Las Vegas sanctuary fights to save horses from slaughter

Stephen Curran

Monday, May 9, 2005 | 10:55 a.m.

A loophole in federal laws has prompted a Las Vegas horse sanctuary to take an unusual -- and potentially costly -- step to keep horses from being sent to the slaughterhouse.

The Shiloh Horse Sanctuary and Rescue, which operates a ranch off Las Vegas Boulevard South, is often the first step to rehabilitation of abused and neglected horses from throughout the valley. But lately it has become a clearinghouse for animals that otherwise would be sold for slaughter, said Shiloh's founder Jill Curtis, wife of actor Tony Curtis.

On Thursday, sanctuary representatives returned from a loosely organized auction outside Cedar City, Utah, with five horses in tow, she said. Such trips have become regular practice for the sanctuary, which travels monthly to the auction and has left with scores of horses, she said.

All told, the sanctuary spent $1,400 on the horses, which included a colt and mother that fetched $150, Curtis said. About 50 other horses remained, many of which she said were sold for slaughter. There's a market overseas for horse meat.

Two pregnant mares got away because they didn't have room in their trailer, she said. They were likely among those sold for slaughter.

"You just never know," Curtis said. "You never know what you're going to find."

The trip to the auction comes on the heels of what has become a national discussion brought on by a loosening of federal rules that once protected wild horses and burros, a change advocates say put horses deemed "symbols of the West" in danger of being sold for slaughter.

Curtis' organization specializes in domestic horses and has not been active in the national debate, prompted by an amendment placed in a federal omnibus bill by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., that allowed the Bureau of Land Management to sell the wild horses to slaughterhouses.

The revision undoes the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act that prohibited wild horses from being sold.

The change has created an "ugly side to the horse world," Curtis said, as horses cast aside by owners who are unable to care for them as the animals age can fetch a higher resale price at slaughterhouses in Texas and Illinois.

Because they're sold by the pound, a horse can fetch anywhere between $28 and $1,200, she said. Shiloh encourages owners of sick horses to euthanize the animals as opposed to sending them to slaughterhouses, where they are often shot with bolt-shooting guns intended to kill cattle

"It's just really awful the way they're slaughtered," Curtis said. "People just need to stop breeding their horses and take responsibility."

The change also allows the BLM to sell "without limit" the roughly 8,400 wild horses 10 or more years old held in the agency's facilities.

Laurie Howard, a spokes woman for the Las Vegas-based National Wild Horse Association, has actively campaigned against the changes which allow the wild horses to be sold at BLM sales in Northern Nevada.

The agency used to bring its wild horses to Southern Nevada for periodic adoptions managed by the NWHA, but costs of transporting the animals have prompted the agency to suspend its work with the nonprofit group's auction in October, Howard said.

The changes have created a web of often-confusing rules that leave little oversight for the animals' well-being, she said.

The agency has put in its sales agreements a requirement that new owners must treat the once-wild horses humanely, a clause the BLM is powerless to enforce, Howard said.

"Is the BLM directly responsible?" for the horses being slaughtered, Howard said. "No. They were given a law. They have to follow the law."

Under a long-standing state law, any unwanted, neglected or abused horses in Clark County is turned over to a state brand inspector, who regularly turns the horses to a sanctuary like Curtis', Don Bamberry, brand inspector for Southern Nevada, said.

Bamberry, who has held his current job since 1977, said changes in zoning in the rapidly expanding Las Vegas Valley have kept the number of neglected horses kept in areas where horses were once allowed from growing with the population.

It was difficult to estimate how many horses he helps retrieve from the valley, he said, although he said the number had dwindled to "very few."

The brand inspection division, which ensures horses rounded up by the federal government are not privately owned, does not have the authority to sell, adopt or auction the horses, he said.

Clark County Animal Control is responsible for retrieving animals believed to be neglected or abused, where it holds them at publicly owned stables until state officials respond, Joe Boteilho, the county's chief of code enforcement, said.

Boteilho estimated his department retrieved about 70 head of livestock, including horses, last year.

According to Shiloh, more than 65,000 horses including wild mustangs, were slaughtered last year. Curtis estimates her organization has saved about 60 horses.