Advocates call for horse slaughter ban at wild horse and burro meeting

Sheldon Wild Horses. Photo credit: Mike Lorden.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTS:

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Animal rights advocates urged members of a federal advisory board on wild horses and burros Monday to recommend an absolute ban on horse slaughtering in the U.S. and condemned the Oklahoma Legislature’s attempt to authorize the slaughter of horses for human consumption.

The advocates, many representing wild horse and mustang organizations across the western states, told the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Committee that Americans are against slaughtering wild horses and that poor management practices are decimating the nation’s wild horse population.

“Can you hear us?” activist Simone Netherland asked, tapping her hand against a microphone from a table where she addressed the panel. “I don’t think this thing is working. I don’t think this process is working. Please, listen to how the public loves and wants our wild horses.”

Following public comments, Joan Guilfoyle, BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Division Chief, characterized the issue as “astonishingly complicated” and said there are no simple solutions.

“It’s not a black and white issue,” Guilfoyle said.

She denied suggestions from some members of the public that the agency knowingly places horses at risk and said BLM does all it can to prevent wild horses and burros from getting into the hands of people who will harm them.

22,000 wild horses are being held in Oklahoma, where legislation to authorize horse slaughtering has cleared the state House and Senate

The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, a national coalition of wild horse advocates, is urging the advisory group to recommend ending federal wild horse roundups as well as the government’s policy of selling wild horses for as little as $10 apiece. The coalition also wants an outright ban on horse slaughter.

Coalition activist Suzanne Roy said the BLM has mismanaged the nation’s wild horse program by rounding the horses up and corralling them instead of leaving them on the range and managing their numbers.

She said BLM has removed 37,000 wild horses from native rangelands in recent years and now has 50,000 in government holding facilities — more than are left in the wild. A total of 22,000 wild horses are being held in Oklahoma, where legislation to authorize horse slaughtering has cleared the state House and Senate.

“The end game is slaughter and everyone knows it,” Roy said. “Americans overwhelmingly oppose horse slaughter.”

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Feds rein in sales of wild horses

Wild Horses rounded up by federal agency Bureau of Land Management. Google image.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARSON CITY, Nev. –- Sales of wild horses and burros will be restricted under new rules announced Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management after an investigation into the sale of more than 1,700 horses to a Colorado livestock hauler who supports the horse meat industry.

“It is a response to that inquiry, which is being conducted right now by the Office of the Inspector General of the Interior Department,” said Tom Gorey, BLM spokesman for the wild horse program in Washington, D.C.

Wild horse advocates said the rules amount to “window dressing” and won’t keep large numbers of mustangs out of the hands of so-called kill buyers.

The inspector general is investigating what became of 1,777 horses sold since 2009 to Tom Davis. Wild horse advocates fear the animals were taken to Mexico for slaughter.

“He’s the biggest buyer among all of our buyers over the years,” Gorey said of Davis. Since 2005, when the BLM first allowed people to buy horses in bulk as opposed to adopting them, the agency has sold 5,400 animals, Gorey said.

Gorey said the inspector general is “looking into all aspects of the sales to Davis, including the whereabouts of the horses.”

He said it’s unknown when the investigation will be finished.

Under the new rules, sales of wild mustangs and burros will be limited to no more than four within a six-month period unless prior approval is obtained from a BLM assistant director.

Buyers also must describe where they intend to keep the animals.

Requiring BLM approval for large sales won’t protect mustangs, said Suzanne Roy, director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign.

Roy said it is “outrageous” to put the decision of who gets more than four horses “in the hands of the very same BLM managers who were exposed as being responsible” for wild horses ending up with buyers like Davis. She added the new policy allows the BLM “to look the other way after six months.”

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AWHPC Statement on the White House’s “Canned” Response to Wild Horse Petition

The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign writes:

If you signed the Wild Horse and Burro petition on the White House’s “We the People” website, you have received the same canned response that we received from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) director, Bob Abbey.

We are as frustrated and disappointed as you are with this insulting and dismissive response to the sincere concern of thousands of American citizens who seek reform of the costly and cruel federal Wild Horse and Burro Program.

We wanted to share our letter to President Obama’s chief of staff, William Daley, highlighting the inadequacy of the response and the White House’s utter failure to consider this issue, as promised in the “We the People” initiative.

To the thousands of you who took the time to sign the petition – WE THANK YOU and promise to continue to fight for our wild horses and burros. We hope that you will continue to join us.

Begin Letter

18 November 2011

William Daley, Chief of Staff
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. Daley:

I am writing on behalf of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign and the thousands of Americans who signed the “We the People” petition titled “Protect Wild Horses and Burros; Reform Inhumane Interior Department Management Program That Wastes Tax Dollars” to register our grave disappointment with the November 17, 2011 response from the White House. The petition calls on the Obama Administration to stop the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from wasting millions of tax dollars to roundup and remove wild horses by the tens of thousands from public lands in the West, and to instead implement a cost-effective policy to manage these national icons on the range using proven and humane cost-effective methods.

The White House’s canned response to this petition, signed by thousands of American citizens, was authored, not by a White House policy official, but rather by BLM Director Bob Abbey – the very individual responsible for the mismanagement of the federal Wild Horse and Burro Program, which is the subject of the petition.

In unveiling the “We the People” initiative, the White House promised “a new way to petition the Obama Administration” and that “White House staff will review” the issue. However, there was nothing new in the response. The White House merely delivered the old familiar BLM rhetoric that has been used for the past several years to rationalize the agency’s mismanagement and waste of tax dollars. Included is the touting of a “new strategy” that is being implemented despite the receipt of tens of thousands of public comments opposing the majority of the strategy’s components.

Had we, the people who signed the petition, wanted a response from the BLM, we would have written to the BLM. Or better yet, since the response is just a cut-and-paste of BLM propaganda, we could have read it on the agency’s website and saved ourselves the considerable time and effort it took to log into the White House’s website and sign the petition!

President Obama has the full authority to reform the federal wild horse and burro program and could do so with one telephone call to his Secretary of the Interior. The fact that the White House didn’t even take the time to review this petition is a slap in the face to the American citizens who believed in the President’s promise that their concerns would be seriously considered. As a result, we are left to conclude that the entire “We the People” website is little more than a re-election campaign gimmick.

We conclude this letter with a final plea for President Obama’s attention to this issue and a request for a meeting with White House staff to discuss badly needed reform. To such a meeting we would bring wild horse and range experts to discuss the humane, cost-effective solutions, which have already been proposed but continue to be ignored by the BLM and Mr. Abbey.

It’s time that President Obama intervened in this issue to fulfill his promise for hope and change for the future.

We await your prompt response.

Sincerely,

Suzanne Roy
Campaign Director
American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign

End Letter

Source: AWHPC