Earlier this week, Grey’s Anatomy Actress Katherine Heigl posted a series of surreal photos on her Instagram story. The first image was of a horse and its foal. Text on the image said “PLEASE READ!” The next image in the story was the same image, simply overlaid with the email address of White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

Devoid of any context, the posts were bizarre, memes-like, and confusing.

But Heigl’s post is part of a larger campaign in which animal rights activists and celebrities are asking people to flood Psaki’s inbox with emails asking the White House to stop a government project that they say endangers a herd of wild horses in Utah.

Animal Wellness Action ran a months-long campaign to stop the Bureau of Land Management from collecting and remove “excess” horses of the popular Onaqui herd in order to control their population. The campaign drew support from celebrities like Heigl and Priscilla Presley, who both urged their thousands of social media followers to email Psaki to draw more attention to the cause.

“With great evil the great means. And when you’re ignored at the level we were at, political correctness and protocols are out the window,” Animal Wellness Action executive director Marty Irby told Motherboard. that Psaki could have received thousands of emails from their supporters.

Activists have attempted to contact the White House on several occasions, but without success apart from a few generic letters on animal rights or climate change that activists associated with the cause have received. Irby said they had not heard from the White House, the Bureau of Land Management or Psaki. Psaki also did not return Motherboard’s request for comment.

The Bureau of Land Management insists that some of the horses in this area of ​​Utah must be removed for to protect both the health of the herd and the health of the Onaqui mountain range region.

The campaign has used several methods over the months to urge the federal government to stop the roundup from happening, including sharing a video featuring Brownie Scouts appealing to President Joe Biden and deploying an advertising truck to roam the House. Blanche while playing a short film about Onaqui horses. Heigl also attended a rally at the Utah Capitol earlier this month. Grey’s Anatomy actress Ellen Pompeo also shared several Tweets on the cause.

“All of us who fought to stop this roundup gave our all and it’s our 11th hour Hail Mary,” Heigl wrote in an Instagram post, urging his subscribers to email Psaki.

The Bureau of Land Management uses helicopters to round up the horses, which can lead to a stampede and fatal injuries. the BLM The website says there are over 475 Onaqui horses in the area, which far exceeds the limit of 121-210 horses that they believe is appropriate for this region. Approximately 296 horses will be removed from the Onaqui Herd Management Area, located in Tooele and Juab counties in Utah.

Data from previous collections shows that some horses are euthanized after suffering fractures or lacerations during the breeding process.

“When you take the helicopter after a horse that has spent its entire life on the stand, it’s like taking a helicopter and chasing a five-year-old,” Irby said.

According to the bureau’s website, the Onaqui horses have experienced deteriorating health due to a drought in the area. Collecting and removing a certain number of horses from the area would allow the office to begin effectively implementing birth and population control on the group. Campaigners believe remote dart birth control would be a more efficient and humane method of controlling the feral horse population, but the BLM maintains the Onaqui population has grown too large to be managed this way.

The BLM also claims that many of the collected Onaqui horses will be available for adoption from October. But one recent report from The New York Times revealed that many horses adopted under the Bureau’s adoption incentive program are sold to slaughterhouses after adopters receive their federal incentive of $ 1,000 per head.

The Bureau of Land Management has already started rounding up the Onaqui horses on Wednesday morning, with no known plans to stop. While there are other at-risk breeds of the same practice, Irby explained that they expected to protect Onaqui horses better because they are a popular breed and a tourist attraction in Utah.

“They don’t care about the voices of so many riders and youngsters who just wanted to keep 475 horses from being injured in the world,” Irby said. “It was a very easy and easy thing to do. It was probably the easiest request we could ever make to the White House. “