By Roni Bell Sylvester

Feral or ferine: Gone wild; used to describe animals or plants that live or grow in the wild after having been domestically reared or cultivated.

Once upon a time, settlers and industry used horses to help tame the land and ready it for a growing nation in need of food, roadways, fuel, and shelter.

Although these horses were domestic, many spent their non-working days grazing on vast unfenced pastures, until they roamed beyond the call.

And like a parentless child, they eventually became feral, and procreated mightily.

Soon, savvy promoters noticed them and crafted a romantic perception around these horses, embellishing them with claims of being “rare, exotic and wild."

They created an exciting "wild" horse promotion, and ran it to town. After all, “city folk just might want to drive out to the country and take a look see.”

Selling this wild horse concept over and over, proved to be their good horse to ride.

To maintain their money making little venture, they filed lawsuits forcing the federal government into mandating perpetuity protections of these allegedly wild horses.

This odd government, non-profit partnership was structured to lay the daily care and fiduciary responsibility of these horses on taxpayers and private and public lands usage owners.

This arrangement may have worked if - the ones paying the bills and boarding these animals were allowed to exercise needed actions such as: administer birth control and castration of the young, and to cull and slaughter the infirm and aged.
But these ferine horse promoters not only paralyzed all sensible handling of these horses, they grew the problem by initiating a ban on horse slaughter.

Even though their actions can be directly attributed to the doom of thousands of domestic and feral horses, they're exempt from accountability.

They run free, while the horses they pretend to care about are imprisoned to a slow excruciating death by starvation.
Feral horse promoters make money off equine abuse, and we’re held to accommodating them.

In many areas like Wyoming, burgeoning herds of feral horses jeopardize domestic livestock that already has to compete with an overpopulation of elk, for forage and water.

In addition to paying millions of dollars to the Bureau of Land Management for processing paperwork on these horses, taxpayers also pay for the suits filed on the Department of the Interior by feral horse promoters.

Here are some solutions to stop this unfortunate chain of events:

States where feral horses reside should have the right to identify each individual who claims interest in keeping feral horses. The state would rightfully mandate that that individual then be bound as a contracted keeper of a feral horse.
This contract would hold the contracted keeper as responsible party for horses board and room, vaccinations, identification, and eminent slaughter.

Violation of said contract would result in appropriate penalties, fines and prosecution.

Can you see our landscapes littered with thousands of gaunt, moaning horses, wreathing on the ground in pain, or limping along roadsides whinnying for help?

If you truly love horses, you'll take the benevolent action of a responsible caretaker, and call your representative today. Ask him or her to activate these solutions and stop the horse slaughter ban...for the sake of a horse.

Roni Bell Sylvester
P.O. Box 155
La Salle, CO 80645
970-284-6874
February 16, 2008

Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 08:48:18 -0600

Below is a story out of Romania which shows how Unintended Consequences of well-intentioned laws can have disastrous results for horse owners, their horses, and the rural way of life.

The same type of problem is occurring in the United States, as a result of the recently passed ban on slaughtering horses. American horse owners increasingly have no legal way getting rid of their horses; if the horse is no longer of use to them or if they get caught in a financial bind and can not afford to keep them. Horse rescue groups are being swamped with such horses and are unable to take any more. The market for such horses is minimal, and the owners see only one way out, they dump the horse in a rural area. Or, they let the horse starve to death.

Once more, the "do gooders" in the cities have ignorantly imposed laws on rural residents instead of allowing us to run our own affairs.

The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance. We all need to stay informed and actively require our public officials to let us run our communities. We must not let the uninformed masses in the urban areas dictate to us how they think we should live. We must be allowed to manage our lands and our animals, without their interference. This is not just about how to care for animals, it includes their attempts to expand the Clean Water Act to any damp area and other land use restrictions.

Remember, in politics if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.

Randy Givens

Ribs showing clearly through their tattered flanks, the starving horses corralled on the edge of the eastern Romanian city of Galati are just a few days away from death. Click here to see video.

Once, they would have pulled wooden carts along the city's streets or worked in the fields, as horses have done in Romania for centuries. But now they have been abandoned by their owners, victims of a disastrous attempt to bring the country into line with European Union law by banning horse-drawn carts from main roads.

Victims of EU law: Hundreds of horses have been abandoned

Over the past month, hundreds of stray horses have been found roaming the streets and parks of Romania's major cities. Many are half-starved and barely able to walk; some have died where they were discovered, unable to get back to their feet.
Pitifully thin and bearing the scars of frequent beatings, the horses rounded up in Galati will be sent to the slaughterhouse within days unless someone comes forward to claim them, or to offer them new homes. But there is little demand for an ailing animal in a country where an estimated one million working horses have been officially labelled an anachronism.

Some owners have decided it is cheaper to dump the animals than to keep them, since the cost of feeding a horse is now about £80 a month. Many people living in the countryside earn just £50 a month.

"People only care about exploiting the animal," said Corina Daniela Grigore, who runs the Help Labus animal welfare group in Galati, home to Romania's giant Mittal steel plant.

"They think that if it is no use to them any more they can just set it loose."

She said the authorities were struggling to cope with the scale of the problem and were turning to private groups for help.
"We had a call to say there was a sick horse next to the steel plant," she said. "We had to rent a truck to pick him up and we looked after him for four days, but his legs were injured and he could not get up off the ground. We had to watch him die."
Similar stories have emerged across Romania after police started to enforce laws banning carts from the roads in order to bring Romania into line with European road safety legislation.

Romanian police, who say they were under pressure from the EU to cut accident figures, blame horse-drawn carts for 10 per cent of the country's 8,400 serious road accidents last year.

Chief Commissioner Carol Varna, head of the Romanian police traffic safety department, said that more than 1,000 carts had been seized since officers started to enforce the law.

"There are some owners who just let their horses go when they cannot afford them any more," he said.

In the past month, at least 15 horses have been found abandoned in the centre of the capital, Bucharest.

Elsewhere in the country, campaigners have been told of animals pushed into ditches and beaten to death with sticks. Television news reports showing abandoned horses dying in the snow prompted 200,000 people to sign a petition calling for a new government body to look after animals.

Calin Alexandru, a vet who is co-ordinating Bucharest's attempts to deal with the problem, said it was a struggle to find homes for the horses. "We are seeing more and more abandoned," she said. "We cannot find their owners."

In response to the outcry, the government is introducing tough fines and jail sentences for anyone found to have beaten or abandoned a horse.

But horse owners, who face fines of up to £100 and the confiscation of both their cart and their animal if they are caught on main roads, believe that it is the end of a way of life.

Vasile Adresana, 25, said he had no choice but to get rid of his horse when the police started cracking down on the roads around his home town of Roman, in the north-east of the country.

"I used to work gathering wood which I would sell, but the government introduced these laws under EU pressure. Everyone ignored them for a while, but when the police started enforcing the laws there were many roads that I was no longer allowed to travel on with my cart.

"There was not enough thought given to the consequences."

His wife Miheala, 23, said one of their neighbours had kept his horse, but only because he could no longer get rid of it legally. "The animal is all skin and bone and he beats it all the time - he can't use it for anything and he gets frustrated, but it's not the horse's fault."

John Ross, a British equestrian who arranges riding holidays in Transylvania, said that the police were too quick to blame animals for the high accident statistics.

"The ban was slipped in stealthily," he said. "There are some villages where farmers cannot legally get to their fields any more."

. Additional reporting: Carmiola Ionescu in Bucharest