Hello and Happy Friday!
As promised, we will be finishing up our series on Federal Protection. At a later date, we will share our version of what we would like to see amended and passed. We will also have a Call to Action surrounding this coming soon, so please make sure you subscribe to our blogs to stay up to date!
A few small things in the legislation that we believe should be amended include the monitoring and assessment part of the legislation. This part requires the park to provide a yearly report on the wild horses entrusted to their care. We believe this is a wonderful addition but also do not want this to inhibit the park from being transparent with the public the other 364 days of the year. This is something that can be easily remedied through the partnership with the wild horse working group.
The legislation also requires the park to provide a management plan within 120 days. In my meeting with Superintendent Daniels, she agreed that this is a pretty impossible ask. The new management plan should include public input and follow current NEPA rules. The park needs an ample amount of time to properly research the best management for these horses. Also missing from this aspect is how often the management plan should be updated. The last one hasn’t been updated since 1978 – 47 YEARS AGO!
Management plans SHOULD be updated every 10 years or when new science is being considered as a tool to manage the wild horses.
Next, and this topic is a big one – BIRTH CONTROL. This is an even bigger issue because members of this herd have been permanently sterilized because of the aggressive use of GonaCon on this herd since 2009.
This too can be easily remedied through collaboration with the wild horse working group.
We will begin a whole blog series on the use of fertility control on this herd soon so be sure to check back.
We also know that so many of you are opposed to the collars. We spoke with Senator Hoeven’s office about all our concerns, and we will have more on the collars soon. We DO think there should be a line in the legislation that prohibits ANY further experimentation on this herd without prior discussion with the public and the wild horse working group. Between the 11 years of GonaCon experimentation and now the GPS tracking collars, these horses have been experimented on enough.
Please let us know if we covered all of your concerns and if you would like to see anything else added as we go through this process. You can email us at info@chwha.org
Thank you for your support and have a great weekend!
We still have some of our CHWHA 2026 calendars! Grab yours while you can here: https://chasinghorses.com/products/chwha-13-month-2026-calendar
Leave a Reply