March 25, 2009

The head of the Humane Society of the United States has urged Americans to get behind Madeleine Pickens' plan to create a huge sanctuary for wild horses, including the 30,000 now held in captivity.

President and chief executive Wayne Pacelle, writing on the society website, described the Bureau of Land Management's "self-defeating round" as costly and inhumane.

"The wild horses and burros who roam our public rangelands are a national treasure, and it's time we took steps to ensure that they'll always be there," he said.

Pacelle criticised the so-called Burns rider - "a late-night and little-noticed subversion of the democratic process" by former United States senator Conrad Burns, who succeeded in amending the law in order to allow the slaughter of horses and burros older than 10 that had been up for adoption three times.

He urged support for HR 1018, the Restoring our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act, which would reverse the Burns rider and ban slaughter of wild horses and burros, reopen millions of acres originally designated for horses so more can roam free, implement contraceptive programmes as an alternative to costly round-ups, and institute other reforms to honour the original intent of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.

America needed to recognise the rightful place of horses and burros on its public lands, he said.

"Currently, the bureau is taking more horses off the range than it can adopt, and as a result, the agency is amassing an enormous and unsustainable number of horses in short- and long-term holding facilities.

"For fiscal year 2009, the captive horse management programme will consume an astonishing 75 per cent of the agency's total resources for horse and burro protection. There are at least 30,000 horses in short- and long-term facilities, at an estimated annual cost of $US27 million.

The Obama administration must "retool" the programme, he said. He offered his support to Pickens' campaign in which she is urging peope to email Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, asking that the bureau reject the slaughter option and back her sanctuary, which could cover up to a million acres of the western rangelands.

"The HSUS has been working to halt the destruction of the nation's wild horse and burro populations since the late 1950s, and has been a vigorous defender of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act since its inception," Pacelle wrote.

"But we've also invested scientific and financial resources into the management tool of immunocontraception, a birth control method that could be usefully deployed to help with the management of horse and burro herds.

"If you have a chance, please do take the action step Madeleine Pickens recommends. You can also encourage your US Representative and Senators to support HR 1018, which will provide the agency with the guidance it needs to get out of the rut it's been in for the last several decades."