If there is one person who can command national attention for an issue, it is "queen of all media" Oprah Winfrey. That's why Saving America's Mustangs, a group run by PETA supporter Madeleine Pickens, has enlisted actors, musicians, and athletes to film an appeal to Oprah asking her to help them protect the few wild horses remaining in the West.
 

  
Just 100 years ago, there were 2 million free-roaming horses in and around Nevada. Today, there are fewer than 28,000. But that isn't stopping the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from continuing to round up wild horses and confine them by the tens of thousands to holding pens, where they may be held for years before being sold. To get the horses into the corrals, workers rope, drag, and kick them and run them down with helicopters, killing some of them in the process. The roundups cost taxpayers $70 million per year. On July 1, the BLM will resume rounding up even more horses during foaling season.

Why is the BLM so hell-bent on rounding up wild horses? Two words: cattle ranchers. When horses compete with cows for grazing land, guess who ends up the loser? It's just one more of the many excellent reasons not to eat beef cows. 

Oprah has done a wonderful job exposing the horrors of puppy mills, the Japanese dolphin slaughter, and factory farm cruelty. Will wild mustangs be the first animals to star on her new network? Stay tuned …

Written by Michelle Sherrow

TuesdayHorse / CC

Philanthropist and activist Madeleine Pickens needs your help to save a whole bunch of wild horses who are now in peril.

Our pal Madeleine's "Pony Express Campaign" is working to stop Bureau of Land Management (BLM) round-ups in which wild horses and burros suffer great anguish when they are captured, housed in barren pens, and separated from their families. The BLM rounds up thousands of horses and burros every year, claiming that they are "saving" them from crowding and starvation. But in reality, the BLM is working to keep them off millions of acres of public lands that are leased to agribusiness companies for cattle grazing.

Madeleine's first goal is for President Obama to issue an executive order stopping the round-ups. She then plans to set up a sanctuary of more than 1 million acres—she already has them!—for the tens of thousand of horses who have already been captured, and she ultimately plans to adopt, sterilize, and release them to live freely on protected land. Madeleine's vision is to preserve the legacy of American history and encourage people to visit, appreciate, and respect wild horses.

Jump aboard Madeleine's Pony Express by signing this letter, which Madeleine will personally deliver to the president from the back of her adopted mustang. The deadline to collect 20,000 signatures is September 1.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor