Listen Up! Animal Wellness Episode #5: Fighting America’s Wild-Horse Round-Ups

Our iconic American wild horses face an existential threat from the Bureau of Land Management and its excessive focus on round-ups and removals and its inattention to fertility control. In 2020, the agency may attempt to round-up and remove more than 20,000 horses from our public lands, and, astonishingly, with the support of the HSUS and two other animal protection groups. Regrettably, Congress has allocated $21 million in additional monies for wild horse management to implement this scheme.

Disguised and misrepresented as a “nonlethal” plan, the proposal is a hand-off to an agency that treats wild horses and burros as invaders of our public lands and has a cowboy culture that equates “management” with “round-ups and removals”.  In today’s episode of The Animal Wellness, host Joseph Grove talks with Animal Wellness executives Wayne Pacelle and Marty Irby about the round-up plan that sets the stage for the return of horse slaughter to the U.S., and brings Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC), into the conversation. Suzanne and her team at AWHC have joined Animal Wellness Action, and more than 60 other groups in a coalition to fight back and protect the wild horses on federal lands. America was built on the backs horses – and these iconic symbols of the West deserve better.

The Animal Wellness Podcast is a weekly segment that not only delivers timely information but offers insights and analysis you won’t hear anywhere else. We’ll offer in-depth discussions of local, state, or federal policy and elections, and the effects of laws and regulations on corporations. We hope you’ll listen today, and also check out Episodes 4: Big Cats: Endangered in the Wild and In Danger as Captives in the U.S.,  Episode 3: Michael Vick and the Continuing Battle Over Animal Fighting, about the renewed attention on convicted dog-fighter and NFL player Michael Vick and implementation of the latest animal fighting law, Episode 2: 2019 Shark finning, horseracing, and the PACT Act that includes a layered discussion of how the committee process works and why it’s so difficult to even get a common-sense measures into law. If you missed our first episode, you can listen here Episode 1: 2019 Victories for Animals.