Pickens Joins Forces with HSUS

I've been waiting to see what Madeleine Pickens' next move would be with regard to her rebuff by the Bureau of Land Management to set up her mustang sanctuary on some of their land. Well she is mounting an intensive grass-roots campaign via her website and she has enlisted some powerful allies, namely the Humane Society of the United States.

In a recent post, Wayne Pacelle, outlines the situation as it now stands. Pacelle and Pickens are lobbying aggressively in support of H.R. 1018, the Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act, that would ban the slaughter of wild horses and burros, reopen millions of acres to horses, implement contraceptive programs as an alternative to round-ups and restore the mustangs and wild burros to their rightful homes.

The ROAM Bill would effectively end the BLM's argument that the horses cannot roam freely on the land Pickens has in mind for her sanctuary because those acres were not part of the original package of grounds set aside for horses. It also opens the door for Pickens to implement her strategy of saving the government millions of dollars by sheltering the mustangs on this ground, for which the government would pay her a stipend. This stipend, she claims, is a fraction of what the government currently spends on controlling the size of the herd.

I am sure the entire success of this plan rests on the viability of those numbers, but I am also sure that it is hard to ignore the HSUS lobby. They are very effective in getting things done in the name of animal welfare but all of these things take time.

Still, right now, there is no new Director of the Bureau of Land Management and I have a feeling it is fairly low on the president's current agenda. Which is not to say that change won't happen--only that it won't come overnight.