Calling all “Wild Horse Advocates”

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Hello and Happy Wednesday! It has been an insanely busy week already and it doesn’t look like it is getting any easier! I have a few different things to share so please take the time to read through this blog.

First – THANK YOU to everyone who donated items, bid on items or even simply shared our online silent auction posts! We raised $2,229! This money will help support our matching funds for Giving Tuesday! The money we raise for Giving Tuesday goes directly to support our critical advocacy work.

If you won an item in the auction, you should have received an email letting you know and your credit card on file has been charged. If we physically have the items, we will be shipping them out today and tomorrow. Some people donate items and then ship them from their location. That can also mean that if you were the winner of multiple items, you will get multiple packages. We will be sending invoices for shipping fees (if applicable) today as well.

Thank you again for helping to make this silent auction a success! We will be holding one last online silent auction this year in December to help raise money for our Giving Hearts Day matching fund. We need to raise a MINIMUM of $3,000 for this event that will take place February 13, 2025. This has been our largest fundraiser every year! If you have items you want to donate to this silent auction, you can add them to the website here: http://chwha.betterworld.org/donate-an-item?_gl=1%2A173ms7k%2A_gcl_au%2AODIwOTE4MzI0LjE3MjU2NDc1NDguODIzNzg4NDcxLjE3MzA3Mzk1MTcuMTczMDczOTUxNw..%2AFPAU%2AODIwOTE4MzI0LjE3MjU2NDc1NDguNzA4NjExMjIwLjE3MzA2ODE3NzEuMTczMDY4MTc3MA..

You can also email us at info@chwha.org or send us a PM on social media and let us know the item(s) you would like to donate.

This online silent auction will run from December 1-8.

We are working hard to raise the $20,000 needed for the legislation we are working on. Most grants don’t allow funds to be used for legislation or litigation. We are hoping that money raised during Giving Tuesday and Giving Hearts Day will help us with our legislation and legal expenses.

While we are talking about legislation and legal expenses, here is a quick update for you on the work CHWHA is doing in those areas:

We are talking to our lawyers both about what just happened with our TRNP wild horses and the next steps moving forward. We will share those details when we can! We expect to have some news within the next week or so!

We mentioned on social media that we had a meeting with Governor Burgum’s office on Monday of this week. We showed them our proposed legislation. Even though he is not seeking another term, that doesn’t mean his office cannot still be helpful! They thought the legislation was well written and did not see any issues with this passing in the 2025 legislative session! They also offered to help in whatever ways they can for the next 6 weeks.

Holly and I are expecting to have a meeting Thursday or Friday of this week with a couple of our state legislators to answer their questions and get a commitment on who will be carrying the legislation for the 2025 session that begins in January. We already have a couple of co-sponsors; we just need to name the main sponsor.

As soon as the language has been agreed upon, we will share the legislation with you. We do think everyone will be pleasantly surprised on what we have been working so hard on and what is being presented to our legislators! I have A LOT of nervous excitement inside!

I was going to start this blog with this quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

This is an all time favorite quote of mine. I DO wholeheartedly believe that if something – ANYTHING really matters to us – we need to speak up.

Wild horses are one of those things that I am extremely passionate about. In light of the successes we have realized with the TRNP wild horses, many of you and also other advocates have asked us for help with other wild horse herds. We are always happy to help in whatever ways we can.

One of the ways that we will be helping is to take some of the messages about wild horses everywhere and a few herds specifically to Washington DC with us.

A few of the messages we will be bringing with us – IN ADDITION to the TRNP wild horses:

We have sent emails requesting meetings with key members of Congress to discuss the permanent sterilization language (AND OUR TAX DOLLARS TO FUND THAT PROGRAM!) that have been repeatedly approved in the yearly BLM budget.
Our friend Mary is getting some info together that we can give to members of Congress to speak up for the Devil’s Garden herd.
Our friend Heather is putting together literature to discuss sterilization, GonaCon and the zeroing out of MORE of OUR wild horse herds!

That zeroing out includes the horses pictured in todays blog.

That young curly horse really captured my heart when I met our friend Heather from Save Our Wild Horses in Wyoming last month!

Heather toured the Salt Wells Creek herd management area with us.

IMAGINE – 1.3 MILLION acres of public land!

I can’t even begin to paint a proper picture of the vastness of this land! There are places in North Dakota where the quiet really overtakes you. That was NOTHING compared to being on the Salt Wells Creek HMA!

On those 1.3 MILLION acres live approximately 400 wild horses. After driving around portions of the 1.3 MILLION acres for about 4 hours – we were able to find MAYBE 100 of those 400 wild horses. That included this adorable young curly horse and his mom.

The BLM plans to ZERO out The Salt Wells Creek herd next year. This includes these amazing curly wild horses!

When do we stop being quiet?

I can tell you as a wild horse advocate, I am exhausted. I know I am NOT alone in my exhaustion. There is a literal war being waged against OUR wild horses on OUR public lands. There are so many battles –

The battle for the Devil’s Garden wild horses
The battle for the TRNP wild horses
The battle for the Salt Wells Creek wild horses
The battle for the Divide Basin wild horses
The battle for the White Mountain wild horses
The battle coming for the Pryor Mountain wild horses

This list can literally go on and on. The Salt Wells Creek, Divide Basin and White Mountain herds are all set to be completely removed off of the 3 MILLION ACRES of PUBLIC land that was set aside for them through FEDERAL LAW in the Wild and Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act.

WE ARE FAILING OUR WILD HORSES!

I have personally had people from individuals to larger wild horse advocacy groups tell me things like:

There are a lot of people “secretly” cheering you on
YOU should be the poster child for wild horse advocacy – we should ALL be trying to replicate what your organization did for the TRNP wild horses
Can you help with this herd or that herd?

