout the West of both wild horses and burros!

The combined estimated elk populations in 2007 for just Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming is 675,000-700,000 elk. The gap of population estimates is almost as large as America’s entire remaining free-roaming wild horse and burro populations.

*AML is used to show what BLM believes is “appropriate” since wild horse numbers that exceed AML are removed. "To allow wild horses, a living symbol of the American West, to be sacrificed and slaughtered at the hands of an ill-advised and misguided federal policy that never should have been implemented represents great disrespect to the will of the American people and our nation's heritage," said Rep. Nick Rahall, House Natural Resources Committee chairman and sponsor of the legislation. Animal protection groups and their allies have been trying for years to ban horse slaughter. The 2006 agriculture spending bill was stripped of money for horse inspectors' salaries and expenses. Ban supporters had hoped that would end horse slaughter, but the U.S. Agriculture Department decided instead to offer horse slaughter plants inspections for a fee. The slaughter ban advocates had more success in the courts. A federal appeals court in January upheld Texas' law banning the sale of horse meat for human consumption. In March a U.S. district court in Washington ordered USDA to stop the fee-for-service horse meat inspections. The decisions have forced the shutdown of operations at the Texas plants and a third in Illinois. "It's a new day. Given all the plants are not slaughtering horses for human consumption, it's easier than ever for Congress to halt the barbaric practice of killing these American icons," said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States. And the effort to eradicate Mustangs continues. Now the effort is to return captures wild horses that have been neutered back to the wild herds. What kind of effect will adding geldings have to the already controversial issue of genetically viable herds? If geldings will now be included in the maximum populations allowed, won’t this create the illusion that wild herds are more genetically viable than they really are? For example, if a herd has an AML of 100 but BLM gelds 20 of the stallions and return them to the range, in actuality only 80 wild horses are now capable of breeding. When someone looks at the AML, unless they know that geldings have been included in that herd, they will think the herds are more genetically viable than they really are. But then again, that’s the best-case scenario. When BLM rounds up wild horses and burros, they usually leave only 40% of what “high” AML is. So after BLM rounds up those same 100 wild horses, they would usually remove about 60 of them and leave 40. What happens if 20 of those are now geldings? Isn’t the breeding population now only 20? And what about horses too old or too young to breed in the 20 now left? And once BLM begins gelding them, will they have to tell the public every time they geld more or only the first time? Will they start with a proposal that gelds 20 stallions but will more be gelded every time they do a round up? Will they be required to tell us “We plan on gelding 5 more? 10 more? 20 more? Or will they just do it based on their own best judgment? Eradicating wild horses, whether through neutering, selling off and slaughtering a living part of American history from our Public Land just isn't right! Taxpayers' money is used to capture the horses and to house them after capture. You have a say in how your tax dollars and resources are used. The wild Mustangs need your voice and support to protect their lives and to protect our National Heritage. Join RioVida Networks in supporting the Mustang Rally in its efforts to help and to to provide support for non-profit wild Mustang related organizations and for Mustang sanctuaries, RioVida Networks invites all of you to become part of the Mustang Rally and to join our teams.

Let's save the wild Mustangs. Take action by joining the Mustang Rally!