HORSES
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals is to rule soon on whether the
National Park Service can remove about 20
feral horses from the Ozark National Scenic
Riverways park, 150 miles southwest of St.
Louis, Missouri. The horses are feral
descendents of a herd released during the
Great Depression. A three-judge panel is to
decide whether they are protected by the
same laws as western mustangs––whose
own protection is currently in dispute.
More than 60,000 Americans
needed emergency treatment for head
injuries suffered while riding horses in
1991, reports the Johns Hopkins Injury
Prevention Center. Children under 15 were
the most frequent victims. The center rec-
ommends that riders wear helmets.
The estimated 250 to 400 wild
horses in the Rocky Mountain foothills of
Alberta are at risk of extermination by
horsemeat suppliers, provincial environ-
ment minister Brian Evans has acknowl-
edged, pledging to have “a good hard look”
at the situation.
Police in Hampshire, England,
are questioning an 18-year-old in connec-
tion with sexual assaults and knifings of at
least 30 horses during the past 19 months.
A string of 200 similar attacks in Sweden
during the past few years remains unsolved.
The USDA “caved in to industry
pressure “ in relaxing inspection rules for
Tennessee walking horses, the American
Horse Protection Association charges. The
relaxation came in the next-to-last week of
the George Bush administration. The
USDA also reassigned Dr. Joan Arnoldi,
DVM, who as former head of the Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service, tried
to stringently apply the often circumvented
Horse Protection Act.
A 4,300-year-old clay horse
recently found in Syria is the earliest evi-
dence yet of horse use in the Middle East.
