Wild Horse Slaughter

Appropriations Bill - Wild Horse "Rider"
11-29-2004

Surreptitiously included in the omnibus federal Appropriations Bill is a rider that eviscerates federal protection for America's wild horses. Over the week-end before Thanksgiving, without any opportunity for review, Congress opened the door to the sale of this living symbol of our national heritage to be killed for their meat. The administration is pointing the finger at the tens of thousands of wild horses currently held in government pens. What they fail to mention is that these horses were unnecessarily removed from their rightful range at the behest of special interest groups who run private commercial operations on our public lands (cattle, oil).

I am writing from a vantage point of hands-on experience with the destructive results of the government's past and current management of wild herds. Seven years ago I founded Return to Freedom, The American Wild Horse Sanctuary in Central California, now with over 20,000 supporters nationwide. My goal was to implement alternatives to existing wild horse management methods, including fertility control methods that allow us to let the horses roam in their original family groups. With over 200 horses, 10 geographic origins are represented by the herds at the sanctuary. These herds were displaced from our public and Park lands. They each represent unique genetic lines, some going back to the primitive Iberian horse. The sanctuary has been a window for thousands of adults and children to witness the intricate social structures of the herds in a natural environment.

Dr. Gus Cothran, University of Kentucky Pathology Dept, has told me that we are witnessing the disintegration of the domestic breeds of horses. That is what our domestic management does to a species. Nature breeds for adaptability while we tend to breed for adoptability. The American wild horse is a re-introduced native species whose evolutionary journey cannot be reproduced in backyard or horse industry breeding programs. They have evolved back into a natural state over the past few hundred years in their respective natural habitats becoming what they are today. Our wild horses are in fact a rare zoological treasure unique to the United States.

Over the years, the 1971 Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act has been gutted by policy and regulatory changes. Reducing many herds to numbers that create weakened genetic variability and inbreeding, the Bureau of Land Management has illegally created problems then used the very problems they created to eradicate entire herds. HUNDREDS of herds have been zeroed out in clear violation of the Act. But this last Thanksgiving present to the American people and our wild horses takes the prize.

By legitimizing the sale of captured horses for slaughter, the Appropriations Bill is giving the Bureau of Land Management a lucrative outlet for round-ups. Indeed, an unprecedented removal campaign is currently under way, seriously threatening the sustainability of viable herds on public lands, all so that public land grazing permit holders can replace wild horses with cattle. Twenty-two thousand horses are currently in government long-term holding pens, most of them are not suitable for domestication and therefore destined to slaughter under the new law. Another interesting figure: cattle outnumber wild horses on public lands approximately 150 to 1.

In 1971, a public outcry of an unprecedented magnitude for a non-war issue led to the adoption of the Free-Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act, which recognized the intrinsic value of wild horses to our national heritage and ecosystem. The Act was meant to protect our wild horses a home on the American landscape. This law has now all but been overturned, without as much as a hearing. Less than 35,000 wild horses remain on our public lands. If the administration has its way, these horses and their priceless genetic diversity will soon be a treasure of the past.

Neda DeMayo
Founder, Return To Freedom

805-735-3246
returntofreedom.org
wildhorsepreservation.com

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