Horses
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:
Washington governor Mike
Lowry intervened with an emergency order on
January 24 while the state legislature rushed
through special legislation to allow animal res-
cuer Carlene Whitesell and sons Israel, 12,
and Benjamin, 8, of Paterson, to keep a pony
named Blaze. After postmaster Beth Allen
found the pony wandering along a railroad
track on December 30, she and the Whitesells
captured him, searched unsuccessfully for the
owner, then called the state brand inspector––
who moved to seize and auction the pony in
compliance with a state law governing the
roundup of unclaimed cattle. Authorities now
believe the pony was abandoned deliberately.
Moving to prevent repetition o f
the deaths of 122 wild horses due to drought
last summer at the White Sands Missile Range
in New Mexico, the Tadpole Cattle Company
of Bartlesville, Oklahoma on February 1
removed the first 79 of 450 horses it has con-
tracted to take off the range this year. At least
another 550 are scheduled for removal, at cost
of $1.5 million. The horses are to be put up
for adoption; those not adopted will be killed.
One Tadpole subcontractor, former BLM
staffer Bill Sharp of Albuquerque, is among
the subjects of a federal grand jury probe of
alleged irregularities in the BLM wild horse
adoption program. He told the D a l l a s
Morning News last fall that the inquiry had
forced his resignation from the BLM, but
denied any wrongdoing.
A week after Beltex slaughter-
house manager Brent Heberlein told the
Bureau of Land Mangement that the Fort
Worth plant had received nine wild horses
from someone who apparently adopted them
from the BLM, the BLM on December 22
seized the nine in an apparently unprecedented
move to enforce the oft-ignored regulation
which forbids adoptions-for-resale. Heberlein
said the BLM hadn’t responded to previous
reports of the same nature. “It’s ironic that a
slaughterhouse operator had to make the BLM
do the right thing,” said Karen Sussman of the
International Society for the Protection of
Mustangs and Burros.
Pat Houde, owner of the H Ranch
at Elm Creek, Manitoba, has erected a hay
bale fence to hide the 2,400 colts from mares
on urine collection lines that he’s fattening for
slaughter. The urine, collected from the
mares when pregnant, is used to make the
estrogen drug Premarin.
Enforcing a ban on the import of
Asian horses, Swedish officials killed on
arrival three thoroughbreds presented to
Lieutenant General Ake Sagren late last year
by Pakistani top general Abdul Waheed.
Sagren flew back to Pakistan to apologize to
Waheed in person.
