Phoenix residents to protest mass removal of wild horses by BLM
January 27, 2010
Bureau of Land Management Planning, Arizona State Office
One North Central Avenue, Suite 800, Phoenix, AZ 85004
Protest Saturday, Jan. 30 from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
PHOENIX – Concerned members of the Arizona community announced that they will protest the mass removal of wild horses by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) including the closing of all but two herd areas in Arizona. Wild horses are being managed by politics and not science. Public members are calling for a Moratorium until the American public and Congress can develop a truly sustainable future for our wild horses and burros and for the passage of the Restore Our American Mustang Act that passed the House and now sits in the Senate Energy and Resources Committee of which Arizona Senator John McCain is a member.
It cost taxpayers 1.9 million dollars for winter round ups. There are now more wild horses in captivity than in the wild. It costs the American taxpayers over $100,000 a day to feed the 34,000 wild horses currently in captivity that the BLM has removed from the range. The BLM continues to ask Congress to increase their budget by tens of millions of dollars annually to remove and maintain wild horses instead of in the wild management on public lands. Cattle outnumber wild horses 200:1 and federal range leases cost taxpayers over 150 million in losses annually. Independent analysis of BLM statistics estimates as few as 13,500 horses may be left on public lands. Arizona Fish and Game video notes there are 7000 big horn sheep and 35,000 elk in Arizona but BLM reports struggling populations of wild horses at 385. There are only two remaining Arizona herd areas, the Cibola and Cerbat herd areas.
BLM wild horses including only about 60 Cerbat horses in the Cerbat mountains of Arizona whose history places them as the original mounts of Conquistadors riding the Spanish Trail in the 16th Century.