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US Forest Service to Capture 400 Arizona
Wild Horses for Auction
National Animal Protection Groups Move to Stop
Removal
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Four, including a foal, of the estimated 400 wild horses residing in
the Heber Wild Horse Territory
of the Apache-Sitgreaves National
Forest in
Arizona. The US Forest Service is attempting to
remove them from their native habitat.
(photo
Pamela Reed 08/2005)
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PHOENIX (Aug. 31, 2005)—We have learned that the US Forest Service
plans to remove 400 wild Arizona horses from the Apache-Sitgreaves
National Forest in Eastern Arizona and sell them at auction in Sun Valley,
near Holbrook, Ariz. Most or all of the 400 horses, including mares and
foals, will go to slaughter. The agency intends to accept a final bid on
gathering these horses from their territory no later than Sept. 8, 2005.
Its officials will then authorize the contractor to begin rounding up or
trapping the horses as soon as 10 days after the contract is awarded.
The horses currently live in the protected Heber Wild Horse Territory, a
14,000-acre habitat within the Apache-Sitgreaves Forest that was
designated under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. Documents
provided to In Defense of Animals (IDA) by the Forest Service claim the
agency removed the last horses from the Heber Territory in 1993 and that
all 400 horses it currently plans to capture are “trespass” horses who
came from the Apache reservation during the Rodeo-Chediski fire in summer
2002.
The Forest Service asserts that because the horses are not native, it may
impound and sell them at auction. The agency says it is exempt from the
requirements of overseeing an Environmental Impact Study, issuing a
decision memo and submitting the removal plan for public comment. Yet
based upon our investigation to date, most are unbranded free-roaming
horses in a protected territory—and therefore covered under the 1971 law.
In a letter to IDA, a Forest Service official wrote that the
horses are being removed because they interfere with efforts to
reestablish vegetation in the area damaged by the Rodeo-Chediski fire.
However, the same letter indicated tall grasses from the reseeding project
had lured the horses, and local residents report the grasses have never
before been so tall and lush. We suspect the real motivation for the
horses’ removal originates from a June 2005 report from the Senate
Appropriations Committee to Congress, instructing Arizona and other
western states to use additional public land for grazing contracts.
We have retained an attorney and have asked the Forest Service to stop the
removal of the horses—or we will seek court intervention.
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Contact:
Chris Heyde, Animal Welfare Institute—703-836-4300
Dr. Elliot Katz, In Defense of
Animals—415-388-9641
Karen Sussman, International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and
Wild Burros—605-964-6866
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