Wild-horse advocates round up support

Nevada Appeal-Wild-horse advocates round up support for full protection
Former free-roaming horses will be used to carry letters to politicians
Karen Woodmansee, Appeal Staff Writer, June 28, 2005

Wild-horse advocates are saddling up to rebut what they say are
inaccurate statements from several Nevada politicians regarding the condition
of Nevada's wild horses.

The group will use former wild horses as carriers in the "Mustang
Express" to deliver hundreds of letters from the public to U.S. Sens. Harry
Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., U.S. Reps. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.,
and Jon Porter, R-Nev., urging them to reinstate full federal
protection against the sale and slaughter of wild horses.

The letters will be delivered to a demonstration at noon Wednesday in
the common area between the Capitol and the Legislative Building.

"They keep saying they're (the horses) starving to death, yet at the
same time, the BLM says they're reproducing 20 percent a year," said
Bonnie Matton, member of the Alliance of Wild Horse Advocates. "If they're
starving to death, how do they have these big numbers?"

The organization believes recent legislation proposed by Reid, Ensign,
Porter, Gibbons and U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., is inadequate to
protect the state's wild horses and wants full federal protection
restored.

The proposed "Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Sale and Adoption Act
of 2005" would reduce the minimum adoption fee from $125 to $25 per
horse, eliminate the limit of four horses per adoptive household per year
and make all excess horses available for sale.

The 34-year ban on slaughtering wild horses was repealed by Congress in
December, and since then at least 32 horses have been sold to
slaughterhouses.

Matton said the Carson City demonstration is intended to alert the
public to what the group believes are inaccurate statements by the four
politicians. She declined to specify what those statements were, saying
they would be part of a paper the group will pass out at the
demonstration.

"The public needs to know, they (officials) are always saying the
horses are starving to death, but on the whole these horses have adapted
well, even in drought conditions," Matton said. "We're doing this to get
information to the public."