Activists Worry Over Upcoming Horse Auction

Wild and skittish, mustangs and burros carry the aura of the unsettled West, where dust clouds once sprang from their hooves and rose into the same rust-colored dawn that had seen herds of their ancestors roam unbridled for centuries.

Now, 100 of these untamed animals, wrangled from the ranges of California and Nevada, are on their way to Pierce College, where they will be auctioned off to the highest bidders as part of a government adoption program aimed at maintaining range lands.

The program is also designed to find the federally protected animals new homes. But just what kind of homes they’ll get after the three-day auction, which begins Oct. 16, remains uncertain. That has animal rights activists worried.

Over the past 15 years, the federal Bureau of Land Management has come under heavy criticism for allowing wild animals included in its “Adopt-a-Horse or Burro Program” to be sold to slaughterhouses. The program, implemented in 1973, was originally designed as a humane attempt to control the population of roughly 43,000 wild animals grazing on federal land. The intent was to offer the animals to ranchers and recreational riders interested in taming them.

“These are tremendous animals,” Doran Sanchez, spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management, said of the horses. “Once they are trained, they make great pleasure horses. They have no bad habits. Once you establish their trust, you have a friend for life.”

But as an increasing number of wild horses and burros feed off the vast public ranges in the Western United States, animal protection groups are not so sure that the federal agency is interested in finding the animals companions.

Animal rights groups sued the bureau in the 1980s for allowing the animals to be sold to meatpacking companies. In a settlement, the government agreed to take steps to keep the animals from being processed for meat.

But recently, two groups charged that the agency is still primarily concerned with controlling the animal population on the ranges and not taking steps to find them appropriate homes.

Both the Animal Protection Institute of America and the Fund for Animals would like to stop the bureau from running the adoption program.

“We are not satisfied with their compliance with the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act,” said Sheila Hughes Rodriguez, an attorney for the Sacramento-based Animal Protection Institute.

By allowing the animals to go to slaughter and by reducing some herds to zero, Hughes said, “The bureau is in violation of the act.”

The bureau maintains that it is trying to ease the population in the most humane way possible.

“We want to give these animals good homes,” Sanchez said.

Part of its efforts come from recent court actions resulting in buyers being required to sign affidavits promising that they will not use the animals for meat.

Sanchez said the bureau also closely screens potential buyers for their intentions, requiring proof that they are capable of caring for the animals and that they have experience in taming them.

Additionally, buyer’s contracts handed out at auctions stipulate that prospective owners keep the animal for one year before ownership is granted by the bureau, Sanchez said.

During that period, bureau agents monitor the condition of the animals, checking for signs of abuse and plans of slaughter.

“We’re trying to do the best we can with the limited resources we have,” Sanchez said.

To the animal protection groups, limited resources are indeed the main problem.

A lack of funds and employees at the bureau have made the agency historically lax in implementing its policies, group members said.

With roughly 100 employees overseeing the annual adoption of thousands of animals, keeping close tabs on buyers who do not comply with the agency’s policies is too problematic, activists said.

More than 10 years after promising to crack down on slaughterhouse sales during the 1980s “Here we are with the same problem,” said Alan Berger, executive director of the Animal Protection Institute.

“It’s probably too early to tell” how effective the bureau will be in ensuring that the new affidavits are honored, but “We have little confidence in them,” he said.

Sanchez said the agency is taking several new approaches to try to ensure against slaughterhouse scenarios. One new program calls for inoculating the animals with birth control formulas.

“This is a highly reproductive group of animals,” he said. “They grow by a rate of 18% to 20% per year.”

At the Pierce College auction, bidding on horses and burros alike will start at a minimum of $125.