U.S. House Passes Bill to Save Wild Horses & Burros!
O.pearl
U.S. House Passes Bill to Save Wild Horses & Burros!
http://www.animallawcoalition.com/horse-slaughter/article/693
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Update July 17: After some debate on the floor, the U.S. House of Repesentatives
voted to pass H.R. 1018, Restoring Our American Mustangs Act or R.O.A.M.,
which would restore protections for wild horses and burros lost in 2004 under the
Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.
The vote was 239-185.
This bill would require the wild horses and burros have the same amount of range
land that they had in 1971 when the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act
became law. H.R. 1018 would also implement tracking and sterilization programs
and also to improve their health and provide more opportunites for adoption. No
wild horses and burros could be sent to slaughter. No healthy wild horse or burro
could be killed. Here is a copy of the bill. <links at link>
This bill would require an about face by the BLM in its handling of wild horses and
burros which has been largely to run them down, injuring and terrorizing these
animals and destroying their families; trap them in holding pens and sell them for
slaughter or euthanize them. Go here for more information on the BLM's plans to
destroy wild horses and burros. And, go here for more on BLM policies regarding
wild horses and burros.
Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) proposed a substitute that would simply have banned
the slaughter of wild horses and burros. It would not have stopped the BLM,
however, from rounding up these animals, keeping them in holding pens at a cost of
about $20 million annually, and simply euthanizing them. That substitute was
defeated by a vote of 348-74 in favor of the more comprehensive approach offered
by H.R. 1018!
For more information on the bill, read Animal Law Coalition's reports below.
Update April 29: H.R. 1018 has passed the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee!
The vote was 21-14.
For more on H.R. 1018, R.O.A.M., the bill to restore the protections of the Wild
Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act and how you can help pass it, read Animal
Law Coalition's report below.
Original report: Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) and Rep. Ra�l Grijalva (D-Az) have
introduced H.R. 1018 to restore protections for wild horses and burros under the
Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act.
Basically, the bill saves wild horses and burros from commercial sale and slaughter
as originally intended under the Act.
The protections of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 were
gutted in 2004 for many thousands of horses, leaving them at risk of sale and
slaughter. That Act, 16 U.S.C. �1331, et seq., declares, "It is the policy of
Congress that wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture,
branding, harassment, or death; and to accomplish this they are to be considered in
the area where presently found, as an integral part of the natural system of the public
lands."
In 2004 then Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), now a pro-horse slaughter lobbyist with
the Washington D.C. firm, Gage, buried an amendment to this Act in a 3,300 page
appropriations bill. That infamous amendment opened the door to the slaughter of
thousands of horses. Basically under the Act there are certain horses and burros
defined as excess animals. These are animals the [Bureau of Land Management]
"BLM" has removed from an area "to preserve and maintain a thriving natural
ecological balance and multiple-use relationship in that area" or for some other legal
reason. See 16 USC �1332(f).
Under Burns Amendment, these "excess" horses "shall be sold...if the excess animal
is more than 10 years of age; or ... has been offered unsuccessfully for adoption at
least 3 times." 16 U.S.C. �1333. Any horse sold under this provision is no longer
subject to the protections of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. 16
U.S.C.�1333. Since this amendment became effective, thousands of horses have
been slaughtered for human consumption.
H.R. 1018 reverses the Burns Amendment. Though recent federal court rulings and
Congressional action as well as state laws have shut down horse slaughter for human
consumption in the U.S., for now, American horses are still shipped outside of the
U.S., usually to Mexico and Canada for slaughter for their horse meat consumed
primarily as a delicacy in some other countries.
This bill, H.R. 1018, will at least protect wild horses and burros from this fate.
A similar measure passed the House in the last session by a vote of 277-137 but
remained stuck in a Senate committee.
This bill, H.R. 1018, would also prohibit the killing of healthy wild horses for any
reason. Last year the Bureau of Land Management had proposed euthanizing
wild horses en masse. Go here for more on that. And here.
This bill would require the Bureau of Land Management to take steps to improve the
tracking and census of these animals by adopting and "[e]mploy scientifically sound
methods to develop a policy for setting consistent, appropriate management levels".
The bill clarifies that in doing so, the agency would be required to consult with other
federal agencies and other experts including those outside of the government.
Finding more range land and sanctuaries and reducing numbers through contraception
The BLM would be required to "[i]dentify new, appropriate rangelands for wild free-
roaming horses and burros, including use of land acquisitions, exchanges, conservation
easements, and voluntary grazing buyouts, and negotiate with private landowners to
allow for the federally supervised protection of wild horses and burros on private
lands." The new law would required the BLM to "[e]stablish sanctuaries or exclusive
use areas" and, significantly, "[r]esearch, develop, and implement enhanced surgical or
immunocontraception sterilization or other safe methods of fertility control."
The BLM would be required to develop and implement a much more aggressive
adoption program that would also more rigorously screen adopters. Notably, the bill
would not allow helicopters or "other [inhumane] airborne devices" for corraling and
removing wild horses and burros. Also, wild horses and burros could not be
contained in "corrals or other holding facilities for more than 6 months, while awaiting
disposition."
Wild horses and burros could be removed temporarily otherwise from rangeland in
the event of threats to their health and safety such as drought conditions.
A more open, accessible BLM when it comes to wild horses and burros
The public's right to be involved in in determining management level standards is
guaranteed under this bill. The new law would require the BLM also to post
information on a website accessible free of charge to the public about herd numbers,
planned removals of horses or burros, animals injured during removals, and generally
the treatment of wild horses and burros.
