Stop Bucking Around, Wyoming! PETA Asks State to Nix Required License Plate Logo

For Immediate Release:
June 27, 2024

Contact:
Maddy Missett 202-483-7382

Could Wyoming’s “Bucking Horse and Rider” license plate design soon go the way of the dinosaurs? PETA thinks it should. Today, the group sent letters to Wyoming Senate President Ogden Driskill and Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives Albert Sommers, asking them to introduce an amendment to the state’s motor vehicles statutes—which currently mandate the use of the rodeo-glorifying design—to allow residents to opt out of promoting cruelty on their cars.

To help give them a jump-start, PETA is offering three brand-new replacement logos: a triceratops skull, to celebrate the many dinosaur fossils that have been discovered in Wyoming; a horse running free in nature; and, if lawmakers insist on promoting rodeos, a more honest depiction of them—a spur dripping blood.

Credit: PETA

“Animals exploited in rodeos are provoked with weapons and left with broken bones, punctured lungs, and snapped necks,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is calling on Wyoming lawmakers to allow residents to reject this cruelty and celebrate what truly makes their state extraordinary, such as its thrilling Jurassic history or the wild horses who run free on its plains.”

PETA notes that animals used in rodeos have frequently sustained fatal injuries—including two horses who were killed at the Overland Stage Stampede Rodeo in Green River earlier this month.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.