Advisory vote could spell doom for thousands of horses, burros
Tens of thousands of wild horses and burros in government holding facilities could be killed if the federal Bureau of Land Management adopts a recent recommendation from an advisory board.
The bureau is caring for nearly 50,000 animals in off-range corrals and pastures, according to a statement. Groups of equines are routinely rounded up and removed from public-range lands in 10 Western states and placed in holding. The bureau estimates there are more than 67,000 wild horses and burros, also known as donkeys, still roaming public ranges.
“The animals should not have to pay this price for the inaction of the government. Killing healthy horses is not humane.” — Ginger Kathrens, Volunteer executive director, Colorado-based Cloud Foundation
The National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, an independent nine-member panel, on Friday voted 8-1 to recommend the bureau sell without limitation or kill all horses and burros deemed unadoptable.
“The BLM is committed to having healthy horses on healthy range lands,” the statement reads. “We will continue to care for and seek good homes for animals that have been removed from the range.”
Tom Gorey, senior public affairs specialist for the bureau, said there are not enough resources available to care for any additional animals.
“Unplaced animals cost taxpayers up to $50,000 over each animal’s lifetime if maintained in an offrange corral,” he said via email.
Ginger Kathrens, the volunteer executive director of the Colorado-based Cloud Foundation that advocates for wild horses and burros and a member of the advisory board representing humane advocacy, cast the lone dissenting vote.
Ms. Kathrens said the bureau has a long history of rounding up and removing wild horses and burros without also using available fertility-control methods.
The government has created its own problem, she said. “The animals should not have to pay this price for the inaction of the government,” she said. “Killing healthy horses is not humane.”
The bureau has argued that the animals are having a devastating effect on range lands, leaving them in poor condition for other uses by wildlife and the public. Ms. Kathrens said livestock allowed to graze the land is having the biggest impact. “On the lands where they exist together, the BLM does a forage allocation on how many animals can live there based on how much food they are allotted,” she said.
“Horses are given 18 percent of the forage, but livestock get 82 percent. Wild horses are on 11 percent of BLM land, and livestock are on more than 70 percent.”
Ms. Kathrens noted that over the years, the government also has removed more than 20 million acres of range from the areas in which wild horses and donkeys are allowed to roam.
Mr. Gorey noted that Congress has placed annual riders on appropriations bills since fiscal year 2010 that prohibit the bureau from destroying healthy animals or selling them for commercial processing.
Advocates argue that the recommendation for sale without limitation means many of them will likely end up in the slaughter pipeline. “Essentially what that means is that they go to the highest bidder, regardless of who that buyer is,” said Gillian Lyons, manager of the wild horse and burro program for the Humane Society of the United States.
“They could go to a kill buyer, and we know that’s happened before.”
The humane society says more than 100,000 American horses from all backgrounds wind up in slaughterhouses across the borders in Mexico and Canada annually.
The meat is sold for human consumption overseas in countries including France, Italy, Belgium and Japan.
The bureau has argued that there are no effective and affordable methods for fertility control either on the ranges or in holding facilities.
Both Ms. Kathrens and Ms. Lyons said that argument is misleading, because there is porcine zona pellucida, an injection available for mares that will render them infertile for about a year.
“We hope to have better solutions in a few years, but we have to start managing the horses using the tools available to us now,” Ms. Kathrens said.
Ms. Lyons said the government has a responsibility to care for the animals it removes from the wild, and to do so humanely.
“The agency still has to consider whether or not to adopt this recommendation,” she said. “The only good thing that came out of this is just the pure public backlash. They are an iconic species. The American mustang is the symbol of the West.”
Horses originally evolved in North America, Ms. Kathrens said. They migrated over a land bridge to Asia and then Africa, and were reintroduced to their native soil by Spanish conquistadors in the early 1500s.
Several online petitions have garnered thousands of signatures. The primary petition, created by the American Wild Hose Preservation Campaign at change.org/p/say-no-tomass-killing-of-wild-horses had nearly 70,000 signatures by Wednesday evening.