The Equine Welfare Alliance (EWA), a coalition of groups and individuals who are dedicated to ending slaughter of American horses and to protecting wild horses and burros on public lands, has issued a press release calling for an immediate moratorium on wild horse round-ups.
Despite the public outcry against removal of wild horses and burros from public lands and perhaps because of increasing media attention to this injustice, the Bureau of Land Management has accelerated round-ups (what they call “gathers”) of wild horses and burros.
The concern expressed by the EWA and others is that without a moratorium there will be no wild horses and burros left on public land by the time legislation purporting to protect them–such as the R.O.A.M. Act currently before the U.S. Senate, and the Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act reintroduced this year–is passed.
The war against American horses has created some strange alliances. Democrats such as Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, U.S. Senator from Nevada Harry Reid and former U.S. Representative from Texas Charles Stehholm (now lobbyist for foreign horse meat producers) find themselves on the side of the horse killers together with Republicans such as former U.S. Senator from Montana Conrad Burns (now lobbyist for the American Quarter Horse Association) and Wyoming state representative Sue Wallis (working to bring horse slaughter facilities to your neighborhood).
Where is our charismatic, compassionate President Obama on this issue?
Why have the wild horse and burro round-ups and anti-horse rhetoric increased instead of slowing down or stopping since the last presidential election?
It is time for the President to stop the wild horse and burro round-ups, take a stand against horse slaughter and end America’s war against equines.
The thread that unites the lobbyists, bureaucrats, Democrats and Republicans with the killers is a concern that laws protecting horses from slaughter might be extended to protect cows, sheep and pigs from slaughter. The “horse as proxy” and “slippery slope” concerns underlie the hollow justifications raised by horse killers and their apologists to support their arguments that Americans should be in the business of raising and slaughtering horses for export of horse meat to Japan, France and other countries where horsemeat is consumed.
The Animal Law Coalition’s Laura Allen posted a comprehensive article debunking the widely circulated lie that closing slaughter houses led directly to an increase in abandoned horses.
Are horse meat farms and domestic slaughter houses the final indignities that Americans will inflict on the innocent and brave horses that have walked with us, carried us and pulled our carriages and plows since the early days of the Republic?
What would Paul Revere’s warning have been without “Brown Betty,” the mare he rode to warn patriots that the “British Are Coming?”
Please watch this video entitled “An American Horse,” that was created by John Holland, an American human being who believes American equines deserve better than slaughter. There are graphic images at the conclusion of the video.
This week, the Department of the Interior attempted to divert public attention from the Bureau of Land Management’s appalling mis-management of America’s free roaming horses and mustangs.
In a hastily conceived “conference call” and press release, BLM Director Abbey and Secretary of the Interior Salazar announced an “initiative” to create seven new “preserves” in the East and Midwest to replace 20 million of so acres of public land in the West that was dedicated to preservation of the horses and burros in 1971; land that the BLM/DOI has essentially stolen from the horses and burros–and the American taxpayer who owns the horses and burros–over the last 38 years.
Here is a link to the DOI’s press release announcing the proposal. Here is the Cloud Foundation’s response taking issue with the bogus plan. In a nutshell, the Cloud Foundation recommends:
1) Cease all roundups until independent analysis can be made of each herd management area. Move forward only with emergency removals if deemed necessary by independent as well as BLM specialists.
2) Return wild horses and burros in good health to the 20.8 million acres of public land designated primarily for their use in 1971 that has since been taken away from them.
3) Reanalyze appropriate management levels (AMLs) for herd management areas (HMAs).
4) Congress should follow-up with hearings on the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program as recommended by the Government Accounting Office (2008 report).
Stop the roundups now.
Give America back her wild horses and burros on public lands.
I did not start out against horse slaughter. I did not want to watch the footage of what goes on inside slaughterhouses. I did not like the antics of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I did not want to give up horseback riding. I ate meat. Not horsemeat, but beef and pork. In recent years, it has mostly been fish and fowl. That I can somehow justify. But I wear leather. The car I drive has leather seats. I don’t know how to avoid the killing and consuming of animal flesh, skin and bone.
On the subject of horse slaughter, I was influenced by articles in horse enthusiast magazines that talked about the plight of “unwanted horses” who would be doomed to starve or face transport to foreign slaughterhouses if there were no “domestic” abbatoirs to “process” them. I was perplexed by the apparent paradox: Why allow slaughter of pigs, cows and sheep, but not horses? Is it sentimentality?
I was confused by statements from “reputable” organizations such as the American Quarter Horse Association, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Association of Equine Practitioners. All support slaughter. All actively oppose the R.O.A.M. bill (Restoring Our American Mustangs, H.R. 1018, S. 1579). All give the “reason” for their opposition as concern about the “crisis” of “unwanted horses.”
