Wild horses: Pickens to the rescue? (US)
That'll be 30,000 wild horses and some burros to go, says Mrs Pickens. Who do I make the check out to? Oh, no, we can't let you do that Mrs P says the BLM.
Oh, look. The BLM have been made an offer they can refuse.
The Washington Post reports:
Madeleine Pickens, wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, made known her intentions to adopt not just the doomed wild horses but most or all of the 30,000 horses and burros kept in federal holding pens. Lifelong animal lovers, the Pickenses just a few years ago led the fight to close the last horse slaughterhouse in the United States.
Madeleine Pickens is looking for land in the West that would be an appropriate home for the horses.
She is working with the BLM staff to adopt the horses, said Henri Bisson, the bureau’s deputy director, while the agency persuades Congress to shift $20 million in funding to feed and protect the horses now in captivity for another year. As backup to Pickens’s offer, he said, two other groups, both animal rescue organizations, have expressed similar interest in adoption. “We are very hopeful that euthanasia won’t be necessary this year,” he said.
The news that Pickens and others intend to adopt the wild horses and burros was celebrated by animal rights groups, several of which were preparing legal challenges to prevent the government from putting the horses to death.
Hmmm, let’s see now. The Bureau of Land Management, who have been rounding up thousands of wild horses and adopting out about a dozen a month for years now, were going to kill all the ones they have “warehoused.” (Where did that word come from? Sounds like they got them stacked up in some building on the outskirts of town). The BLM have been screaming that these darn things are just costing way too much taxpayer money to feed and give manicures to and stuff. Yet when one of America’s billionaires steps forward and wants to buy them all, the Guvment says “hold your horses.”
It seems the BLM wants to hang onto all the wild horseys and burros costing gazillions of taxpayer dollars and doesn’t want to sell them to the nice, rich lady. But they’re kinda, sorta working on it, maybe.
To the BLM the answer is simple, and they just don’t understand all the fuss.
I mean, why can’t they just give all the wild horseys and burros a nice bedtime drink and put them to sleep forever so they don’t bother anybody ever again at all ever. When that’s done, they go get the rest of them and put cyanide in their hot cocoa. How happy that would make all those welfare supported fake cattle barons infesting the wild horseys and burros’ land. Just in time for Christmas too.
Nice job Henri.
Source: Washington Post Registration required, but they’ll let you read it once first.
