Regarding "New attention to wild horses," your Jan. 25 editorial praising Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar: I am happy you recognize the need of wild horses to continue to exist on Western rangelands, but I am very upset with your portrayal of Salazar, a lifelong cattle rancher, who appears to want all public lands used for oil, other types of development, and mainly for cattle range.

The Bureau of Land Management continues to this day to carry out the Bush administration's plan to decimate our country's wild horse population.

On a very recent inhumane roundup in the dead of winter (when the horses are most vulnerable) in Nevada, nine horses were killed, including a young foal whose hooves were ruined running on volcanic rocks; also 25 other horses were injured. The foal had to be euthanized. This is just one example of dozens of inhumane roundups. The BLM tries to soften their terminology by calling them "gathers." What a laugh!

The BLM vastly exaggerates the number of the horses and the conditions of the wild horses by saying they are starving to death. This is not true; the horses are healthy. The BLM's inhumane roundups destroy the genetic viability of the herds, break up families, destroy herd wisdom, and worst of all, terrorize, injure and kill the horses.

The BLM is spending $100,000 per day or more of taxpayers' money maintaining and feeding the 34,000 to 44,000 wild horses they have already rounded up and penned up in corrals. Just imagine the suffering of these wild creatures. Also, the mustangs don't belong in "eco-touristic" lands in the Midwest or the east, but on their native lands!

You failed to mention the devious Burns Amendment of 2005. Montana Republican Sen. Conrad Burns attached a stealth rider to the 2005 federal appropriations bill just as senators were going home for Thanksgiving. The bill passed and it completely destroyed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.

The Restore Our American Mustangs Act is now stuck in the Senate, having already been passed by the House. People who care about restoring our wild horses to their rightful native lands need to write to their senators and the other "powers that be" and urge them to pass this act and to call for a moratorium on roundups and for an investigation of the BLM.

Judith L. Chase is an author and a member of WHOA, the Wild Horse Observers Association based in Placitas.