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Wild Horses Heading to the Gallows as Cowboy Prez Exits
As if the situation were not disturbing enough, wild horses are once again heading for the gallows. Thanks to a report just issued by the GAO, the Bureau of Land Management - tasked with overseeing the country's mustang populations - should implement euthanasia as a tool in handling wild horse populations. That means that the 30,000 wild horses now in government housing (more than are in the wild) may soon be eradicated - the result of a decades-long war against the wild horse that has reached its crescendo under the Bush administration, and is now fueled by cost-cutting hysteria sweeping federal agencies.
As I ask in my recently published book Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West, why are we, a cowboy nation, destroying the horse we rode in on? This is a difficult question, and now is the time to put it to rest. Surely, even considering the financial condition of the country, we can take care of our wild horses - and more importantly, can we really put a price on our heritage? (And on a side note: what bizarre, subterranean impulse led the BLM to first float the euthanasia plan on July 4th - the day on which America was born in hoofsparks - and the GAO to publish its findings on Veteran's Day - when we ought to remember our equine war partners as well: in the Civil War, for example, 1.5 million horses and mules were killed or died of illness while serving - at least 5000 at Gettysburg alone).
Please get in touch with President-elect Obama, as well as your representatives and senators, and let them know that a) the extermination of our great partner - the wild horse - is not how you would like your tax dollars to be spent; b) Congress should take a hard look at exactly why so many wild horses have been rounded up in recent years, and c) getting rid of the wild horse is un-American.
Incidentally, Obama was a backer of the anti-slaughter legislation that Congress passed a couple of years ago, shutting down the country's three remaining, and foreign-owned, horse rendering plants. This legislation was passed by a huge margin, thanks to a massive grass-roots campaign kicked into high gear after the previous official death sentence for wild horses was enacted - a rollback in the law that protects them orchestrated by former Montana Senator Conrad Burns. The original law, the Free-Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act, was signed iin 1971 by Richard Nixon, who, in a bizarre footnote to history, quoted Thoreau in an impassioned defense of the wild horse at the signing ceremony. The Burns rollback paved the way for the current disaster.
Now is the time for citizens to stand up for wild horses - the animal that blazed our trails, fought our wars, and at this very moment is making its last stand. As the great cowboy scribe Will James wrote years ago, "They really belong not to man, but to that country of junipers and sage, of deep arroyos, mesas - and freedom."
Note: for additional background on the situation, please see my previous huffpo blogs, my Newsweek interview, and my Los Angeles Times op-ed calling for a moratorium on round-ups.
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this is part 2. The BLM will kill every horse unless there is a proven program thats works. The Wild Horse Summit did not provide one idea that the BLM needed to support releasing the wild horses back out on open range. The BLM knows about genectics, feed, range management, contreceptives and yet not one idea was original and note worthy to convince them to release the wild horses. The so-called groups were worried about wild horses getting along out in the wild once they are released being they are from different herd areas, well what do you think there doing now? In the holding areas, standing along the fence? They didn't ask the hurricane victims in the shelters if they could get along they just said here you are and that was that. So, release the wild horses, they know more about being able to get along than people do, take a page from the wildhorses, learn to get along and be free. In closing quit blaming a person for your sorry lot in life, if you have bad luck its because you bring it on yourself, No President can control congress even if they think they can, many have tried and many have failed. This is a voters system, if you don't like the way something is going then don't vote the creep back in. Remember this, Wild Horses DON'T HAVE LOBBIEST!
this is in 2 parts, part 1. Its a real shame that EVERYONE wants to BLAME President Bush for the problems this country is having. This congress is ran by DEMOCRATS and controlled by Poloesi and Harry Reid who have controlsd over getting the MONEY we need to fix our problems. They gave 12 million to save a rum factory in the Bail Out plan, another 1.2 million to save a bow-in-arrow factory. President Bush didn't bail out the idiots who can't run there own companies, the DEMOCRATS did and yet the DEMOCRATS won't bail out the WILD HORSES. Who has priorities here. Our legacy sure doesn't. At a price tag of 30,000,000.00 plus and 30,000 wild horses thats an easy 1,000,000.00 each so lets put these wild horses on the race track and make money to pay for the work. The Wild Horse Foundation places more wild horses in adoptive homes than any other group and without any government support and yet all others scream louder. My question is, write your books, sing your songs but exactly how many horses did you place inhomes last year, and the year before? To be the difference you have to see the difference.
