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Hearing on the Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act (H.R

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Hearing on the Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act (H.R Hearing on the Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act (H.R. 1018) U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources Testimony of Wayne Pacelle President and CEO The Humane Society of the United States March 3, 2009 I am Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, and I want to thank you, Chairman Rahall, and members of the Committee for the opportunity to testify in support of H.R. 1018, the Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act. We are grateful to you and Representative Raul M. Grijalva for introducing this important legislation, and I offer HSUS’s support of the bill on behalf of our 10.5 million members and constituents. Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act Overview For years, the HSUS has advocated for the protection and welfare of wild horses and burros. As an active member of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign Coalition, we work collaboratively with m a n y wild horse advocacy groups to preserve and properly manage these animals in their habitats in the West. It is our belief that free- roaming horses and burros deserve first to be given every chance to live out their lives wild and free. When intervention is required, we owe them our best efforts to ensure that any human actions that affect their lives – such as gathers, transportation, confinement, and adoption – are done in a way to assure their humane treatment. In recent years, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) - the very agency that is Congressionally charged with protecting and managing these animals - has failed time and again to protect these creatures. The BLM has (1) taken over half of the horses and burros off the range without any sound plans to attend to their long-term needs, (2) often offered scant scientific justification for their removal, (3) adopted animals to unscrupulous individuals who have then sent them to slaughter, and (4) even now proposed to kill large numbers of wild 1 horses taken from the rangeland, in order to wipe away the problems created by its own actions. All of this could have been prevented, if, beginning in the 1980’s, the BLM had taken a more balanced approach to the “multi-use” charge for public lands. Instead, the agency chose to favor livestock ranchers at every turn, and to fail to use immunocontraception as a humane management tool. Ironically, the use of immunocontraception would not only have benefited horses and burros, but also the public lands and the taxpayer. The legislation introduced this year by Chairman Rahall and Representative Grijalva is a needed course correction and a reining in of an agency that has failed in its mission to protect horses. under the terms of the landmark Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 (1971 Act). If passed, not only would the bill restore longstanding protections for wild mustangs, it would also require the BLM to take the first step toward a rational, fiscally responsible and compassionate program, while fulfilling the mission, spirit and original intent of the 1971 Act – to protect wild horses and burros on our public lands for Americans to appreciate and enjoy for generations to come. Restoring Longstanding Protections for Wild Horses and Burros The most critical issue addressed by H.R. 1018 is the restoration of protections to wild horses and burros. Wild horses and burros had been protected from commercial sale and slaughter since the passage of the 1971 Act. However, these protections have been disregarded, and also eroded by amendment to the original 1971 Act. As a result, thousands of protected horses have been sold at auctions and shipped to slaughter plants. The first of these amendments was passed in 1978, directing the BLM to destroy “excess wild free-roaming horses and burros for which adoption demand…does not exist.”1 Following the passage of this amendment, from 1981 to 1982, the BLM killed at least 47 horses, but the killing stopped when public dismay prompted the Director of the BLM to issue a policy prohibiting the destruction of healthy these animals. To further ensure the protection of wild horses and burros, from fiscal years 1988 to 2004, Congress prohibited the BLM from using funds to destroy healthy wild horses and burros who had not yet been adopted. In late 2004, an extremely controversial rider - commonly referred to as the “Burns Amendment” - was inserted into the Fiscal Year (FY) 2005 Omnibus Appropriations bill by Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT). This amendment directed the BLM to sell “without limitation” animals who were either more 1 16 U.S.C. § 1333(b)(2)(C). 2 than 10 years old or had been passed over for adoption at least three times.2 As a result, approximately 8,400 wild horses and burros became eligible for sale in 2005, and since then, BLM has sold more than 2,700 horses and burros under this authority. Without any opportunity for public review or even a Congressional hearing, the Burns Amendment robbed wild horses of critical federal protection which they had been granted for over 30 years. In reaction to an overwhelming outcry by the American public, Sen. Burns then claimed that horses sold pursuant to this amendment would end up in good homes, not at slaughter. Sure enough, a few months into the implementation of the amendment, at least 41 wild horses sold by the BLM ended up at a slaughter plant. And today, it appears that American wild horses are still being sent to slaughter. “Without limitation,” as BLM was aware of at the time, can be a euphemism for sale to a “killer buyer.” Killer buyers are the middlemen who purchase horses at auctions only to then sell them to slaughter, often times outbidding sanctuaries and others who want to provide good homes for these animals. The BLM has attempted to avoid allowing the sale of wild horses to slaughter, but despite the agency’s efforts, many of these animals end up in slaughterhouses because once an animal’s title has been passed, it is nearly impossible to prevent sale to slaughter. This is exactly how 41 horses ended up at a slaughter plant following implementation of the Burns’ Amendment. In April 2005, Dustin Herbert of Oklahoma purchased six horses from the BLM and told the agency he intended to use the horses for a church youth program. Instead, Mr. Herbert sent them immediately to slaughter in Illinois. Also, in the same month, 35 of the 83 horses initially bought by a Sioux Indian group were later re-sold to a broker and went to slaughter at the same Illinois plant. As amended, the 1971 Act requires the BLM to destroy excess animals and/or sell them without limitation. Due to concerns about public and Congressional reaction to the massive slaughter of healthy horses, BLM has chosen not to destroy excess animals or sell them without limitation. But in an effort to comply with the law and reduce costs associated with caring for an increasing number of wild horses in short and long-term holding facilities, the BLM announced that for FY 2009, they would consider euthanizing about 2,300 horses in short-term holding (about one-third of the animals currently in short-term holding) and selling, without limitation, about 8,000 animals from both short and long-term holding. The announcement generated enormous outcry from the public, national media, and Congress, and prompted separate letters from Senator Dianne Feinstein, as well as Chairman Rahall and Rep. Grijalva, and Rep. Kucinich that criticized this proposed 2 16 U.S.C. § 1333(e)(2). 3 policy. Additionally, in order to address BLM’s noncompliance with the Act, as amended, the General Accounting Office (GAO) recommended in its October 2008 report, “Effective Long-term Options Needed to Manage Unadoptable Wild Horses” (2008 GAO Report) that BLM: “[d]iscuss with Congress and other stakeholders how best to comply with the act or amend it so that BLM would be able to comply specifically with 1) the act’s requirement for the humane destruction of excess animals and 2) the possible slaughter of healthy horses if excess animals are sold without limitation, under certain circumstances, as the act requires.” 3 As a first step towards that goal, H.R. 1018 would allow BLM to comply with the 1971 Act by removing the “destruction of healthy animals” and “sale without limitation” requirements, pushing them to instead utilize several alternatives for the long-term management of these animals. We firmly believe that no horse should pay the ultimate price for the agency's mismanagement and that killing horses, or allowing them to be sold to slaughter, is not the answer. The BLM made a social contract with Americans when it placed horses in long term care: The horses would be cared for life, and the commitment should be honored. Reformation of Wild Horse and Burro Management Policies and Procedures In addition to encouraging BLM to work with stakeholders and Congress to amend the 1971 Act in order to achieve compliance, the 2008 GAO Report also recommended that the BLM “develop cost-effective alternatives to the process of caring for wild horses removed from the range in long-term holding facilities and seek the legislative changes that may be necessary to implement those alternatives.”4 To that end, H.R. 1018 also provides the “legislative changes” necessary to address the on-the-range management policies and procedures that are directly responsible for the increasing number of “excess” animals managed off-the-range, the rising costs associated with their care, and the resulting budget crisis that prompted the BLM to consider killing and/or selling over 8,000 animals to solve the agency’s fiscal problems.
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