[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 62 (Thursday, April 11, 2024)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       PROTECTING OUR WILD HORSES

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. STEVE COHEN

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 11, 2024

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to include in the Record a 
statement from Josselyn Wolf, a young woman from Rhode Island, who 
appears with me in the documentary film ``Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit 
of the West'' about the plight of America's wild horses. She is an 
advocate for H.R. 3656, the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act, of 
which I am an original cosponsor, and has some insightful thoughts to 
share about how the Wild Horse and Burro Program is being run by the 
Bureau of Land Management. This is her statement:
       ``We need the tonic of wildness.'' This powerful sentiment, 
     articulated by Henry David Thoreau in his reflective piece 
     Walden, was embodied when millions of children sent letters 
     to Congress--more letters than any non-war-related movement 
     has generated in American history--begging for the protection 
     of one of our nation's most treasured species: the wild 
     horse.
       Harnessing the power of our democratic republic, these 
     voices inspired the unanimous passage of the 1971 Wild Free-
     Roaming Horses and Burros Act. The Act reserved roughly 47 
     million acres of Western rangelands for the unbridled 
     existence of wild horses and burros and promised the 
     dwindling numbers of mustangs--then at extinction level--
     protection from ``capture, branding, harassment, or death.''
       Over fifty years since the passage of that vital 
     legislation, half of designated herd management areas have 
     been eliminated and the protections promised by the Act 
     continue to be grossly and sometimes violently violated under 
     a system that misleads and misinforms Congress, the media, 
     and the American people.
       Each year, Congress allocates over one hundred million 
     dollars to the Bureau of Land Management to support the Wild 
     Horse and Burro Program: a system that endangers, kills, 
     incarcerates, and separates close-knit equine families 
     through the use of traumatic helicopter-induced stampedes and 
     dismal holding facilities, a system overseen by land managers 
     who claim to restore the land while destroying it, a system 
     that has sent thousands of wild horses--wild horses: the 
     icons of freedom and grit that define our great nation--to 
     the slaughter pipeline.
       Why? To support millions of livestock who produce less than 
     two percent of American beef, much of which is shipped 
     overseas to China. Livestock who, by the Bureau of Land 
     Management's own statistics, graze nearly six times more 
     public land than wild horses, vastly outnumbering them on 
     their own designated territories. Not only does public 
     grazing of cattle and sheep degrade biodiversity, it also 
     subsidizes billion-dollar cattle corporations at the expense 
     of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars: a stark contrast 
     to small ranchers who are forced to pay rising grazing fees.
       As human beings, we wield unprecedented power to disrupt 
     the thriving natural ecological balance of our planet and 
     therefore unprecedented responsibility to sustain it. As the 
     National Academy of Sciences along with a multitude of 
     independent scientists and researchers have attested, our 
     land's ecological harmony is, in its current state, 
     fundamentally broken. As law scholars have passionately 
     voiced, our legal compliance with the Wild Free-Roaming 
     Horses and Burros Act is fundamentally broken. As Indigenous 
     representatives have testified, our relationship with the 
     land is fundamentally broken.
       You, Members of Congress, wield the power to defend this 
     untamed wildness that is the history and heart of America 
     before it reaches extinction level. Each of you, Members of 
     Congress, are in a unique position to rectify this 
     dysfunctional system that is compromising our environment, 
     our economy, and the natural wonders and gifts we are 
     collectively responsible for, to pass down to our children 
     untarnished and undestroyed.
       Therefore, I am not asking for a radical, partisan rewrite: 
     I am asking for a conversation. It is up to you to reevaluate 
     the priorities of our nation . . . before it's too late. As a 
     sixteen-year-old constituent, it is of imperative importance 
     to me that the planet of my future is managed sustainably, 
     and that carelessness does not forever eliminate the tonic of 
     wildness that makes our Earth a home.

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