BLM has taken away over 19 million acres designated for wild horse use and they have completely eliminated wild horses from over 100 herd areas identified as lands for their use per the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971. The Bush Administration is trying to completely finish off these "pesky" wild horses before they fold up their tents and fade into the night, (hopefully). Since Bush 2 became President, we have lost 40% of our wild horses in the wild. 33,000 languish in holding. I say let them out back home to their legally designated ranges.
Not all horses belong in pastures. If you ever saw a horse out in the wild happy and free and does not want to be caged like a wild animal which is how they feel when captured they will kill themselves to be free of fences. If they don't escape from the pens to be free again on their homeland which us humans are destroying out of greed to graze more cattle then there are the wild mustangs and to drill oil and other resources that is what is destroying the land they live on. It is stripping all of the nutritional value out of the land so plants and grass cannot grow to feed the mustangs and other animals out west. We also wou;d not have an over population of domestic horses if breeders would stop trying to get 10's to 100's of foals each year from their papered horses just to make a profit. I know there are alot of people out there who do it cause they love their breed of horse but there are those that breed hundreds of foals just to produce a winner then sell the rest which then most of them get sold to a meat dealer and go across the boarder to be slaughtered for meat especially if they do not like them cause they don't want to do the jobs people want them to be good at.
I don't understand how 30,000 horses are using up that many $$$resources or how we don't have enough land under the BLM to carry them. Yet we have 12-30 million ILLEGALS in this country who we provide housing, medical care, education and food for............
There are thousands of acres owned by the American Tax payer, ask the tax payer how it should be handled, not cattle ranchers.
Our "living legends" are guilty of only one crime: they don't make money. Alive, that is.
Don't let Sarah know about those mustangs. She just loves shooting animals from helicopters.
Excellent article! I, as a taxpayer, am getting tired of footing the bill for these public lands ranchers that are on the wild horses's land! Talk about damage ... they do way more damage than the horses , and the horses also put back into the land when they die; and are an important part of the ecosystem when they're living. Other animals, birds, and plants depend on them. Craig Downer has an excellent article on this.
And don't forget, the BLM is meeting Mon. the 17th in Reno to decide the fate of OUR wild horses. Send them your comments.
If the BLM would stop using TAXPAYER DOLLARS to round the wild horses up, then, we would have enough money to feed the horses. In fact, let's take 1/2 of the horses out of the holding pens and put them back onto the mountains and hills they came from. They are all gelded now, so they won't be procreating. The reality is that they survive fine in the wilderness. We have wild horses here in Montana, and they survive handily in our climate & environment. Leave these beautiful creatures, God's creatures, alone. Have some compassion for them, and let's put enormous pressure on the BLM to stop this heinous idea.
Completely absent from this article and comments on it is the extreme damage uncontrolled feral horse populations are doing right now to the ecology of the high desert. Native animals that did not go extinct in North America are paying a huge price for the emotional attachment to this animal with no predators. Deer, antelope, sage grouse, plenty beautiful and noble in their own right, not to mention countless species of flora, are having to cope with horses in an already harsh environment. They need to be controlled much more than they currently are, if not eliminated. Period.
Ok get a clue and educate yourself on the issue. First off these horses are not feral. They are a native species reintroduced. Paleontological evidence shows that wild horses evolved on the North American continent. And these wild horses are a genetic equivalent to the wild horses that lived long ago and they do differ from domesticated breeds because of hardness of the hooves and resistance to disease.Some herds such as Utah’s Sulphur Spring herd are a direct link to the primitive Iberian horse and have been recognized by geneticists as a resource of “truly unique and irreplaceable genotypes, a zoological treasure.” These horses retain many traits of the endangered Sorraia breed, including triple dorsal stripes, zebra striped legs, and chest barring. Man has used elephants for centuries for work but the ones turned loose are not considered feral, it is the same with horses. Second the animals that do the most damage are the non native species of COW that far out numbers horses by over 200 to 1. There over 6 million cattle and maybe less than 15,000 horses that are actually left on the ranges. These wild horses do have predators which are mountain lions and bears! Every single thing you have said is a lie. These horses are actually good for the environment they live on. They pass seeds through their systems that re-grow new plants plus horses migrate spreading these seeds. Cows do NOT. Cattle are the main reason for plaines degradation.