The BLM would be required to report annually to Congress the following: (1) number
of acres for wild free-roaming horses and burros. (2) appropriate management levels
on public rangelands, (3) description of the methods used to determine the appropriate
management levels and whether it was applied consistently across the agency,
(4) number of wild free-roaming horses and burros on public lands; (5) description of
the methods used to determine the wild free-roaming horse and burro population;
(6) any land acquisitions, exchanges, conservation easements, and voluntary grazing
buyouts that the Bureau of Land Management has acquired or pursued for wild free-
roaming horses and burros; (7) any sanctuaries or exclusive use areas established for
wild free-roaming horses and burros; (8) programs including budget established for
enhanced surgical or immunocontraception sterilization research and development and
the extent to which fertility control is being used to control the population of wild free-
roaming horses and burros;(9) ratio of horses the agency has contracepted and put
back on the range; and (10) herds to which contraception has been administered and
with what results.
Rep. Rahall chairs the House Natural Resources Committee and Rep. Grijalva leads
the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.
http://www.animallawcoalition.com/horse-slaughter/article/693
Dank 110100100
> U.S. House Passes Bill to Save Wild Horses & Burros!
>
> http://www.animallawcoalition.com/horse-slaughter/article/693
>
> ..
>
> Update July 17: After some debate on the floor, the U.S. House of Repesentatives
> voted to pass H.R. 1018, Restoring Our American Mustangs Act or R.O.A.M.,
> which would restore protections for wild horses and burros lost in 2004 under the
> Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.
>
> The vote was 239-185.
>
> This bill would require the wild horses and burros have the same amount of range
> land that they had in 1971 when the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act
> became law. H.R. 1018 would also implement tracking and sterilization programs
> and also to improve their health and provide more opportunites for adoption. No
> wild horses and burros could be sent to slaughter. No healthy wild horse or burro
> could be killed. Here is a copy of the bill. <links at link>
Horses and burros are feral animals that are not native to the U.S.,
and cause great damage to the ecosystem by competing with native
species. Since horses and burros are cute, radical animal rights
activists are more willing to protect them than other non-native
animals that are less cute.
The same 'environmentalists' who would poison entire lakes and streams
to destroy non-native trout species demand that helicopters fly water
in to remote areas of Nevada to preserve the non-native species of
feral horses and burros. They do not care that feral burros consume
the same vegetation eaten by native rabbits, or that the vegetation
they consume may provide shelter for native lizards, snakes, insects,
etc.
O.pearl
> Horses and burros are feral animals that are not native to the U.S.,
'The genus Equus, which includes modern horses, zebras, and asses, is the
only surviving genus in a once diverse family of horses that included 27 genera.
The precise date of origin for the genus Equus is unknown, but evidence
documents the dispersal of Equus from North America to Eurasia approximately
2-3 million years ago and a possible origin at about 3.4-3.9 million years ago.
Following this original emigration, several extinctions occurred in North America,
with additional migrations to Asia (presumably across the Bering Land Bridge),
and return migrations back to North America, over time. The last North American
extinction occurred between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago.[1] Had it not been for
previous westward migration, over the land bridge, into northwestern Russia
(Siberia) and Asia, the horse would have faced complete extinction. However,
Equus survived and spread to all continents of the globe, except Australia and
Antarctica.
..
According to the work of Uppsala University researcher Ann Forst�n, of the
Department of Evolutionary Biology, the date of origin, based on mutation
rates for mitochondrial-DNA, for E. caballus, is set at approximately 1.7 million
years ago in North America.
..
The fact that horses were domesticated before they were reintroduced matters
little from a biological viewpoint. They are the same species that originated here,
and whether or not they were domesticated is quite irrelevant. Domestication
altered little biology, and we can see that in the phenomenon called "going
wild," where wild horses revert to ancient behavioral patterns. James Dean
Feist dubbed this "social conservation" in his paper on behavior patterns and
communication in the Pryor Mountain wild horses. The reemergence of
primitive behaviors, resembling those of the plains zebra, indicated to him the
shallowness of domestication in horses.[6]
The issue of feralization and the use of the word "feral" is a human construct
that has little biological meaning except in transitory behavior, usually forced
on the animal in some manner. Consider this parallel. E. Przewalski (Mongolian
wild horse) disappeared from Mongolia a hundred years ago. It has survived
since then in zoos. That is not domestication in the classic sense, but it is
captivity, with keepers providing food and veterinarians providing health care.
Then they were released a few years back and now repopulate their native
range in Mongolia. Are they a reintroduced native species or not?
And what is the difference between them and E. caballus in North America,
except for the time frame and degree of captivity?
The key element in describing an animal as a native species is (1) where it
originated; and (2) whether or not it co-evolved with its habitat. Clearly,
E. caballus did both, here in North America. There might be arguments about
"breeds," but there are no scientific grounds for arguments about "species."
The non-native, feral, and exotic designations given by agencies are not merely
reflections of their failure to understand modern science, but also a reflection
of their desire to preserve old ways of thinking to keep alive the conflict
between a species (wild horses) with no economic value anymore (by law) and
the economic value of commercial livestock.
..'
http://www.wildhorsespirit.org/3-2-2005_WH_Native_Species_Scientific-MetaAnalysis.htm
'Livestock grazing seriously impacts wild ungulates such as elk, bighorn sheep,
and pronghorn through forage competition, disease transmission, social
displacement, habitat degradation, and plant community alteration. On the
majority of public lands, more forage is allotted to livestock than to native large
herbivores. Whereas native species are an integral part of the ecosystems in
which they have evolved, alien, domestic animals represent a denial and violation
of ecological integrity.
....'
http://www.publiclandsranching.org/htmlres/wr_bison_roamed.htm