Wednesday, March 2, 2005 | 10:33 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
February 26 - 27, 2005
Last fall Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., slipped an amendment into the massive federal budget bill that gives the Bureau of Land Management the right to sell wild horses, a move that critics say could send thousands of wild horses to the slaughterhouse.
The law has set off a debate closely watched in Nevada -- home to more than half of America's wild horses and burros -- that touches three hot-button issues in the West: land rights, horses and the federal government.
Nevada is at the center of the debate because federally owned land, which makes up almost 87 percent of the state, is home to some 19,000 wild horses and burros.
Ranchers want the horses off the land because they eat the vegetation and crowd watering holes used by cattle. Land managers are concerned about the damage the wild horses do to stream beds and endangered species habitat. Animal activists say selling horses will lead to the animals' demise.
Everyone agrees on one crucial point: The BLM has, for more than 20 years, failed to adequately manage the wild horses and burros roaming freely on public lands and in dozens of holding facilities.
"The BLM has done a poor job of managing the horses and burros, but slaughter is irresponsible," said Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., who is sponsoring legislation to repeal the Burns amendment.
For years the BLM has taken wild horses and burros off public lands to manage the size of the herds and their impact. Those animals are then sent to holding facilities where the government tries to set them up for adoption or put them out to pasture.
The BLM says it doesn't have the resources to adequately manage the herds in 10 Western states, everything west of the Rockies but Washington state. The agency also has a difficult time adopting out all of the animals that are taken off public land.
The Burns revision specifically targets a 1971 federal law that shields wild horses and burros from unscrupulous horse dealers. It repeals those protections and allows the BLM to sell "without limit" wild horses that are 10 years old or older or horses that have not been successfully adopted on three attempts.
The amendment will apply to approximately 8,400 horses that are currently being kept by the BLM in holding facilities across the country.
Burns spokesman James Pendleton said allowing the BLM to sell horses should ease the population of wild horses. The adoption program, he said, didn't work.
"We have a well-intentioned program that was not being used to the best of its extent," Pendleton said. "We were spending millions of dollars to have these animals pent up."
Pendleton said the majority of horses will likely be bought by legitimate horse traders, who will in turn sell the horses for work purposes. According to the BLM, individual horses could be sold for $75 a head, or less if the horses are bought in large quantities.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., an opponent of the Burns amendment, said the wild horse and burro adoption program "is broken and needs to be fixed."
Reid and critics of the amendment contend that it paves the way for horse buyers to purchase thousands of previously protected wild horses, and will do nothing to prevent those buyers from selling the horses to slaughterhouses, where the wild horses could bring in between $300 to $600 each. There's a market for horse meat in Europe and Asia.
The BLM has yet to sell a horse under the new law, and is currently looking for large-scale buyers who would not take them to the slaughterhouse.
Reid is currently working with the Las Vegas-based National Wild Horse Association (NWHA) to help increase the rate of adoptions of wild horses, thereby reducing the number of wild horses that are currently being corralled in the long- and short-term holding facilities.
"Run right, an effective adoptions program could make Sen. Burns' amendment to the wild horse and burro act a moot point. I hope that day comes sooner rather than later," Reid said.
Uphill battle
In the meantime, however, critics of the amendment face an uphill battle in trying to save the wild horses.
The Burns amendment "is an easy and cheap remedy," said Laurie Howard, the vice president of the NWHA. Howard and the NWHA are in stanch opposition to the Burns amendment, which the association refers to as the "slaughter bill."
On Tuesday the NWHA hosted a public outreach program at the West Charleston Library Theater with state Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, to bring awareness of the issue and support for legislation opposing the Burns revision.
"The ranchers are very much opposed to the wild horses on their land, and they are the strongest voice out in the rurals," Titus said, who opposes the Burns amendment on humanitarian grounds. "The wild horse issue needs to be addressed, but they should not be sent to slaughter."
She emphasized that this issue is out of the realm of local politicians.
"There is nothing the state could do legislatively (to protect the horses), but we could put pressure on the BLM within the state," she said.
Rahall's bill seeks to restore the previous protections for wild horses and prevent the BLM from selling off the thousands of wild horses currently in holding facilities.
"Wild horses are the symbol of the American West. It is that symbolism that the American people want to see protected," Rahall said. "If the purpose of the Burns language is to facilitate the sale of horses and burros (to legitimate horse traders), then why does it remove the prohibitions on slaughter?"
BLM
Under the 1971 Wild Free-roaming Horse and Burro Act, and subsequent amendments, the BLM is responsible for protecting the horses against abuses while simultaneously keeping the horses on BLM land at manageable population levels.
The federal agency also must facilitate adoptions of wild horses and maintain and improve rangelands where wild horses roam with livestock and wildlife to "productively support all rangeland values," according to the BLM.
The rangeland, however, is being threatened by the wild horses and burros currently living on the public lands, proponents of the recent Burns amendment claim.
