Activist Groups Slam Proposal To Kill More Than 44,000 Wild Horses
“They have a commitment to these animals... they took them off the range.”
Horses run from a BLM helicopter in 2010.
An advisory board to the Bureau of Land Management suggested Friday that the agency should euthanize about 45,000 wild horses and burros that are currently captive in holding facilities, and animal rights groups are condemning the recommendation.
Groups including the Humane Society of the United States and In Defense of Animals say accepting the recommendation would betray the BLM’s responsibility to the horses.
“They have a commitment to these animals,” Gillian Lyons, the HSUS’s Wild Horse and Burro Program manager, told The Huffington Post. “They took them off the range.”
Although some news outlets have stated that the BLM or the “government” voted to euthanize the horses, this isn’t true. The measure is a recommendation from the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, an independent body that advises the BLM on matters pertaining to wild equines. The BLM has not accepted or rejected the recommendation yet.
“The BLM is committed to having healthy horses on healthy rangelands,” the agency said in a statement. “We will continue to care for and seek good homes for animals that have been removed from the range.” It did not reply to follow-up questions.
Even if the BLM were to accept the plan, it would take some time for it to be implemented. The 2016 Interior Appropriations Bill prohibits using federal funds to send horses to slaughter or to euthanize healthy animals - meaning the language would have to be changed in the next bill for the recommendation to actually go through.
So many animals are in holding facilities because the BLM periodically rounds up wild horses and burros to remove them from public lands. The agency says this is to curb overpopulation and protect the environment, but critics accuse it of catering to the whims of cattle ranchers who want rangelands for themselves.
There were 44,111 wild horses and 1,080 burros in BLM holding facilities in July, according to the agency’s data. (By comparison, the agency estimated in March there were about 70,000 free-roaming horses and burros across 10 western states.)
Equine behaviorist Sue McDonnell, who sits on the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board and voted for the euthanasia recommendation, said many of those holding facilities are inadequate and inhumane. She emphasized that she was speaking only as an individual, not on behalf of the board.
“This is not a reasonable quality of existence they’re in,” she told HuffPost. “They’re basically in dry lot pens, there’s no natural vegetation. It’s not the way anyone would keep their horses, you know. Those are the horses right now.”
Wild horses in a corral during a BLM gathering operation in 2015.
However, she also praised efforts to house some horses on large pastures or in ecosanctuaries that tourists can visit. She couldn’t say what percentage of the horses were living in conditions that she would consider more humane. According to the July data, about 562 horses were in ecosanctuaries and 31,000 were in “long-term pastures.” About 13,000 horses and burros were in “short-term corrals.”
The BLM “adopts” out horses, but there just isn’t enough demand for the large number that the agency has. The board’s new recommendation, McDonnell said, also included a suggestion to remove some of the red tape involved in the adoption process to encourage more people to take in the animals. (The BLM maintains that its policy is not to sell to “kill buyers” that send horses to slaughter, although they were documented in recent years doing exactly that.)
McDonnell said she considers the recommendation to be less of a demand for euthanasia, and more of a cry for help because the horses are in a desperate situation.
Criticisms of how the BLM manages wild horses will likely remain, regardless of whether the agency accepts the new recommendation. Numerous animal welfare groups have vehemently opposed BLM’s roundup-and-remove strategy, which involves chasing down animals with helicopters - sometimes leading to horse injuries or deaths - and often separating strongly bonded social groups.
That said, even the HSUS concedes that having too many horses under the wrong conditions can lead to problems. Horse overgrazing can quickly deplete the food supply, especially in drier areas, and make way for invasive plant species that provide poor nutrition and destroy native vegetation.
Some advocates, including Lyons, argue in favor of implementing widespread fertility control - specifically, a vaccination known as PZP.
PZP faces some criticism - both from skeptics like McDonnell, who cited the difficult logistics of administering it to far-reaching, hard-to-access horse populations, and advocates who believe the drug could be harmful. However, it has garnered the support of the National Academy of Sciences, which referred to it as one of the most promising fertility-control methods available in a 2013 report.
