Kitty Block,
AlterNet.org
March 2018
Though the final budget contains harmful provisions, it also has some big wins for wolves, bears, horses and other animals.
There’s great news for animals in the final 2018 budget bill that
President Trump signed into law last week. The bottom line is this: the
budget bill includes language to restrict funds from being used to harm
horses and to address a purge of key animal enforcement records, it
increases federal resources to enforce significant animal protection laws,
and it omits riders that would have been devastating for wildlife.
The Humane Society Legislative Fund, the government affairs affiliate of the
Humane Society of the United States, worked with animal protection champions
in both chambers and with other stakeholders to secure victories on a number
of fronts, including these key outcomes:
1. Maintaining the ban on horse slaughter.
The bill includes language to prohibit government spending on horse
slaughter inspections, which effectively bans horse slaughter in the United
States for human consumption. This language has been in place in every
year’s budget but one since 2005, but was rejected in the House committee
last summer.
2. Preventing slaughter of wild horses and burros.
The bill includes language to prevent the Bureau of Land Management and its
contractors from sending wild horses and burros to slaughter, or from
killing excess healthy horses and burros. A provision allowing wild horses
who are removed from public lands to be transferred to federal, state, or
local governments to serve as workhorses makes clear that these horses
cannot be destroyed for human consumption, or euthanized except upon the
recommendation of a licensed veterinarian in cases of severe injury,
illness, or advanced age. The explanatory statement accompanying the bill
criticizes the Department of Interior and directs it to provide, within 30
days, a comprehensive, science-based proposal that “has the goal of reducing
costs while improving the health and welfare of wild horses and burros, and
the range.”
3. Preserving protections for carnivores on National Park Service lands in
Alaska.
The omnibus bill does not authorize inhumane and scientifically unjustified
trophy hunting methods on National Preserves in Alaska. This is a major
victory because in February 2017 Congress enacted a rollback of a U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service rule prohibiting such practices—including luring
grizzly bears with bait to shoot them at point-blank range, and killing
wolf, black bear, and coyote mothers and their young at their dens—on 76
million acres of National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska, and the House Interior
Appropriations bill contained a rider to undo a similar National Park
Service rule barring such cruel trophy hunting methods.
4. Preserving ESA protections for Great Lakes wolves.
The omnibus omits harmful language—present in both the House and Senate
Interior Appropriations bills—directing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
to remove Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in the western
Great Lakes states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan) and Wyoming, and
barring judicial review of such action.
5. Pushing USDA to fix its data purge.
Following bipartisan expressions of outrage, the package directs the U.S.
Department of Agriculture to restore inspection reports and enforcement
records for horse shows, puppy mills, roadside zoos, laboratories, and other
facilities, which were purged from the agency’s website in February 2017.
6. Providing needed funding.
The bill boosts funds for some key animal programs, such as $2 million
more for USDA enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, $1.5 million more in
grants for veterinary student loan repayment, and $5 million more to train
and provide therapeutic service dogs for veterans and soldiers. It holds the
line against cuts in many other important accounts affecting animals, such
as the Marine Mammal Commission and development of alternatives to live
animal testing.
The good news notwithstanding, the omnibus package is not a victory across
the board for animals. There are harmful provisions in it, too, including
one that exempts factory farms (also known as CAFOs or concentrated animal
feeding operations) from reporting toxic air emissions, and another that
maintains a prohibition on the Environmental Protection Agency regulating
toxic lead content in ammunition and fishing tackle, which poisons and kills
wildlife.
This article was originally published by A Humane Nation. Reprinted with permission.
Kitty Block is the president of Humane Society International and the acting president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States.
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