Because the BLM cannot maintain the populations of wild horses, the herds roaming on public lands have grown out of control and are overtaking the natural resources that are also used by wildlife such as deer and elk as well as livestock, critics say.
"We've been after this sale authority for years," state Sen. Dean Rhodes, R-Tuscarora, said. "Everything on Nevada's public lands is being harvested, from the livestock to the deer and elk. But the wild horses are not because the BLM's gathering program is not working."
Rhodes, a rancher near Elko, said the wild horses in Nevada are more of a nuisance than the symbol of the West they are often heralded as.
The wild horses in rural areas often clear the foliage and vegetation that livestock and wildlife graze on, Rhodes said.
Watering holes
The horses also aggressively take over precious watering holes that cattle and other animals rely on, he said.
"As ranchers, we have to go back to that land year after year. If we see an area overgrazed by our cattle, then we pull out our livestock and move them away. But there are no such controls for the horses," he said.
The BLM's environmental assessment reports seem to confirm this. In a January 2005 report the BLM examined the Battle Mountain District in central Nevada. The report found that the number of wild horses living on the roughly 350,000 acres of BLM-operated land known as Fish Creek and Sevenmile/Butler Basin was far greater than the number of horses allowed under the "appropriate management level."
The management area called for up to 280 wild horses. The projected level of wild horses this year will be 811.
"It's like that statewide," said Dr. Bradford Hardenbrook, supervisory biologist for habitat at the Nevada Department of Wildlife. The problem is not isolated to Nevada. According to a BLM statement to the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies' annual conference in September 2000, the number of wild horses and burros in the West was reaching alarmingly high levels.
Overpopulated
"Wild horse and burro populations are exceeding the capacity of the land to support them," the statement reads. "If populations are not reduced, irreparable damage will occur to riparian zones and watersheds, water quality, threatened and endangered species such as the Lahontan cutthroat trout and desert tortoise. ... In addition, degradation of native vegetation communities will accelerate the spread and establishment of invasive weeds."
Little has changed since the BLM gave this statement, Hardenbrook said.
Officials from Burns' office agree that the wild horses across the West are taking up too much land. They also frame the Burns amendment as a measure aimed at saving the wild horse population on the plains from undue suffering.
"Because of the sheer magnitude of animals on the plains, the horses are in danger of starving to death," Pendleton said. "Something had to be done."
The BLM currently has 24,000 wild horses in short-term or long-term holding facilities that the agency has removed from public lands, according to Tom Gorey, a BLM spokesman in Washington. These horses were removed from areas such as Fish Creek in an attempt to better manage the land.
There are approximately 15,000 wild horses living on two long-term BLM-contracted facilities in Oklahoma and Kansas. Approximately 9,000 wild horses or burros are now living in 23 BLM-run short-term facilities.
In fiscal year 2004 the BLM spent a total of $19.2 million to house the horses in these facilities -- more than half of the overall BLM budget for wild horses and burros. The BLM estimates that it will spend a projected $20.1 million to care for these horses in 2005 -- again more than half of the projected BLM budget for wild horses and burros, Gorey said.
The BLM, meanwhile, states that its solution to the excess number of horses on the range and the backlog of horses waiting to be adopted is to continue pushing its adoption program. Each year the BLM on average adopts out between 6,000 and 7,000 wild horses and burros, Gorey said.
"We are making every effort to get the horses into long-term care situations," Gorey said. "It may take a period of time."
Officials at the BLM concede that adopting out the horses is not an easy task.
Maxine Shane, spokeswoman for the BLM in Carson City, said there are difficulties in adopting out the horses under the BLM's authority because the horses the BLM removes from public lands range in age, and "it's always been easier to adopt young animals. Do you want a horse that's 25 or one that's 5?" she asked.
Adoption numbers
The number of wild horses the BLM removes from public lands also exceeds the number of horses adopted. In fiscal year 2004 the BLM removed a total of 9,252 wild horses and 647 burros nationally, according to Shane. In Nevada the BLM took 4,751 wild horses and 17 burros off public lands for management purposes, she said.
In fiscal year 2003 the BLM removed a total of 8,865 horses and 1,216 burros from public lands. The BLM in Nevada took 3,938 wild horses and 148 burros from public lands, she said.
"We need to have sustainable lands. We can't have the horses eating all the vegetation," she said.
According to Rahall, however, the problem isn't with the horses currently in the holding facilities but the BLM's collection practices. The BLM, he said, routinely rounds up more horses than it can adopt, and the wild horses remain pent up in the facilities.
Howard of the NWHA said she was aware that restoring the original protections to the wild horses would be returning to an allegedly failing system, but that she hoped it would spur the BLM to improve its practices.
"It's better than what is in existence now," she said. "Rahall isn't fixing anything. It's not going to be the fix-all solution. But maybe this will be the spanking the BLM needs."
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