US Gov't Votes to Kill 45,000 Wild Horses, Advocates Want Them Saved
The Humane Society of the United States has launched a petition seeking to save the lives of 45,000 wild horses and burros currently in government holding facilities across the country after the Bureau of Land Management's National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board voted to recommend euthanizing all of the unadopted animals.
"The decision of the BLM advisory board to recommend the destruction of the 45,000 wild horses currently in holding facilities is a complete abdication of responsibility for their care. The agency would not be in this situation but for their long-term mismanagement. Alternatives to this proposal have been ignored for over 20 years. The HSUS stands ready to implement these alternatives at any time," Humane Society of the United States Senior Vice President of Programs & Innovations Holly Hazard, said in a release Friday.
The activist organization charged that over the past 20 years, the BLM has maintained round-up and removal as a primary management strategy for wild horse and burro populations on America's Western rangelands.
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This effort said the organization has resulted in a financially unsustainable Wild Horse and Burro Program.
"By focusing massive efforts on removing horses and burros from the range, without treating those horses remaining on the range with any form of fertility control to limit population growth, holding facilities throughout the United States have become overburdened," the wild horse advocates charged.
"In fiscal year 2015, BLM spent $49 million maintaining these horses in off-range facilities, which constituted 46 percent of the entire budget of the agency's wild horse and burro program. Such a large expenditure has limited the agency's ability to properly manage wild horses on the range. The HSUS has long recommended the humane and sustainable option of implementing fertility control programs throughout the West," the organization added.
President and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States Wayne Pacelle said if the government is allowed to euthanize the horses and burros, it could make America the biggest horse killer in the world.
"That's a prescription for mass slaughter on an almost unimaginable scale and it would perhaps make the United States the biggest horse killing enterprise in the world. While the Advisory Board has no legal authority to mandate action on the agency's part, the agency will consider this recommendation, a sort of 'Final Solution' cooked up by public-lands ranchers and their allies," Pacelle noted.
He further noted that in 2015, the Department of Interior's Office of the Inspector General released an investigative report, which found that the BLM had sold thousands of wild horses to a livestock hauler named Tom Davis who then sold these horses to kill buyers.
"Though they are not being sold directly by the agency, wild horses are still going to slaughter by a variety of circuitous pathways. Sources at the Sugarcreek, Ohio, livestock auction last week documented BLM freeze-branded horses, in very poor condition, being sold to kill buyers," Pacelle said.
"Our nation's wild horses deserve better than this sort of mismanagement and abuse, and an attitude that they are throwaway objects. A sensible program must be grounded on controlling the population on the range through fertility control, obviating the need for dangerous round-ups that betray the national interest in protecting horses, and ending wasteful spending that ultimately solves no problems and just builds a massive captive wild horse program," he added.
