The Burns Wild Horse Slaughter Rider -
How Did This Happen?
During the Thanksgiving week of 2004, Senator Burns (R-MT) surreptitiously
added Rider #142 to the Federal Appropriations bill without public knowledge
or comment. With the upcoming holiday recess, the majority of Senators and
Representatives did not scrutinize the nearly 4,000-page document before
voting for its passage. This was the same bill that contained another rider
that would have allowed your Congressperson to have access to your IRS
records. This provision was caught in the Senate version of the bill and
deleted.
How This Rider (now law) Affects America’s Wild Horses:
The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act protected the diminishing
population of wild horses and burros from extermination on public lands
(Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands). It was intended that
wild horses should never have to endure the terrible conditions in which
they were transported to slaughter so a provision was made to allow for
euthanasia in the fields. This Act passed in 1971without one dissenting
vote and received the largest outpouring of mail in Congress – second only
to the Viet Nam war. The rider amends this Act as follows:
- Allows for any wild horse over the age of ten to be sold at auction
without stipulations.
- Allows any horse that fails three adoptions to be sold without
stipulations (for slaughter).
The important fact to remember is that BLM does not offer for adoption any
animal over the age of five so these poor horses being held in sanctuaries
never ever had an opportunity to be adopted into good homes in the first
place.
The second important fact to remember is that BLM has never had an effective
marketing program for its Adopt-A-Horse/Burro program, although they had
been encouraged to do so for years.
New Legislation to Reverse the Burns Amendment has Recently Been Sponsored
Representatives Rahall (D-WV) and Whitfield (R-KY) on the House Resources
Committee have sponsored legislation known as HR-297 to reverse the Burns Amendment. It
still is in Committee and must be heard before it goes to the floor of the
Congress.
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