Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act of 2023

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.