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Welcome to the Alliance of Wild Horse Advocates (AOWHA) Web Site! Welcome! This web site is dedicated to preserving America's wild horses and burros. Here is a snapshot history of the current situation. In 1971 Congress unanimously passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses & Burros Act. The Act provided protections for free-roaming horses and burros found on BLM lands. It also led to an adoption program for excess horses and burros whereby adopters were required to properly maintain and care for adopted animals. They couldn't legally be adopted for purposes of resale, use in commercial products such as table meat or dog food, etc. In recent years BLM gathered more horses than it was able to adopt. Most were held in Sanctuaries located in Oklahoma. Just before Thanksgiving, 2004, Senator Conrad Burns of Montana secretly snuck a provision into the huge Omnibus spending bill that required BLM to sell these excess horses by any means available. Thus thousands of cheap horses would be forced onto the market with no restrictions preventing their purchase for slaughter or rendering. After considerable public protest Congressmen Ed Rahall and Nick Whitfield submitted a bill known as H.R. 297 that would restore the most important protections for these horses and burros. However Congress has been slow to embrace this bill. What you can do. There are many things that you can do. These include calling, e-mailing and writing your representatives in Washington D.C. This web site contains quite a bit of information, downloadable resources, links you can use to get the names and addresses of your Congressional Representative and Senators, etc. We also post recommended actions each week. The navigation bar on the left side of each page lists several topics, most of which open up into sub topics. If you are new to the site, feel free to explore around and learn about the wild horse issue. When you are ready to take action, select "Actions!" from the navigation bar. This link will take you to a listing of the current week's actions as well as actions for all of the previous weeks. Please check them all out and get involved. Just because a specific action was listed in a previous week doesn't mean that it is no longer relevant. Most of the actions are useful at any time. If you need to find out how to contact your Congressional Representatives, use the "Congress" link in the navigation bar. If you want to download postcards and information sheets to share or to send to your representatives, click on "Resources." It shouldn't take long to find your way around this site. If you do get lost and need help, please click "Contact Us" and someone will help you. Thanks for joining the campaign to protect America's wild horses and burros. Every voice counts and if we are united, we will likely succeed. Willis Lamm, Chair Internal Communications Workgroup