By Hilary Hanson. 09/13/2016 07:29 pm ET.
Source
Horses run from a BLM helicopter in 2010.
An advisory board to the Bureau of Land Management suggested Friday that the agency should euthanize about 45,000 wild horses and burros that are currently captive in holding facilities, and animal rights groups are condemning the recommendation.
Groups including the Humane Society of the United States and In Defense of Animals say accepting the recommendation would betray the BLM’s responsibility to the horses.
“They have a commitment to these animals,” Gillian Lyons, the HSUS’s Wild Horse and Burro Program manager, told The Huffington Post. “They took them off the range.”
Although some news outlets have stated that the BLM or the “government” voted to euthanize the horses, this isn’t true. The measure is a recommendation from the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, an independent body that advises the BLM on matters pertaining to wild equines. The BLM has not accepted or rejected the recommendation yet.
“The BLM is committed to having healthy horses on healthy rangelands,” the agency said in a statement. “We will continue to care for and seek good homes for animals that have been removed from the range.” It did not reply to follow-up questions.
Even if the BLM were to accept the plan, it would take some time for it to be implemented. The 2016 Interior Appropriations Bill prohibits using federal funds to send horses to slaughter or to euthanize healthy animals - meaning the language would have to be changed in the next bill for the recommendation to actually go through.
So many animals are in holding facilities because the BLM periodically rounds up wild horses and burros to remove them from public lands. The agency says this is to curb overpopulation and protect the environment, but critics accuse it of catering to the whims of cattle ranchers who want rangelands for themselves.
There were 44,111 wild horses and 1,080 burros in BLM holding facilities in July, according to the agency’s data. (By comparison, the agency estimated in March there were about 70,000 free-roaming horses and burros across 10 western states.)
Equine behaviorist Sue McDonnell, who sits on the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board and voted for the euthanasia recommendation, said many of those holding facilities are inadequate and inhumane. She emphasized that she was speaking only as an individual, not on behalf of the board.
“This is not a reasonable quality of existence they’re in,” she told HuffPost. “They’re basically in dry lot pens, there’s no natural vegetation. It’s not the way anyone would keep their horses, you know. Those are the horses right now.”
Wild horses in a corral during a BLM gathering operation in 2015.
However, she also praised efforts to house some horses on large pastures or in ecosanctuaries that tourists can visit. She couldn’t say what percentage of the horses were living in conditions that she would consider more humane. According to the July data, about 562 horses were in ecosanctuaries and 31,000 were in “long-term pastures.” About 13,000 horses and burros were in “short-term corrals.”
The BLM “adopts” out horses, but there just isn’t enough demand for the large number that the agency has. The board’s new recommendation, McDonnell said, also included a suggestion to remove some of the red tape involved in the adoption process to encourage more people to take in the animals. (The BLM maintains that its policy is not to sell to “kill buyers” that send horses to slaughter, although they were documented in recent years doing exactly that.)
McDonnell said she considers the recommendation to be less of a demand for euthanasia, and more of a cry for help because the horses are in a desperate situation.
Criticisms of how the BLM manages wild horses will likely remain, regardless of whether the agency accepts the new recommendation. Numerous animal welfare groups have vehemently opposed BLM’s roundup-and-remove strategy, which involves chasing down animals with helicopters - sometimes leading to horse injuries or deaths - and often separating strongly bonded social groups.
That said, even the HSUS concedes that having too many horses under the wrong conditions can lead to problems. Horse overgrazing can quickly deplete the food supply, especially in drier areas, and make way for invasive plant species that provide poor nutrition and destroy native vegetation.
Some advocates, including Lyons, argue in favor of implementing widespread fertility control - specifically, a vaccination known as PZP.
PZP faces some criticism - both from skeptics like McDonnell, who cited the difficult logistics of administering it to far-reaching, hard-to-access horse populations, and advocates who believe the drug could be harmful. However, it has garnered the support of the National Academy of Sciences, which referred to it as one of the most promising fertility-control methods available in a 2013 report.
By Hilary Hanson. 09/13/2016 07:29 pm ET.
Source