1,000 Wild Horses to Be Rounded Up in California: Potential Risk of Slaughter

Federal officials are set to begin a controversial roundup of approximately 1,000 wild horses from the Devil’s Garden Plateau Wild Horse Territory in the Modoc National Forest, Northern California. This move, scheduled to start on Wednesday, has sparked concerns among animal advocates about the potential fate of these horses, including the risk of them being sold for slaughter.

The U.S. Forest Service, which manages the land, has stated that the area should ideally support around 400 adult wild horses. However, the current population is nearly 4,000, prompting the need for population control measures.

Animal rights advocates have raised alarms that selling the horses could lead to them being acquired by "kill buyers" who might ship them abroad to slaughter plants for horse meat production. D.J. Schubert, a wildlife biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute, emphasized the risk of selling these horses to individuals with harmful intentions, stating, "That is not an appropriate fate for protected wild horses."

Schubert also criticized the roundup process, describing it as potentially "quite brutal" and noting that it might inadvertently increase the reproductive rate of the remaining horses. He advocated for a more humane population management strategy using immunocontraception technology to reduce reproduction rates and gradually decrease the population.

The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign) has also condemned the plan to sell some of the horses. In a statement, they accused the Forest Service of exploiting a legal loophole to sell an estimated 300 wild horses "without restriction," allowing kill buyers to purchase a truckload of 36 horses weekly until they are gone.

Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Conservation, remarked on the irony of federally protected wild horses being sold for slaughter from California, a state where horse slaughter has been banned since the 1990s.

The Forest Service argues that reducing the adult horse population will help certain ecological conditions recover while supporting herd health by reducing competition for limited resources like food, water, and habitat. They noted that younger horses under 10 are more likely to be adopted, while older horses will be put up for sale in November if not adopted.

The American Wild Horse Conservation reported that the Forest Service plans to round up about 700 younger mustangs for adoption, with approximately 300 older horses available for sale after 30 days. Although the Bureau of Land Management is prohibited from selling wild horses for slaughter, the Forest Service is not bound by the same restrictions, though they are not required to sell the horses either.

Schubert concluded, "The law allows it but doesn't require it; they have the direction to do what's right, to do what's humane."

Originally posted by NBC News