Editorial: Acting to save wild horses

Sunday, May 21, 2006 | 7:37 a.m.

Wild horses would again be protected from slaughter under an Interior Department spending bill approved Thursday by the House.

The horses were first protected in 1971 by the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. In that bill, Congress directed the Interior Department to either place excess horses in humane, open-range sanctuaries or adopt them out to people who had the land and willingness to care for them.

But in 2004 Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., authored a provision to a law that allowed the Bureau of Land Management to sell horses aged 10 or older (normal life span for a horse is 20 to 35 years), and to sell horses that have been passed up for adoption three times.

The BLM - an agency within the Interior Department - began selling horses meeting that criteria and many of them ended up being slaughtered for human consumption. As horse meat must be inspected by federal law, Congress tried to end the slaughter by pulling its federal inspectors. But managers of horse slaughterhouses simply hired privately accredited inspectors.

The House language is now clear - the BLM is prohibited from selling wild horses for slaughter. We are heartened by this House bill and hope that it is also approved by the Senate.