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Thank you to all those that attended and those that helped to make this year's conference a tremendous success! We had nearly 200 attendees from 95 different organizations join us for learning, networking, inspiration and fun!
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BLM Policy puts Wild Horses at Risk of Slaughter
Earlier this summer, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) quietly issued a new policy loosening limitations on the number of wild horses and burros that can be sold to any one buyer. Under the new directive, 25 animals can be included in a single sale with no wait time between transactions – meaning buyers who intend to resell the animals for slaughter ("kill-buyers") can obtain additional animals almost immediately.
The agency's reversal on this front offers a troubling path for wild horses to wind up directly in the horse slaughter pipeline. The BLM's previous and more prudent policy allowed an individual to purchase up to four horses at one time, with a wait time of six months per transaction. The four-horse limit was put into place after the public learned that the BLM was inadvertently funneling wild horses to a notorious kill-buyer. In 2015, the Department of the Interior Office of Inspector General released an alarming report outlining how the BLM had allowed a staggering 1,800 wild horses to be sold for slaughter due to lax oversight of the adoption program.
Take Action – it’s easy!
Call your U.S. Senators and Representative and ask them to oppose the new BLM policy that puts wild horses at risk of being sent to slaughter. Find the contact information for your legislators here.
When you call each congressional office you can say:
As your constituent, I was troubled to learn that the Bureau of Land Management recently removed existing protections in order to dramatically increase the number of wild horses that can be sold to buyers. The new lax policy allowing anyone to acquire horses by the truckload (and with no waiting period between purchases) offers a sure-fire way to drive federally protected animals into the slaughter pipeline. I hope that you will work with the BLM to reinstate the safeguards that were put in place after an Office of Inspector General investigation found that the BLM had allowed almost 2,000 wild horses to be sold into slaughter. Thank you.
If you’d like to learn more about this issue and contact the agency directly, please visit the Animal Welfare Institute’s action alert on the troubling new BLM policy.
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Free Webinar
How to Attract, Convert, and Nurture Online Donors with Email, presented by Classy, Tuesday, October 2, 1 PM ET.
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