THE WILD WILD WEST: Animal rights activists and ranchers are locked in conflict over the fate of wild horses
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has been interested in brutal methods of spaying wild mares for at least a decade but have failed or been blocked by animal rights activists in court.
BRITTA LOKTING: The question of what to do with America’s wild horses is an emotional battle over livelihood, freedoms and how humans view animals. Many ranchers see the mustangs as an overpopulated invasive species that competes for the public land their livestock grazes. Animal rights activists see an icon of the American West that deserves better protection. There are over 100,000 wild horses and burros on 26.9 million acres of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, which owns the majority of the country’s wild horses, according to the agency.
This doesn’t include mustangs on Native American reservations, national parks, several U.S. Forest Service territories and lands managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The BLM has failed to keep populations at what it considers a sustainable level. To deal with the so-called excess horses, the agency rounds them up, usually using helicopters, puts them in short-term holding pens, tries to adopt them out, and then sends the unwanted ones — currently over 47,000 — to private, grassy pastures in the Midwest….
For decades, it was the normal and legal way of life for cowboys and ranchers in the West to round up wild horses and sell them to slaughter for extra cash. These cowboys were called mustangers, and wild horses were considered nuisances that added no value to the land. One Nevada rancher I spoke with said mustanging used to be his “Christmas account.” He received 7 cents for every pound he sent to a slaughterhouse in Nebraska. He would rope the horses around the neck, pull them down until they fell, and secure their front and hind feet with a hobble, a cuff-like device that makes walking difficult. The horses were usually exhausted and unable to move much. Some mustangers left the horses on the range overnight before hauling them to the corrals; a few might die this way…
The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 – which passed Congress unanimously and was signed by President Richard Nixon — called for the BLM to protect and manage the wild horses that roamed its public lands. Johnston became known as “Wild Horse Annie”: a hero in some circles, an oppressor in others. After the act passed, the bureau no longer issued permits to ranchers to round up wild horses and claim them as their own. It became illegal for anyone to gather wild horses except the BLM (though that hasn’t always stopped cowboys from mustanging). Paired with the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act, which created grazing districts, public land became even more restricted for commercial use… It’s illegal for the bureau to euthanize healthy horses, though it euthanizes ones that have such ailments as blindness or club feet. Officials also can’t ship horses to slaughter or sell them to someone who intends to ship them to slaughter…
In its nine-year existence, Protect the Harvest has gained a loyal following among ranchers, farmers and cowboys… It was founded by the oil tycoon Forrest Lucas… Lucas told Levin he started Protect the Harvest to fight “environmentalists that are trying to take control over and do away with — you know, vegans who want everybody to be vegans.”… His fixation on animal rights groups can be traced back, in part, to a 2010 Missouri state ballot proposition called the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, which sought restrictions on dog breeders, such as allowing them to own no more than 50 breeding dogs. Lucas vehemently opposed the proposition. It passed, but a law enacted the next year made significant changes, including repealing the 50-dog cap…
In 2012, the Humane Society of the United States released an undercover investigation revealing abuse to a breed called the Tennessee walking horse, including chemicals being cooked into their feet to create an exaggerated gait known as Big Lick, which is valued in shows. About a year after… Dave Duquette started a nonprofit called United Horsemen to achieve “humane and realistic solutions to the unwanted horse problem,” according to an online posting… Duquette felt that animal activists were butting their noses into other people’s business. “They started attacking the horse industry, and the deeper I got into it the more I realized how many bills were out there to stop the horse industry,” he says… Duquette, who worked at Protect the Harvest, a controversial nonprofit that opposes animal rights groups — sees euthanasia or slaughter of horses as humane options… and has become an outspoken proponent for slaughter. “He’s such a loud voice in advocating for horse slaughter and will take any platform to do it…
The BLM agency is at a standstill, partly because options like euthanasia or slaughter face intense backlash… The BLM has been interested in spaying wild mares for at least a decade, but various approaches have failed or been blocked by wild-horse activists in court. Two attempts in recent years were met with such public outcry that the agency’s university research partners backed out of studies… Animal rights advocates vehemently oppose the type of spay procedure — called ovariectomy via colpotomy… “They’re pushing some of the most brutal tactics in the form of ovariectomy,” says Ginger Kathrens, the executive director of the Cloud Foundation, a nonprofit in Colorado that seeks to prevent herd extinction. Lisa Jacobson, an equine veterinarian in Colorado, says ovariectomy risks infection, internal bleeding and pain. She prefers gelding, or castrating, stallions. Duquette says activists have it backward: Spaying, he argues, is “a lot less barbaric than castrating a colt”. SOURCE…
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