Bush endangers wild horses

By Carla Bennett for Knight Ridder News Service - 02/02/2005

They were the heart of one of the most famous enterprises of our old wild west. They cost up to five times as much as an average cowpony because they were the best in the west — tough, sure-footed and fast, able to outrun any horse chasing them. Have you had the good fortune of seeing one of America's increasingly rare wild mustangs or burros?

If not, you most likely never will, because President Bush just pulled the trigger on them. In the future, the main places they will appear is in Japan, Belgium, France and Italy, on dinner plates.

In January, our cowboy president signed into law the 2005 Omnibus Spending Bill, which contains an amendment that guts the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act (WFHBA) and will send tens of thousands of our spirited freedom symbols down bloody slaughterhouse ramps. It mandates that any free-roaming horse or burro merely deemed unadoptable by the Bureau of Land Management, any free-roaming horse or burro who's not been adopted after three attempts or any free-roaming horse or burro over age 10 — still relatively young in horse or burro years — be sent to slaughter.

And I'm pretty sure there won't be any horse whisperers around to reassure and calm the terrified captured animals, separated from their herds, families, complex social structures and territories and prodded into crowded holding pens for prospective adopters to view. No, for most of these animals, the worst is yet to come.

Sponsored by Sen. Conrad Burns, (R-Mont.), critics say the amendment, one-page Rider 142, well buried in the 3,000-page federal appropriations bill, is payback to cattle rancher and meatpacker groups that contributed to Bush's and Burns' campaigns and eventually will wipe out all America's wild horses and burros.

Cattle ranchers have an estimated 4.1 million domestic livestock grazing our public lands, and pay just $1.8.l a month — less than it costs to feed a hamster — to graze a cow and her calf on these lands.

But the wild horses and burros are ecologically important. Their digestive systems allow whole seeds to be eliminated and dispersed into the environment. Their hooves trampling these seeds enhances vegetative growth. Also, using their sheer strength the mustangs blaze trails through heavy snowfalls and break up ice during heavy freezes, helping less powerful animals survive winters.

The 1971 WFHBA gave protection and management of the wild horses and burros to the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. Both agencies have close ties to livestock producers.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, The Humane Society of the United States, American Horse Protection Association, the Animal Welfare Institute and many other animal protection groups long have advocated humane, chemical sterilization of wild horses and burros, which has proved successfully to control these animals' populations. However the inept Bureau of Land Management has turned its back on this gentle solution.

Rather, BLM spokesperson Celia Bodington announced that the BLM will support the shocking new law.

It is to be hoped that the outcry of not only animal lovers, but decent people everywhere, against this travesty taking place on their public lands to their wild mustangs and burros will become loud enough to be heard in Washington. I know I'll be calling my legislators and asking my friends and others to switch, as I have, to a vegetarian diet, to hasten a decline in the meat industry and eventually loosen its stranglehold on our public lands.

— Carla Bennett is a writer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.