Protest BLM Plan to Ship 100 U.S. Wild Burros to Guatemala
Action Alert from All-Creatures.org

FROM

American Wild Horse Preservation
July 2014

[Ed. Note: The "livestock" industries want to rid our public lands of all animals they believe compete with "livestock" for food, land, water. GO VEGAN!]

ACTION

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is planning to airlift 100 of our nation's wild burros to Guatemala, where they will spend the remainder of their days as "beasts of burden," working under stressful conditions in a country with few, if any, enforceable animal protection laws.

wild burro BLM
Wild, free burros...

The BLM is calling this a pilot program that could lead to additional efforts to exile thousands of wild horses and burros to foreign nations, where tracking the fate and ensuring the welfare of these protected national icons will be impossible. The agency also has in its possession a proposal to ship hundreds of mustang mares to Guyana. It's time to take a stand against our government's latest attempt to dump America's cherished wild horses and burros to fates unknown.  

Sign an online petition here.

And then:

Find and contact your U.S. Senators
http://www.senate.gov/

Find and contact your U.S. Representative
http://www.house.gov/ 

wild burro BLM
Captive, enslaved burro...

INFORMATION / TALKING POINTS

Burros are amazing, hardy animals who manage to survive under the harshest conditions. Sadly, just like their wild horse cousins, they cling to a tenuous existence in a shrinking habitat on our public lands and struggle under a management program that rounds them up and removes them from their homes on the range in the American West.

Just like wild horses, wild free-roaming burros face many hardships, including ever-shrinking habitat and a federal "management" program that rounds them up in large numbers and removes them from the range to keep burro populations artificially low.

Since 1971, when Congress unanimously passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the number of burros in the West has declined dramatically.

Congress passed the Act stating that protection for these animals was needed because "these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene." So when the first federal census, conducted in 1974, found 14, 656 burros living on Forest Service (FS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands it was understood that was a low number. By 1978, after four years of federal "management," fewer than 10,000 burros remained. Today just 6,825 burros remain on BLM land and under 1,000 on FS land. During this same time period, their designated habitat area has been reduced by half.

Complicating the burros' struggle for survival even more is the fact that the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act only applies only to mustangs and burros living in designated areas on FS and BLM lands. On other federal lands, such as those administered by the National Park Service, and on state lands, these animals are considered to be "exotic" and "feral" and are subject to eradication plans.

Working horses, donkeys and mules often suffer from exhaustion, dehydration, malnutrition, and abuse as a result of excessive workloads and limited animal health services in developing countries.

Now is the time to tell Congress and the BLM that this ill-conceived plan must be immediately scrapped. The BLM should not be in the business of shipping our cherished burros (or wild horses) to foreign countries where the welfare and fate of these animals cannot be ensured.

Learn more about these steadfast survivors - Burro Stories for Burro Awareness Month.


Thank you for everything you do for animals!


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