Ask Congress to let the BLM dispose humanely of wild horses and burros
What the document says“Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.”
The chapter states there are 95,000 wild horses and burros on nearly 32 million acres, triple what it says the range can support, that the population has more than doubled in ten years and grows at 10 to 15 percent annually, and that more than 47,000 already gathered are held in off-range corrals at a cost of nearly $50 million a year. It cites a 2019 joint policy of the American Association of Equine Practitioners and the American Veterinary Medical Association calling for further reducing overpopulation, endorsed by the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, and says the ASPCA and the Humane Society recognize that unchecked herd growth threatens the animals. It lists the BLM's 2020 approach, which includes expanded adoptions and sales of gathered horses, increased gathers and holding capacity, fertility control and contraceptive research, and says all of that will not be enough.
What the document actually says“Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.”
None of that will fix it. Congress must pass a law letting the agency put these animals down humanely.
About 95,000 wild horses and burros live on public land. The book says the land cannot feed them all. Some are caught and kept in pens. That costs about $50 million a year. The book says Congress should let the agency get rid of some of them.
“dispose humanely”The chapter does not define what disposing humanely would mean, and names no method. The words slaughter and euthanize appear nowhere in this chapter. Slaughter appears once in the whole book, on p.305, in a reference to the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1978 in a passage about state meat inspection, unconnected to horses.
Widely reported as a proposal to sell wild horses for slaughter. The chapter does mention sales, but as a description of the BLM's existing 2020 approach, which it says is insufficient. Readers who take the sentence to mean killing point out that what currently stops the BLM from destroying healthy excess animals, or selling them without limitation, is a set of appropriations restrictions, so a law permitting disposal would have to displace them. Readers who reject that point out the chapter says neither, and cites veterinary and animal welfare bodies on overpopulation.
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