A Penny Saved is A Penny Earned
By Trent LoosI will start by telling you that I love horses. I own and provide daily care for 15 of them. I share that with you only as a means of letting you know that I don’t want you to misconstrue what I about to say into believing that I think we have no need for horses. In fact, every single day that I am home, I spend some amount of time in the saddle.
You can find a major newspaper in this country every day that has written a story about the romantic notion of wild horses in the west. Animal rights zealots seem to have a haven for fundraising simply by mentioning the sentimental value of a wild horse. The month of November provided me a detailed look at the history of the wild horse.
I was fortunate to attend the Nevada Cattlemen’s Convention in Fallon this month. I met Dave Mathis, a retired professor from University of Nevada, Reno. He was on the original committee back in 1971 to determine what to do with the excess of horses that had accumulated in the west. First we need to correct the common myth that these horses are native and the last of millions that used to roam the North American continent. In fact, they are all horses or burros that were once domesticated and were turned loose or escaped.
From these committee meetings came the Adopt a Horse or Burro Act. Ironically, the original intent was to find the most cost effective manner in which to remove these animals from the United States government’s feed bill. The result is possibly the most costly method that could have been created.
The Department of Interior has had a $30 million budget for dealing with wild horses and burros. Today, there are just short of 38,000 wild animals roaming Federal Lands. The state of Nevada is home to more than half of them yet receives about 15% of the budget to provide for the critters. So then where does the money go?
Last year, $11.6 million dollars was spent on the Adopt a horse program. Americans adopted 6,165 horses. The average person paid $185 to adopt their new equine. Now let’s do some cowboy arithmetic. Over one third of the total Wild Horse budget was spent adopting 6,165 horses which means the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) spent nearly $2000 per horse to find it a new owner. This excessive cost has lead some to believe that it is time to end the Adopt a Horse program. A few years ago a horse contraceptive program was investigated and has been deemed effective, but too little too late. This is being administrated today in some herds but will not address the immediate problem.
So what is the answer? Before last week, the answer by authorities looked to be what the BLM calls “Long term holding facilities”. These facilities are where horses that were not adopted go to live out the rest of their lives. These are located in Kansas and Oklahoma and the BLM is now entering long-term contracts with landowners. The contracts pay the landowners $1.65 to $1.90 per day to house the horses. There are currently about 15,000+ horses in these facilities. The BLM reports a cost of $465 per year per animal to warehouse these otherwise unwanted hay burners.
I am sure I don’t need to tell you the thoughts of cattlemen in the area who have been outbid and lost good grass for beef production so it can be used to warehouse horses. The horses have now been elevated to a higher nutritional plane and thus will live longer, healthier lives and cost taxpayers even more money.
Last week, Montana Senator Conrad Burns attached a provision to an Appropriations bill that stated animals “shall be made available for sale without limitations.” This would, for the first time, allow the BLM to sell to the highest bidder a horse that had been up for adoption three times or is ten years old. The anti-horse slaughter advocates are up in arms. They undoubtedly know this will lead to wild horses ending up in slaughter facilities. If a horse is ten years old and unwanted, the best use for this resource is to find somebody that will actually have a purpose for him rather than warehouse the critter like an old sweater in moth balls for twenty years.
I am sure it is being said that in the scope of $2 trillion United States Government budget, $30 million seems insignificant. I can’t argue that except to say it is no wonder we have trillion dollar budgets and ever-growing deficits with this type of fiscal mismanagement. Maybe this would be a good time for our government officials to remember a famous saying from one of our founders, Benjamin Franklin who professed, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
