Urgent Action Items

Below are urgent action items where you can make your voice heard on behalf of wild horses and burros

The petition asks the following:

The Issue

Save The Salt River Wild Horses

We strongly object to the forced removals of over half of our beloved Salt River Wild Horses.

Petition to Katie Hobbs, Governor of Arizona.

We, the undersigned, call on you to cancel the mandate by your AZDA to remove over half of the Salt River Wild Horse herd. That is not in accordance with state law in the Salt River Horses Act, that you voted for. We urge you to allow the second half of the successful 10-year plan implemented by the previous AZDA Director to continue, without removals. The Salt River Act states: “A person shall not interfere with, take, chase, capture or euthanize a horse that is part of the Salt River horse herd without written authorization.

The department or the county sheriff may provide written authorization only for humane purposes.” The Salt River Horse Act clarifies that Salt River wild horses are not stray livestock and are not subject to livestock removal laws such as ARS § 3-1371 and §3-1402. Therefore, the AZDA does not appear to have the authority to require removals of healthy wild horses. In the original 10 -year plan, the first five years has seen the herd size reduction go from 450 to 274 today, an over 40% decrease. This was achieved through birth control and natural attrition. There is no sudden imperative to discard this program. At this rate, the population would be approximately 168, in the second five years, well within the expert recommended range necessary for a healthy, genetically diverse herd. We urge Governor Hobbs to:   Uphold the spirit and letter of the Salt River Horse Act, ARS § 3-1491 and cancel forced removals   Continue humane, science-based management in partnership with SRWHMG, allowing the successful original 10-year plan to continue Let’s honor our state’s proud history, the will of the people, and a working solution that reflects compassion and common sense. Humane wild horse management works — please let it continue, without forced removals. Only YOU can stop this and honor the wishes of the majority of Arizonans.

Comments are due June 27th on the BLM's Public Comment Period on the Eagle Complex in Nevada. Thanks to the hard work from Wild Horse Education you can see the important points on this comment period and quickly create and submit your comments. All the links you need are in the comments section below.

From WHE:

"You did not have to participate in Scoping for Eagle to comment on the Preliminary gather plan EA.

It can feel like BLM has already made up its mind — and the structure of this document suggests it has. But commenting matters anyway. What goes into the record now shapes everything that comes after. Your comment becomes part of the official record, and that record is what holds BLM accountable — in public, and, when necessary, in court. Wild Horse Education has repeatedly used these records to win in court, in the Pancake, Blue Wing, and Callaghan cases. The strongest record is built by a lot of voices. Speaking up now is how that record gets built."

The following was entirely put together by Wild Horse Education:

Public comment on the Eagle Complex Herd Management Area Plan and Gather Plan (DOI-BLM-NV-L030-2026-0007-EA)

Dear Bureau of Land Management (Caliente and Cedar City Field Offices):

I am writing about the Preliminary Environmental Assessment for the Eagle Complex Herd Management Area Plan (HMAP) and Gather Plan, covering the Eagle, Choke Cherry, and Mt. Elinor Herd Management Areas on the Nevada–Utah border. The document is labeled a “Herd Management Area Plan,” but it functions as a plan to remove nearly 2,000 wild horses. After more than a decade of paper plans and templated roundups at Eagle, I am asking BLM to fix the serious problems in this document before any decision is finalized.

1. This is a gather plan with a new title, not a real management plan. A genuine HMAP studies the land — water, forage, fences, fire, and the condition of the range — and sets science-based goals for managing healthy wild horses on it. BLM has never written an actual HMAP for the Eagle Complex. Instead, every few years it issues another gather Environmental Assessment, removes horses, and leaves the underlying land-use problems untouched. This document repeats that pattern: the real “HMAP” is confined to a generic appendix of fill-in-the-blank language, while the body of the analysis is devoted to removal. A federal court in Nevada has already ruled, in Leigh v. Raby, that BLM must prepare a true HMAP and cannot substitute a gather plan for one. A different title on the same gather plan does not make it lawful. I am asking BLM to put the real, site-specific Eagle Complex analysis in the body of the plan — not in a one-page summary that points to an appendix.

2. The outcome was decided before the analysis was written. Both “action” alternatives reach the identical result: removing horses to the low end of an Appropriate Management Level (AML) set decades ago. The Eagle AML was carried forward in the 2008 Ely Resource Management Plan with no disclosure of how the numbers were derived; the Choke Cherry and Mt. Elinor AMLs were set in 1983 from horse counts taken between 1971 and 1982, and have never been revised or their methodology disclosed. BLM cannot lawfully carry forty-year-old numbers into a new ten-year plan without a current, site-specific analysis under its own Handbook, H-4700-1. Every alternative that would actually examine the habitat — adjusting AML, or analyzing livestock use — was dismissed as “outside the scope.” When the only question on the table is how fast to remove horses, no genuine analysis has occurred.

