In Arizona: Congress Gives Bloody BLM MORE Money To Assault Wild Horses

Friday, December 10, 2010

Congress Gives Bloody BLM MORE Money To Assault Wild Horses

Update from Laura Allen of Animal Law Coalition

Elected Officials Screw Wild Horses and Burros, AGAIN!

Update Dec. 10, 2010: The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a continuing resolution that will keep the government running through the end of the year.

Well, actually, it does more than that. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was handed its requested budget increase for FY 2011, more than $12 million.

As BLM described in the Wild Horse and Burros Program, FY 2011 Budget Justifications: “In 2011 this measure includes an increase of $12,000,000 which will result in … an additional 9 Herd Management Areas achieving appropriate management levels. The 2011 increase allows the Wild Horse & Burro program to gather and hold additional horses“….”[A]chieving appropriate management levels” is BLM speak for rounding up wild horses and burros and placing them in holding facilities.

BLM also said “The 2011 BLM budget request includes a program increase of $12.0 million in the Wild Horse and Burro Management program to support implementation of [Interior] Secretary[ Ken Salazar's] plan“. The plan as announced in 2009 would allow removal of wild horses and burros to “preserves”, also called “pastures” and “feedlots” in the Midwest and East where they would live in non-reproducing “herds”. Many have called this a plan for extinction. For more on Secy. Salazar’s “plan”…..

Under the Continuing Resolution BLM has been authorized ”to enter into multiyear cooperative agreements with nonprofit organizations and other appropriate entities… for the long-term care and maintenance of excess wild free-roaming horses and burros by such organizations or entities on private land.” The contracts could now be up to 10 years rather than the current 5. Still pending is a BLM request for $42 million for the purchase of land in the Midwest or East for the first of Secy. Salazar’s “preserves” – or “pastures” or “feedlots”.

This support for an already bloated program, the sole focus of which, contrary to the law, has become to drive wild horses and burros off public lands, is astonishing given tight budget constraints.

Read the Equine Welfare Alliance and Animal Law Coalition report below for more on a report submitted to Congress just recently on BLM’s questionable numbers, unsubstantiated data and lack of accountability that has prompted many including Animal Law Coalition to call on Congress to de-fund the wild horses and burro roundups pending completion of a study and possible removal of the operation of the wild horses and burros program to another, preferably independent agency.

So far Congress does not appear to be listening – or reading…..