meat Barons want 30,000 mustangs killed

[ensho]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/washington-plans-mass-slaughter-of-americas-mustangs-1041659.html



Washington plans mass slaughter of America's mustangs
Pressure from cattle-ranching industry could lead to more than 30,000 horses being culled


Wild mustangs, those quintessential symbols of the American West for hundreds of years, are facing their most deadly predator yet: the pen-pushing civil servants of the US Bureau of Land Management.


Growing pressure on the horses' traditional habitat has left officials contemplating a programme of mass slaughter to reduce the number of mustangs held captive in government-run pens. More than 33,000 of the animals, almost as many as the number still in the wild, have been rounded up and taken off increasingly barren public land in recent years, to reduce pressure on grazing required by the cattle-ranching industry.

But the increasing cost of keeping them fed and watered has left the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) contemplating a programme of what it calls "euthanasia" – sending healthy horses to slaughterhouses where they are likely to be turned into steak for export to France.

The proposal sparked outrage from conservationists when it was outlined in a recent Government Accountability Office report, with welfare groups accusing the BLM of holding an unnecessarily high number of mustangs in captivity in order to appease the politically powerful ranching lobby.

-snip-

The only hope for many horses may lie with Madeleine Pickens, wife of the Texan oil billionaire T Boone Pickens, who recently announced that she was trying to establish a million-acre refuge where all captive mustangs can be released. Her plan will see private land turned into a rural theme park where Americans can interact with the mustangs. Its announcement persuaded the BLM to grant captive horses a stay of execution until the New Year.

"We will take all the excess horses," Mrs Pickens explained, "and put them somewhere where families can see them and live among them, and camp out in teepees and have bonfires and look up at the stars and get to know this incredible aspect of our heritage."
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the horses "only hope" is a rich woman's caring.

no one else in america wants to save 30,000 horses?

I want them saved and I live on a horseless island.

the meat Barons have and are ruining our country in more ways then one.

[DonEBrook]

1. What a dilemma...Pickens is an oil baron and they are ruining the country too.

It's hard to know who to hate these days.

[deaniac21]

2. I had a killer Appaloosa on rye for lunch!