Advocates worry new law will lead to slaughter of healthy wild horses

Staff and wire reports
November 24, 2004, 4:01 AM

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LAS VEGAS - Wild horse advocates say they're worried that healthy horses rounded up on the range could be sold for slaughter under a herd-thinning measure Congress passed over the weekend.

The legislation lets wild horses older than 10, or those that have unsuccessfully been put up for adoption three times, be sold without limitations at local sale yards or livestock facilities.

"You can kiss the thousands of horses in long-term holding facilities goodbye," said Wild Horse Preservation League member Chuck Matton of Dayton.

The Bureau of Land Management estimates 32,290 wild horses currently roam on public lands across the western United States. More than half of them - 17,679 - are in Nevada, and 14,000 remain in seven BLM long-term holding facilities in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Matton, husband of Wild Horse Preservation League President Bonnie Matton, said most of the horses in the BLM long-term holding facilities are old or unwanted.

"Most people don't care to adopt older horses because they're pretty set in their ways and hard to train," he said. "This will make money for the BLM. It's $25,000 a day they won't have to spend to feed them."

The legislation has animal advocates across the country crying foul.

"I would expect under this law we're going to have far higher numbers of horses going to slaughter," said Howard Crystal, attorney for the Fund for Animals. "If someone under this program can now buy 300 horses and ship them to a slaughterhouse, people will start making money."

Chris Heyed, a policy analyst with the Society for Animal Protective Legislation, called it "a systematic attack on wild horses."

The bill removed from federal law a clause that no wild free-roaming horse or burro could be sold or transferred for processing into commercial products. It also clarified that it is not a crime to sell an aging or horse for slaughter, Crystal said.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the BLM, placed the measure in a 3,000-page year-end spending bill after consulting with Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., Burns spokeswoman Jennifer O'Shea said.

"We've got to get the number of animals down to appropriate management levels and keep them there, but do it in a way that doesn't bankrupt us," Burns said in a statement. "This language is a step in the right direction."

Lawmakers have expressed frustration with the BLM wild horse program. Costs have gone up as more horses have been taken off the range and placed in government-run holding facilities.

Giving the BLM the authority to sell the horses could solve agency budget problems and let it continue gathering thousands of wild horses from public lands. The agency manages herds in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.

BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington declined to comment on the congressional action.

The BLM spends about $6.8 million a year, or $465 per horse placed in a long-term holding facility.

The bureau plans to reduce wild horse populations, which reached an estimated 42,000 in 2000, to below 30,000 by 2005.

Matton said immunocontraception, a birth-control method implemented in the last decade by the BLM, should have been implemented earlier to cut down on the number of horses that could now be sent to slaughter with the new legislation.

Immunocontraception is a birth-control method that uses the body's immune response to prevent pregnancy.

The Humane Society of the United States endorses it and works with several public agencies to develop it. The BLM has injected 2,000 mares with it since 1992, and it has been very successful.

"If the immunocontraception system had been in force longer, these horses wouldn't be going to slaughter," Matton said. "But this will make money for the BLM, and that's what matters to them."