Posted on 09/28/2017 10:03:33 AM PDT by street_lawyer
The critical issue is whether or not the horses are “destroying their natural habitat and thereby starving for food. Pictures published by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of the wild horses show healthy, well-fed horses capable of winning a national jumping completion. https://cbsnews3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2017/09/27/db9d4fb1-6dde-45f7-b7a7-1f14b9866c8d/resize/620x/771dc9e69e24fe30c9354f38c0c35744/horse-smash.png
In September of 2016 BLM categorically stated that it would not euthanize wild horses. Its solution was to round up all the horses and sell for slaughter those it deemed “unadoptable”. government estimates that each one of the 45,000 wild horses will cost taxpayers $50,000 over its lifetime. That would mean $2 billion dollars, which is slightly more than the $1.7 billion in cash payments that the Obama Administration gave Iran earlier that year; furthermore, the National Academy of Sciences accused BLM of over counting in an effort to remove the horses in an effort to appease cattle ranchers. Some government estimates are as high as 70,000 horses and burros. Phoenix wild –horse lover Michele Anderson spoke out against the slaughter of horses for food. “"That means to kill-buyers who can truck them to Canada or Mexico for slaughter, which is horrific,"
The congressman to contact is Chris Stewart, R-Utah because he is the one who was the author of the euthanization amendment. His amendment did not make the horses available for sale since he believes that would result in their slaughter for food. Other congressman who support the euthanization amendment include Mark Amodei, R-Nevada referring in a congressional hearing to wile horses as “these things”. Others who support the amendment are Ken Calvert R-Calif,
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla prefers contraceptives to limit horse populations. The population of horses on the Out Banks of North Carolina is successfully limited using a fertility drug called PZP, according to David Price, D-NC. Stewart is opposed to contraceptives stating that they have been tried for 30 years and have not worked.
The House Appropriations Committee is leading the fight by removing language from the Interior Department’s budget that would have prohibited “the destruction of healthy, unadopted wile horses and burros in the care of the Bureau of Land Management or its contractors.
The same committee in July proposed a change to end the prohibition on the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection of horse meat.
Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wile Horse Campaign (MWHC) said that ““The Stewart amendment is a mass slaughter amendment, and its proponents are trying to hide that fact from the American public.” According to Simone Netherlands of MWHC, there are 27,000 wild horses on 22 million acres and the reports of starving horses is “fake news”.
So you’re saying emotions trump logic?
“Introduce predators such as wolves and mountain lions.”
Nevada and most of the wild horse states already have extensive mountain lion population(s). Kalifornia has no mountain lion hunting, they are literally every in the state. The wild horse population has not gone down due to predators in Kalifornia. Mountain lions rarely attack healthy grown horses. Stupid idea. As for wolves, introducing wolves into Nevada will cause them to be exterminated on sight.
When they shut down the so-called “Killer Plants” the bleeding hearts dictated this to happen. They were warned back then that it would happen and now it has.
We have wild horses coming out our ears here in Nevada. They regularly are in our neighborhood eating the lawns. They are eating up the food that real wildlife would eat. Next time we get a dry season we are going to have starving and dead horses all over the place.
“Let people capture them”
No one wants them. There is an adoption center but not many takers.
“Thats a tv show I’d watch.”
Not that hard. You can get right up to them. They are only kinda ‘wild’.
The BLM facility north of Sparks is not at all scenic. Just a bunch of horses standing around on bare dirt. There are some much prettier places to see them in the area.
If you want to see them in the wild there are some easy to get to places around Sparks I can point you too. The area around USA parkway is lousy with them. A lot of them south of I80 near Fernley. Give me a shout next time our are in the area and we could let you see some.
Don't know if you've ever been in the horse business (sounds like not - puissance isn't of wide currency anymore - only two recognized events in the U.S. last year) but the dirty little secret is that banning humane and necessary slaughterhouses in the U.S. led directly and inevitably to the Mexican horrors.
