The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has halted its unnecessary gruesome mare sterilization research project in Oregon thanks to Friends of Animal’s Legal intervention. The BLM was poised to begin unnecessary, gruesome sterilization on Oct. 1 on 225 wild mares, including at least 100 pregnant mares, imprisoned at the Wild Horse Corral Facility in Hines, Ore.
But Friends of Animals filed a lawsuit on Aug. 3, and the agency confirmed Monday, Aug. 22, that it will not begin the research before Nov. 16, allowing more time for a judge to hear FoA’s case.
This project demonstrates how unfit the BLM has become at protecting America’s wild horses and how its mismanagement practices are instead harassing, harming and even killing wild horses.
“The Bureau of Land Management is obligated to protect wild horses under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 and has absolutely no authority to experiment on wild horses with new and risky surgeries,” said Jennifer Best, assistant director of Friends of Animals’ Wildlife Law Program. “In fact, Congress has expressly prohibited the use of funds for activities that would kill wild horses as this experiment may do. Furthermore, wild horses who have been ripped from the range and their families and remain imprisoned in holding facilities have lost their freedom, but they did not lose their status as wild horses under the WHBA, and the protection provided by such status.”
Despite extending its public comment period on this so-called research, and receiving thousands of comments in opposition of it, the BLM, in its eagerness to appease cattle and sheep ranchers who despise wild horses, approved of the project.