3. Livestock got the benefit of the doubt; horses got the blame — without proof. BLM frames wild horses as the singular cause of rangeland damage, yet its own 2017 Wilson Creek rangeland-health findings attribute conditions to a combination of livestock, wild horses, elk, drought, pinyon-juniper encroachment, halogeton, and fire — not horses alone. The Wilson Creek livestock allotment dominates this Complex, overlapping roughly 47% of the Eagle HMA with 54,070 permitted livestock AUMs, much of it grazed during the growing season when the range is most fragile. BLM is attempting to write a ten-year wild horse plan on top of Wilson Creek grazing decisions that remain under administrative and judicial review and partially stayed. I am asking BLM to disclose the litigation status of those decisions; to disclose suspended and non-use AUMs on every overlapping allotment and whether any are being reactivated under its “grazing flexibility” policy (IM 2025-011); to inventory and analyze every named water source, fence, cattle guard, and exclosure that fragments habitat or blocks horses from water; and to analyze closing areas to livestock under 43 CFR 4710.5 and 4710.6. BLM must also correct its demonstrably wrong claim that changes to livestock grazing cannot be made through a wild horse management decision.

4. BLM cannot promise to protect foals when it admits it has no foaling data. The Eagle Complex has a documented history of severe welfare incidents during helicopter operations — including a mare run by helicopter as she was actively losing her foal, foals separated from their mothers and never recovered, and horses run to a lather in sub-freezing temperatures. The law prohibits helicopter use during foaling season, and BLM recites a foaling window in this document. But that window is an assertion, not a finding: BLM presents no underlying data, no census, no observation record establishing when foaling actually peaks across these specific herds. A foaling-season guideline built on no data is no guideline at all — it is an unenforceable placeholder that cannot satisfy the prohibition on flying during foaling. BLM cannot comply with a protection it has never actually measured. I am asking BLM to determine the real, data-based foaling window for the Eagle Complex from its own herd records, to commit in the decision to a documented foaling window and temperature thresholds, and to establish a public incident-reporting process so the welfare record is transparent.

5. Do the full study, and keep the decisions separate. Removing nearly 2,000 horses across more than 760,000 acres, with cascading effects on water, forage, fire, genetics, and a sensitive species, is a major federal action. The lawful vehicle is a full Environmental Impact Statement, not a shorter Environmental Assessment built on undisclosed, decades-old data. And any gather or removal decision should be a separate decision record from adoption of the HMAP — with its own appeal rights and implementation timing — so the public can meaningfully review each.

A plan that decides the outcome first, freezes the population limits at numbers older than nearly every horse on the range, refuses to examine the livestock use that dominates the Complex, and promises to honor a foaling season it has never actually measured, has not studied anything. It has written up a decision that was already made. The horses at Eagle have paid the price for a decade of paper plans and templated gathers. I am asking BLM to fix these problems and write a real management plan before this document is finalized.

Sincerely,

LINKS:

Article from Wild Horse Education

Link to BLM page on this public comment period

On June 9th in Australia, helicopters once again took to the air and starting using rifles to shoot at the wild Brumbies. Stallions, mares, and foals will be shot at indiscriminately until June 30th. They will suffer as these are not direct kill shots, but rather random shooting meant to inflict pain, suffering, and in most cases a long death.

The claim is of course that the Brumbies are 'overpopulated', are trampling and eating native plants, pushing out native wildlife, but we all know it's for livestock.

So what can we do? Make our voices heard and help bring awareness to this atrocity. I know there is so much going on in the world and it's hard to think that we can make a difference, but we can if enough of us take the time and effort needed.

Here are some details below for contacts provided by facebook.com/Australianbrumby to raise your concerns. It is best to use polite but strong language to let them know how you feel about this issue (i.e. no death threats, swearing, or all caps).

RSPCA Australia

https://www.rspca.org.au/report-animal-cruelty/

Chris Minns- Premier NSW: kogarah@parliament.nsw.gov.au

https://www.nsw.gov.au/nsw.../premier-of-nsw/contact-premier

Minister Sharpe is currently suspended from parliament and is not answerable, despite this being her portfolio! and now will only accept communication screened through NSW Parliament.

The Governor General of Australia

https://www.gg.gov.au/office-official.../email-contacts

The Prime Minister of Australia

pmc@pmc.gov.au or the online form

https://www.pm.gov.au/contact#no-back

There is a script you can use in one of the graphics below. You can also contact tourism offices in Australia at https://www.tourism.australia.com/en/contact-us.html and let them you will not visit the country until this plan of shooting the Brumbies stops.

Will all of this take some time and research? Yes. Is it worth your time? I hope the answer is yes. We might not be able to stop the current culling for June, but as you can see in one of the graphics below, they plan to do it again in November. Let's help to stop that one.