Currently, the BLM Livestock Grazing Program encompasses 214 million acres of rangeland. Approximately 80 million of those acres were designated "principally" for wild horses & burros. Due to ongoing removal policies, wild horses & burros have been completely removed from millions of acres of land originally intended as their habitat (six states have lost their ENTIRE wild horse populations!) and now they range on only 34 million acres of federal lands where they are vastly outnumbered (200-1) by private livestock. Currently, there are approx. 28,563 wild horses and burros roaming on these lands, in contrast to 7,488,055 privately owned cattle permitted to graze there also. Still, it is the wild horses and burros that the ranchers are blaming for the rangeland being over-grazed. While the government rents the rangeland to the private ranchers at about 1/10 of the market-rate, administration of the Livestock Grazing Progam COSTS the tax-paying public over $130,000.000 dollars per year to manage. Meanwhile our government and the BLM, encouraged and supported by the private interests of the ranchers, have embarked on a systematic removal policy for the wild horses and burros that is designed to insure their extinction! We sign this petition in DEMAND that ALL grazing permits be REVOKED on the rangeland designated for the wild equines, and that the $130,000.000 dollars a year used to manage the Livestock Grazing Program be used to EXPAND, manage and KEEP the wild horses and burros FOREVER on our public lands for all the Nation and future generations to enjoy. NO MORE PRIVATE GRAZING ON OUR WILD HORSES PUBLIC LANDS! NO TO CATTLE IN WILD HORSE & BURRO COUNTRY!
* cat·tle: Any of various chiefly domesticated mammals of the genus Bos, including cows, steers, bulls, and oxen, often raised for meat and dairy products.
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Click link below to read more about the privatization of our public lands. Its an old article but nothing has changed or the better, only worse.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-12514447.html
