Groups representing animals, ranchers reach wild horse pact

RENO, Nev. — Animal welfare groups have reached a milestone agreement with ranching interests they say would save wild mustangs from slaughter but the compromise has opened a nasty split among horse protection advocates.

The Humane Society of the United States and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals say their proposal backed by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation would eliminate the threat of slaughter for thousands of free-roaming horses primarily by spending millions of dollars on expanding fertility controls on the range.

As part of the deal presented to the Bureau of Land Management, they’re willing to drop long-held opposition to controversial roundups of the horses — fighting words for the largest mustang advocacy groups that have been in court for years defending the animals’ ability to forage with cattle and sheep in 10 Western states.

The unprecedented alliance unveiled this week has ignited fierce opposition from the American Wild Horse Campaign and Friends of Animals, which currently is leading a legal challenge to Forest Service efforts that could for the first time make mustangs recently rounded up along the California-Nevada border available for purchase for slaughter.

“The groups promoting this plan have been co-opted into supporting the livestock industry’s agenda for wild horses by the BLM’s vague promise to utilize undefined ‘population growth suppression’ methods,” including surgical sterilization, the Campaign said. “By mandating the removal of a startling 15,000 to 20,000 wild horses a year, the plan will result in the reduction of America’s wild herds to extinction levels.”

“It’s a sellout,” added Laura Leigh, who heads the Nevada-based Wild Horse Education.

Nancy Perry, ASPCA’s senior vice president, acknowledges they’re in “frightening territory” with a “bold approach that no one has taken so far.”

“Not every advocate wants to engage with or work with those that they have been in battle with over the years,” she told The Associated Press. “But BLM’s current polices are ineffective. If they continue on the road they’re on now, it means disaster.”

In addition to the cattlemen’s powerful lobbying arm, the package has the support of the Society for Range Management, Utah’s governor and rural county commissions in Utah and Nevada.