By your standards then, we should reintroduce the "genetic equivalent" of such "native" species to North America as cheetahs, camels, elephants, sloths etc. who also went extinct here. Educate indeed. Cattle grazing, also responsible for a lot of damage, is at least regulated. They are not out there 24/7 year round. Had you chanced to get out of your car you might notice that horse populations are exploding. And I'm not talking about the plains, I'm talking about high desert, where horses destroy springs and riparian areas. "Horsees" belong in pastures, not the desert. What do you suppose my agenda is? To berate a pretty animal? They don't belong in the wild. Sentimentality is no reason to let them continue to overpopulate the West.
The native horse of North America was about the size of a full grown german shepherd dog. They were small animals. The wild mustangs date back to runaway Spanish horses and others set free by settlers. They are large animals.
OK Mr Nevadadude have you ever had the chance to see a wild horse? What is the high price you are talking about and yes the cougar is a predator to this animal. And feral horse, is the high desert where you saw one--where are you from? The wild horse is one of Americas last icons. The mystic and beauty is bigger than any animal you mentioned. It's people like you that have totally messed this animal up with your attitude and lack of knowlege on the subject of wild horses. I take professional photos of all animals and the wild horse is power, beauty, and grace. So please don't make general statements about something you don't know anything about and can't back up, from the sound of it you are probably Bush in Cheney in disguise.
Anti-slaughter people must come to terms with the results of this legislation:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1809950,00.html?iid=fb_share
This was predicted! Horses that are not used for horsemeat or rendered in a systematic way WILL starve to death. No organization has been able to provide for more than a few of these animals. A crisis is approaching very quickly. If horse slaughter had been regulated rather than outlawed, fewer horses would be facing prolonged and cruel suffering.
This article is about WILD HORSES, not neglected domestic horses (who are the products of over-breeding, the racing industry, and irresponsible owners).
The 30,000+ healthy wild horses warehoused in holding facilities should have been left free, where they were. Despite some remaining protection from the 1971 Wild Horse and Burro Act, these horses continue to be removed from their legal herd areas (*100* have been "zeroed out") due to politics. There is plenty of room for the horses, but more powerful interests - subsidized livestock grazing on PUBLIC land, replacing horses and burros with species for hunting (Bighorn Sheep for example) and poor management by the BLM have brought them to the brink of extinction.
Horses evolved in America, they belong here both naturally and by historical tradition and the will of the people.
If the BLM management had left these horses where they were we would not been having this problem right now and the waste of money of feeding them.
The people to look to for the problem is the cattle industry who in a backhanded way wanted to use OUR land for grazing their cattle and the Bush administration for wanting to use OUR land for big oil companies.
Send these horses back to where they were and there will not be any problem. Many have taken pictures of these horses as they were being rounded up and they were all healthy and able to live out in the land that we had given them and where they belong.
Stop this slaughter of our Wild Horses.
I agree with Barnmom this is a disgrace to our nation! We should never have allowed the removal of so many of our wonderful wild mustangs. Please stop now! In a country that spends millions (if not billions) of dollars on an election we can surely afford to feed these horses who through no fault of their own were captured by cruel methods until spring when they should be returned to the wild. I hope the new administration will do a thorough investigation into the BLM and do away with their biased management practices!
Please be more informed. There are laws against starving horses and many rescues .
Deanne's excellent article is about OUR wild horses on OUR public lands that were supposed to have been protected and preserved by law. There are only about 13,500 left running free and those in holding facilites should be taken back to the HMA's they were unnecessary removed from . Weldfare ranchers have put their 6 million cattle on OUR PUBLIC ranges to over-graze them and get subsidized with $500 million ( a half billion) of our tax dollars. No wonder there is not a few million left to feed these wild horses that were NOT starving on the range Also millions of our tax dollars have been spent on the CRUEL and DEADLY roundups. The BLM has created this buget fiasco and now wants OUR wild horses to pay for their mistake. This is an outrage ! Those responsible for this mismangement and for the "managing for extinction" should be fired immediately starting with the Secretary of the Interior and the BLM director and working on down. Clean out this mess and LEAVE OUR WILD HORSES ALONE. They must not be killed or sent to slaughter. Congress needs to act now to PROECT our wild horse and to INVESTIGATE the BLM.
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