And then when I suggest what has worked for us – I get “That won’t work here.” No one tried – they just KNOW it won’t work.

When I ask a lot of groups – can you share our Calls to Action? We need signatures on our petition, etc. to help get things changed. All of those people “silently” cheering me on suddenly become even more silent!

WHY?

I have narrowed it down to a few very sad things:

As nonprofits, we depend on the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR to be able to change things. This is where the buck stops for many nonprofits. It would seem that they can’t afford to show that someone else is doing something different EVEN IF they are partnering with us to create change. That would mean that they might lose or possibly split donations.
People don’t like me personally. OR – They don’t like Heather or Mary, or any other individual or organization that we are working with.
In some cases, as many of you have pointed out – it’s ego – it wasn’t THEIR idea so they can’t support it.
Some individuals/organizations are very stuck in their own thinking. It is LITERALLY – THEIR WAY or the highway. There isn’t any room for other solutions outside of what they have decided is THE solution.

And – just like that – just as a BLM agent said DECADES ago – wild horse advocates will be the key to their own undoing and will cause the end of wild horses.

Yes! WE ARE HERE!

The ONLY question we should EVER be asking ourselves as “wild horse advocates” is “CAN THIS ACTION HELP OUR WILD HORSES?”

IF that answer is yes, every other question should be pushed aside.

That’s not happening today.

I have talked to so many wild horse advocates – EVERY ONE of them is concerned about the permanent sterilization language in the BLM budget and feels strongly that it needs to be removed.

And yet – our petition, that will be hand delivered next week to members of Congress has ONLY 258 signatures as of this writing. The Call to Action asking for people to email their own members of Congress to help lay the groundwork for our meetings next week has even less – 168 as of this writing.

It has been said that the Theodore Roosevelt National Park wild horses have MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of followers.

The majority of individuals and organizations believe that the collars that have been put on our horses need to come off. We KNOW there is no reason for them. We KNOW there are safety concerns. Yet our petition ONLY has right around 3,000 signatures. It seems we are missing a few names.

Have we really become so complacent and polarized in our beliefs that we CANNOT come together FOR THE HORSES?

Please, I beg you to prove me wrong.

I can’t do this alone. Neither can Heather or Mary or Barbara or Janine or The Cloud Foundation or Laura Leigh or ANYONE else.

I will once again ask that you take literally a moment to do the Calls to Action, we laid out last week to help us realize success FOR THE HORSES when we head to Washington DC next week. These action items will be open through MONDAY 11/11/2024. We head out early Tuesday morning.

In case you missed our blog from this past Sunday, I will copy and paste the Calls to Action for you here:

We need your help to make the MAGIC happen!

First – if you have NOT already signed our petition asking that the collars be removed from the wild horses of Theodore Roosevelt National Park – PLEASE SIGN IT NOW!! If you have already signed it, THANK YOU! Now, please ask your friends and family members to sign this as well. You can sign the petition here: https://secure.everyaction.com/x-5WrjPo20Cb4LGbj5PD-A2

This is ONE of MANY topics we will be discussing with Senator Hoeven. We are also trying to get an appointment with the National Park Service when we are in DC. It goes without saying that we really need strength in numbers here to get these collars of these horses! We have just under 3,000 signatures so far!

Second – One of the biggest things we asked during our postcard campaign was that Congress STOP giving the BLM money for the permanent sterilization of our wild horses. Almost 900 of you sent postcards asking this!

We want to follow-up on this and are asking that you do 3 things to help:

Sign our petition asking them to stop funding the permanent sterilization of our wild horses! We will hand deliver this petition to Congress this month. You can sign the petition here: https://secure.everyaction.com/TDodlCKidU68M1sjsNQWJA2
Write a Letter to the Editor to YOUR own local newspaper. We have a sample message you can customize below.
We have taken the sample letter in our LTE action above and also added it to a one-click email that you can send to your members of Congress. You can send the email here: https://secure.everyaction.com/KpGnE7odVkG2_LuFlzncPg2

We are asking that you customize this letter and send it to your local newspaper. Please make sure that you call out your members of Congress – feel free to list multiple names! IF you have a member of Congress that is on the Interior Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee – please call them out in a single Letter to the Editor. You can check the committee members here: US House Appropriations Committee: https://appropriations.house.gov/subcommittees/interior-environment-and-related-agencies-118th-congress US Senate Appropriations Committee: https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/subcommittees/interior-environment-and-related-agencies

(Member of Congress) I am asking that you do your part to protect our wild horses! The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has once again requested money in their budget for the permanent sterilization of America’s wild horses and burros. This is in direct conflict with The Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the law that was enacted to protect our wild horses and burros on our public lands. If the BLM continues to receive funding from Congress – WITH OUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS – to permanently sterilize our wild horses and burros, this will mean the end of these majestic animals.

The continual funding being granted to the BLM for the permanent sterilization of our wild horses and burros is a total waste of taxpayer dollars and I am asking for your help to stop this act of destruction against these amazing animals.

This advocacy method DOES get the attention of our members of Congress! They watch closely to see where their names are mentioned on social media or in the newspapers.

Third – We will also be speaking with members of Congress about the Devil’s Garden herd when we are in Washington DC this month. Please take a moment to send an email to your members of Congress to speak up for the Devil’s Garden herd: https://secure.everyaction.com/TUGd9WmX4EqyNwsH08Wnww2

Thank you for taking the time to take action. Please – share these action items with your family and friends and please, ask other organizations you support to also share these action items.

I will leave you with one last quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr:

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”