Unfortunately, many horses are not viable for anyone to keep, let alone your average owner. Some are temperamentally dangerous (try having a 1400 pound animal actively trying to bite you, strike out at you, or pound you into jelly). Some are unsound and cannot be used for any purpose (what we call "pasture ornaments"), others are so lame that they cannot move about and inevitably succumb to colic, founder, or some other disease that overtakes immobile horses. Euthanasia is very expensive, and whether the horse dies of colic or a lethal injection, you are left with 12-1400 pounds of dead weight to dispose of - not an easy task (I have assisted at several backhoe burials on the back 40).
With no option to send vicious or unsound horses to slaughter, and the high price of hay and feed, the owners often just turn them loose or sneak them into somebody else's pasture (my pro trainer says she used to worry about going down to the pasture and finding tire tracks and a horse missing - now she goes down to the pasture and finds tire tracks and two horses she never saw before). And THAT adds a risk of communicating deadly diseases to the whole mix, not to mention the risk of colliding with a loose horse or three on the highway.
The banning of slaughterhouses in the US was not done to save money - it was at the behest of ignorant animal rights activists who have never been any closer to a horse than a Disney movie.
The wild horses are a whole separate issue. We spend a lot of time calculating our pasture yield and how many acres are needed to support a horse - the BLM horses overpopulate quickly and destroy the relatively delicate range (it's not like a well-watered, fertilized pasture, and too many horses will quickly churn up even a well cared for meadow). Over time the bands inbreed, and you get the weedy, knock-kneed, jug-headed gray horses that are useless for much of anything other than destroying rangeland.
BLM needs to (1) do some serious culling to reduce numbers and remove bad examples of inbreeding; (2) start an overall breeding/rebuilding program and judiciously add breeding stock to particular herds; (3) get the horses off the most delicate land. And USDA needs to reinstitute a network of humane, well-inspected slaughterhouses.
“My friend said most of those well trained horses sold for around $200.”
Not worth what the trainer should have been paid.
Yup. Every morning I look out the window and see dozens of them. Literally every morning. They are breeding like crazy this year.
I love the wild horses around here. I really do. Every morning I get to see them. When we go off-roading they are all over. But there are too many. So far I have only see one dead one on the side of the trail. But they breed FAST. every tiny herd around here is 1/3 to 1/2 yearlings and younger. A couple good wet years and the population explodes. One good dry year and they are going to be dying all over the place.
If $500 will get you a quality high-bred horse, nobody is going to waste time on 13-14 hh chance-bred little weeders.
Wild horse, like any other wild animal, is a ressource: it must bring in money, not cost money.
How the h.ll does they assess a cost of $50,000 per animal, and even more, justify such cost? They must have used same Nintendo “science” models as the climateers.
This out-of-control bureaucracy is insane.
I live in Millard County Utah. We have an abundance of the things. Everyone I know, that knows anything about range management wants these vermin gone. They destroy the ground with every hard hooved step. When they run, it’s even worse. This isn’t some eastern pasture that gets 36 inches of rain, it’s the desert and it might get 12” in a good year. A house on that range is more destructive than a cat in the house.
Horses are an invasive speecies brought here by spanish when they were genociding indians and poisoning them, so that white guys got the blame for that... (remember, isabella was SPAIN not england france or germany)
Horses DO damage the environment just as pythons are ruining florida, and pigs are destroying hawaii...
“I’ve seen horses in the same area. It was pretty amazing to see. The kids, especially, were amazed. They were running in a herd and kicking up dust just like the movies.”
My father grew up near there. The year of his death, his older brother took us on a little ride around the area, to see the horses and to see gazillions of ancient sea-creature fossils, too.
“Horses are an invasive species brought here by spanish when they were genociding indians and poisoning them, so that white guys got the blame for that... (remember, isabella was SPAIN not england france or germany)”
Horses DO damage the environment just as pythons are ruining florida, and pigs are destroying hawaii...
lol “invasive” you are joking right? If not still pretty funny.
