Rally aims to stop Nevada mustang roundups

(NN&V Staff) – Wild horse and burro advocates and In Defense of Animals (IDA) are organizing a Wednesday rally in San Francisco.

The mustang defenders will gather at noon in front of Senator Diane Feinstein’s office building (One Post Street at Montgomery) asking the senator to help halt the federal Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) massive roundup of thousands of mustangs living in the public Calico Mountain Complex in northwestern Nevada.

The roundup is scheduled to begin today, despite a federal court ruling recommending that the action be postponed. It will begin in secret, on private land from which the public will be barred.

What: Protest for America’s Wild Horses
Where: Outside Senator Diane Feinstein’s office, One Post Street, San Francisco
When: Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 11 A.M.; News Conference at Noon

“We invite concerned citizens of all ages to join us Wednesday, calling on Senator Feinstein, who has always been a friend of wild horses. We ask her to halt the largest and most controversial BLM mustang roundup in years,” said Elliot M. Katz, DVM, president of the Marin County-based In Defense of Animals, which is organizing the event in conjunction with the Colorado-based Cloud Foundation.

In a December 23, 2009 decision, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman said that the BLM’s plans to stockpile Nevada’s wild horses in Midwestern holding facilities is likely illegal, and consequently suggested that BLM postpone the Calico gather, saying it was an issue for Congress. IDA says that ruling, combined with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) violations cited in IDA’s complaints to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Interior Department, should warrant President Obama’s intervention to stop this roundup immediately.

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