Wild-horse advocates continue political struggle

Armed with attorneys and a passion for one of America's icons, a new wild-horse advocacy group will protest the sale of horses for slaughter made easier by an amendment to the country's wild horse and burro legislation.

The Alliance of Wild Horse Advocates, a nationwide umbrella group of wild horse and animal welfare organizations, met recently at Casino Fandango for an "emergency conference" to address a federal spending bill, signed by President George W. Bush last month, which slackens federal limits on the sale of wild horses.

This is only the first of several meetings held at various locations throughout the West, organizers say.

Willis Lamm, chief organizer of the Carson City conference and owner of horse adoption organization Least Resistance Training Concepts Inc., said the Alliance has opted to elicit a group of attorneys to focus on the new legislation and will develop a "multi-pronged response."

The disputed legislation lets wild horses be sold if they are more than 10 years old or, if younger, after they have been offered unsuccessfully for adoption three times.

The law requires any money from sales to go to the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management adoption program for wild horses and burros.

It is an amendment to the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, which provides for the necessary management, protection and control of wild horses and burros in the United States.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., who sponsored the amendment, said he believed most horses would wind up being adopted, not slaughtered, but his intent was to spur the BLM to get serious about its adoption program.

"These animals live in poor conditions that often lead to their deaths, and without proper management this will continue to happen," Burns said Dec. 9, after President Bush had signed the bill.

Lamm said the amendment unravels 34 years of federal protection for wild horses and burros mandated by the act. As a result, he said, wild horses will now be trucked to slaughterhouses and sold on the foreign meat market.

He said there will be another conference in Washington in the coming months where advocates will further develop their strategy for saving their beloved animals from slaughter.

Lamm said the conference in Carson City, attended by more than 100 people, was a huge success in kicking off an organized grass-roots protest and reversal of the appropriations bill.

"We're starting to come up with up with reasonable, effective ways to change this (legislation)," he said.

The objectives of the Alliance, he said, is to share information about activities taking place in the various states and regions, and determining the most appropriate and ethical actions that groups and individual citizens can take to stop the slaughter of "thousands of our wild horses."

Contact reporter Robyn Moormeister@ rmoormeister@nevadaappeal.com or 888-0564.

On the Net

For more information about the Alliance of Wild Horse Advocates, contact Lamm at wills@kbrhorse.net or go to the Alliance Web site at www.aowha.org.