This is what happens when bleeding heart liberals want to shutdown U.S. Slaughter Houses.
“How about we round up all the Owls and see how much flack we will get from some people. Are Owls as useful as horses? When the economy totally collapses or an EMP is pop’d over CA by NK do you want an Owl in your back yard or a horse?”
I have no idea what all that meant. Anybody care to decipher the message? I did get something about owls or horses in my backyard but I already have both.
Unintended consequences.
Don't know if you've ever been in the horse business (sounds like not - puissance isn't of wide currency anymore - only two recognized events in the U.S. last year) but the dirty little secret is that banning humane and necessary slaughterhouses in the U.S. led directly and inevitably to the Mexican horrors.
THIS IS THE HEAT OF THE ISSUE. BLEEDING HEART LIBERALS WANT TO BAN U. S. SLAUGHTER HOUSES.
Unfortunately, many horses are not viable for anyone to keep, let alone your average owner. Some are temperamentally dangerous (try having a 1400 pound animal actively trying to bite you, strike out at you, or pound you into jelly). Some are unsound and cannot be used for any purpose (what we call “pasture ornaments”), others are so lame that they cannot move about and inevitably succumb to colic, founder, or some other disease that overtakes immobile horses. Euthanasia is very expensive, and whether the horse dies of colic or a lethal injection, you are left with 12-1400 pounds of dead weight to dispose of - not an easy task (I have assisted at several backhoe burials on the back 40).
YOU WOULD THINK THAT HUMANE EUTHINAZIA WOULD PLEASE THE LIBERALS WHO WANT DEATH PANALS FOR OLD PEOPLE. OF COURSE PUTTING A HORSE DOWN WHO IS SUFFERING IS THE HUMANE THING TO DO, BUT THE HORSES THAT LIVE IN THE WILD HAVE BEEN DOING QUITE WELL, DISPITE THE FAKE NEWS THAT THEY ARE STARVING.
With no option to send vicious or unsound horses to slaughter, and the high price of hay and feed, the owners often just turn them loose or sneak them into somebody else’s pasture (my pro trainer says she used to worry about going down to the pasture and finding tire tracks and a horse missing - now she goes down to the pasture and finds tire tracks and two horses she never saw before). And THAT adds a risk of communicating deadly diseases to the whole mix, not to mention the risk of colliding with a loose horse or three on the highway.
THIS IS AN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE TO THE ASSAULT OF LIBERALS ON THE MANUFACTURING SECTOR OF THE U.S. ECONOMY AND THE HAND OF THE EPA IN INCREASING THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS WHICH HAS RESULTED IN IMPOVERSHING THE GENERAL POPULATION.
The banning of slaughterhouses in the US was not done to save money - it was at the behest of ignorant animal rights activists who have never been any closer to a horse than a Disney movie.
USEFUL IDIOTS NECESSARILY IGNORANT
The wild horses are a whole separate issue. We spend a lot of time calculating our pasture yield and how many acres are needed to support a horse - the BLM horses overpopulate quickly and destroy the relatively delicate range (it's not like a well-watered, fertilized pasture, and too many horses will quickly churn up even a well cared for meadow). Over time the bands inbreed, and you get the weedy, knock-kneed, jug-headed gray horses that are useless for much of anything other than destroying rangeland.
GIVE US PICTURES AND PROOF, OTHERWISE IT'S JUST FAKE NEWS. THERE ARE LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ACRES OF LAND OWNED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT THANKS TO TREE HUGGERS LIKE THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States. Around 92 percent of federally owned acres are in 12 Western states.
BLM needs to (1) do some serious culling to reduce numbers and remove bad examples of inbreeding; (2) start an overall breeding/rebuilding program and judiciously add breeding stock to particular herds; (3) get the horses off the most delicate land. And USDA needs to reinstitute a network of humane, well-inspected slaughterhouses.
THERE ARE BEAUTIFUL EXAMPLES OF ALMOST PERFECT CONFORMATION FOUND IN WILD HORSES.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.