U.S. Won't Kill Wild Horses -- For Now

Maryann Mott, National Geographic News 18 Nov 08;

Thousands of wild horses in U.S. care will not be put down, and the government will have another year to explore possible solutions, U.S. officials said Monday.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will round up fewer wild horses and try to shuffle funds within the agency to prevent killing the animals.

About 30,000 horses removed from western rangelands are currently being cared for by BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program.

A federal report released last week by the Government Accountability Office—the watchdog agency for the U.S. Congress—suggested that thousands of horses kept in government holding facilities may have to be killed as upkeep costs escalate and adoptions dwindle.

(Related: "Horses Suffer, Owners Struggle With Soaring Feed Prices" [September 8, 2008].)

BLM Deputy Director Henri Bisson said maintaining the wild horse and burro program for another year will give the agency, Congress, ranchers, and animal advocates time to come up with alternatives and let "cooler heads prevail.

"Let's focus on doing something positive before we have to look at last resort tools," Bisson said at the BLM's National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board meeting in Reno, Nevada.

"We're not making any decisions today. We're not making any decisions next week."

Bisson said the agency needs to find U.S. $15 million to $20 million elsewhere in its budget to sustain the wild horse program throughout 2009.

Government roundups will also now be limited to about 5,000 horses annually, mostly of animals facing severe hardship because of conditions such as drought.

Back to the Drawing Board

Dozens of wild horse advocates attended Monday night's meeting in hopes of persuading the BLM not to euthanize the horses.

Willis Lamm of Least Resistance Training Concepts, a nonprofit that provides free mentoring assistance for wild horse adopters, attended the meeting.

"The theory [advocated in] the room was these guys need to get their act together and go back to the drawing board and figure out how to market the horses that they do have," he said.

The government may not have to act at all, though, if the agency takes up Madeleine Pickens—wife of billionaire T-Bone Pickens—on her reported offer to adopt all the horses being cared for by the government.

If her bid is successful, the horses would be transferred to private refuges.

"We welcome the offer and the interest," said BLM spokesperson Tom Gorey.

Slaughterhouse Fear

About 33,000 mustangs, often called wild horses, roam the dusty open plains of ten western states, with about half of the population in Nevada.

With few predators, wild horse herds nearly double every five years. To make room for livestock and farming operations on public lands, government-hired cowboys round up about 10,000 mustangs annually.

Horses are then put into holding facilities to be adopted or sold, or to live out the remainder of their lives. Some animals can live for 15 years in pens.

The 1971 Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act calls wild horses "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West."

The legislation ensures that "wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death."

Though the law does allow for euthanasia to achieve "appropriate management levels," public and congressional reaction to the large-scale slaughter of thousands of healthy horses has led the BLM to avoid using these options—despite its recent budget troubles, the GAO report said.

To quell such concerns, Congress gave BLM an alternative to euthanasia in 2004 by allowing the agency to sell horses "without limitation," for example at auctions or livestock sales if the animals have been unsuccessfully offered for adoption three times or are at least ten years of age.

The agency, however, continued to impose sale limitations on buyers, in part, because it feared horses sold for low prices might be resold to slaughterhouses, the report said.

The report also cited job loss as a reason.

"Various BLM officials at different levels of responsibility also told us that the agency has not complied with these provisions," the report said.

Doing so would cause draw negative reaction from the public and Congress and cause an "immediate threat" to the careers of BLM officials involved, it added.

Alternatives

Other alternatives to selling horses exist, the report pointed out.

One would be providing private individuals or organizations with financial incentives, such as tax breaks, to care for unwanted wild horses. (Learn how you can support wild animals through adoptions in Green Guide.)

Another possibility is releasing mustangs on public and private lands outside of areas where they were originally caught, although this would require a legislative change to the horse and burro act.

BLM spokesperson Gorey agreed with the report's findings.

"The GAO report correctly depicts the difficult situation that the BLM finds itself in with regard to maintaining unadopted or unsold animals in holding facilities," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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