Then Barbara Ries posted a rambling comment full of typos on this blog. Barbara wanted people to know about the Bureau of Land Management’s plans to “round up” and cull free-roaming horses in the Pryor Mountains. She submitted a second and a third post with the same information. I got a little irritated, but then I started to look at the plight of the wild horses and burros. And I started to understand Barbara’s commitment.
Mustangs. Wild things. We use their images on ten thousand things. Public schools, wine labels, automobiles, soccer, baseball and football teams. We claim to love and respect their freedom and wildness. But then we capture and kill them. With what seems to be a vengeance.
According to news reports compiled by the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, for over one hundred years, Americans have pursued and killed or allowed the pursuit and killing of wild horses and burros with a pathological relentlessness. Wild horses have been called outlaws, vermin, worthless, pests, cayuses, broomtails, nuisances and worse. They are even accused of being ”horse thieves” because of their knack for convincing “domesticated, grain-fed” horses to join them in the wild.
The war against horses decimated the herds from the reported 2,000,000 or so that roamed free at the beginning of the 1900’s to the mere tens of thousands that live on the ranges today under so-called “federal protection.” Before the killing frenzy was over, millions of horses ended up as chicken feed, pet food or shipped to Europe in cans for consumption by humans. Before they died, they endured horrible torment at the hands of humans.
You would think the few thousand remaining free-roaming horses and burros would not present a problem to a nation as vast as America. And yet the horses are still under attack by an unholy alliance of the BLM, cattle, gas, oil and big game proponents, and unfortunately, some environmentalists who view them as “non-native” or “not wild” and so not deserving of protection and liberty. Today, there are new voices added to the call for killing, people who see horse meat as a solution for world hunger or lost American jobs. State legislatures are rushing to get horse slaughter facilities legalized.
This is madness. If we allow it to happen, America is lost.
I have written before about the fear and domination aspect of so many horse “training” programs, including “natural horsemanship” techniques. Stand outside the horse world for a moment. Look at the use of tools such as whips, spurs and chains. Look at the way we confine and punish horses. When does a “correction” become a beating? Why would an owner who claims to love her horse allow a trainer to beat him?
I watched one “natural” trainer at the Western States Horse Expo this year hit a horse and then admonish the owner for “letting him get away with” it. I would have punched the trainer in the nose but lacked the courage. Besides, it was not “my horse.”
I am not suggesting horses be given free rein to run over humans. I am suggesting that many of the techniques we use to “train” horses make it more likely that they will run us over once they have the chance. I know I would be waiting for the day. What sentient, self-respecting creature wouldn’t?
The Equus exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 2008 featured an illustration of a horse with a braided mane, in a bit and bridle, with its chin tucked close to its chest, and tight nose and brow bands. This image looks beautiful to many observers and is a “classic” look for the domestic horse. The exhibit itself, that I viewed when I was in New York last summer, was heavily geared toward the S&M aspect of the horse/human story, with depictions of horses in battle gear and pulling chariots, and of humans carrying crops. There was little commentary on how that story might be told as a tale of slavery and oppression.
We now believe that horses were originally hunted or kept by humans for food. Humans continue to use horses as a food source today, and the idea of raising horses for food in the United States is gaining momentum, with several states considering or passing measures to allow slaughterhouses for production of horse meat.
The concept of a horse without a human use is apparently so threatening to some humans that they refer to such horses as vermin, trash, mongrels and ferals.
The online version of The Horse exhibit discussed the difference between a horse that is domestic and one that is wild:
When animals are domesticated, the change can often be seen in the bones. In dogs and pigs, for example, the muzzle becomes shorter in relation to the rest of the skull. By contrast, early domestic horse bones look very much like wild ones. So archaeologists studying horse remains must use other clues to tell whether they are domestic or wild.
I am no scientist, but maybe”domestic” horse bones look like wild horse bones because there is no difference. Perhaps the horse is not our “little brother” and not a “beast of burden” but a citizen or another nation as Henry Beston wrote. Or perhaps horses are the intelligent and imperious Houyhnhnms and humans the savage, stupid Yahoos that Jonathan Swift described in Gullivers’s Travels.
Perhaps the domestic horse remains wild, acting sometimes in cooperation with humans for its own purposes, usually in captivity, and waiting. Waiting for the gates to open. Waiting for the bonds to break. Waiting for the day that horses and humans throw off the restraints, forgo the busy work and live in harmony with the seasons and the pulse of the earth.
For whose needs and for what purpose is all this training, leading, riding, picking, brushing, longeing, walking, bridling, saddling, bitting, shoeing, pulling, braiding, tacking, spraying, clipping, scrubbing, washing, cleaning, wrapping, packing and injecting activity anyway?
What is the “and” that binds human and horse? Do they love us? Do we love them? Can you love what you are not free to love?
