ASI Diary

Horse Senseless - With A Happy Ending

How’s this for a scheme that only a government could design: 

Over 100,000 wild horses roamed the Western US minding their own business and not requiring any assistance from people, thank you anyway.  So let’s spend lots of time and money rounding up nearly half of them, kill and injure some in the process, and condense the survivors into holding areas. 

Now those horses who once roamed free do need human intervention.  Food, medical services, and caretaker personnel, for starters.  The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), who manages this enterprise, complains that it takes three-fourths of its $37 million horse budget just for such basics.

Under the “Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971” (the legislation that prohibits commercial capture of wild horses but mandates government roundups) the BLM must offer the horses for adoption at $125 each, sell the remainder without restriction (spelled “slaughter”), or euthanize them. 

Even at such a low price adoptions have been steadily falling and holding pen density is increasing.   But the BLM has been very reluctant to sell the remaining 30,000 horses to the horsemeat trade or to euthanize them because of the anticipated public outcry.

Running free - but for how long?

Faced with a budget crisis, though, the BLM decided that it must “bite the bullet” and begin making “hard choices” at a scheduled October 17, 2008 meeting.  Many horse advocates were gathered in a desperate attempt to save these beautiful animal friends.  But, as in a script straight from Hollywood, a last minute savior appeared in the form of Madeleine Pickens.

Ms. Pickens, wife of oil and gas magnate T. Boone Pickens, has offered to immediately adopt the 2,000 horses that would have been the first sacrifices.  Plus, she told officials that she would buy suitable land and adopt all of the horses now in federal pens.

The Pickenses are both strong animal advocates and were behind the successful movement to close all US horse slaughter houses. 

We who care about our non-human relatives are deeply grateful for these actions.  But we also need to understand how this predicament arose.

Grazing rights on those public lands where the horses ran free are inexpensively leased to cattle ranchers.  They complain that the horses compete with bovines for the limited forage.  Some land experts disagree, arguing that cattle don’t graze far from water whereas horses roam great distances.  Nevertheless, the cattle lobby is a powerful force inside government.

It is this confluence of commercial and humane interests that produces bad results, and not just with horses.  We see such influence in local zoning that impacts wildlife, government subsidized agriculture, cruel and useless animal experimentation, and many, many other areas.

It is easy to feel an impotent rage over such abuses, but the wild horse incident presents an opportunity to email legislators applauding a positive outcome and urging BLM cooperation with the Pickens offer.  That kind of correspondence says that animals are a mainstream societal issue.  A note to your local newspaper editor praising Madeleine Pickens’ generosity would also serve that purpose and would be a nice way to thank her.

Posted on November 19, 2008 at 06:02 pm -- Author's Site

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