Home on the range.

Just wanted to bring attention to the plight of the BLM Mustangs. I know, there she goes about horses again, but I can't help it. For those of you who don't know, the Bureau of Land Management is in charge of rounding up 'excess' wild horses, called Mustangs, and doing something with them. The problem is that we're running out of somethings to do. The horses lost a major battle several years ago when the BLM decided to allow the outright sale of 'undersiable' horses, who could not be adopted out. The adoption program is stringent, requiring the horse to remain in the adopter's home for one year before the deed of ownership can be transferred over. An outright sale, however, can mean the horse ends up sold for slaughter. Despite the well-meaning regulations in place to prevent this, it can and does happen. Even with outright sales allowed, the BLM can no longer maintain the herds of horses captured from the range. Their new plan? To murder them. Oh wait, I mean euthanize. 

I understand that the captive and free roaming herds alike are overcrowded, and that adoptions have decreased, but isn't there a way to reduce the free herds, thus removing the need for the round ups and holding? Something like feral cats - trap, neuter (or spay) and release? The senior horses, and other 'undesirables' have been moved to sanctuaries - a step in the right direction, provided they are run properly and provide adequate care. These two in tandem with the continued adoption and education of the public could provide for the Mustang's future - if they're begun now. 

What really angers me are the responses of those people who are supposedly protecting these horses, like Dawn Lappin of Wild Horse Organized Assistance. Apparently she shares the sentiments of one Fred Burke, an Arizona rancher quoted in a Salt Lake Tribune article as saying "The best thing we could do for that horse is put him down. We can't afford to send him to an old-timers rest home to die." Lappin was quoted in the same article as saying, "How these horses ended up on a refuge when they should have been destroyed is beyond me." And Matthew Mackay Smith, veterinarian and medical editor of an equine magazine? According to him "..death is meaningless to a horse. It only understands the moment." I challenge that one, on the mere grounds that if death was truly meaningless to any sentient being, food and water would probably be as well. With an attitude like that, how could we NOT euthanize them?

How can animals win when those who are supposed to be protecting them believe that their engineered deaths are an appropriate end? Obviously leaving the horses to starve and die on overgrazed ranges is not appropriate either, but perhaps if other 'animal agriculture' weren't continually moving in on the horse's territory, or if predators hadn't been driven off, it wouldn't be such a problem.