While the Chinese government has announced a temporary ban on the trade of wild animals and the closure of all wildlife markets across the country, donkey skins continue to be exported to the country at a high rate. “Over the last decade, there’s been a large increase in demand for Ejiao within medicinal and beauty products and this has had a devastating knock-on effect for global donkey populations,” Brooke’s veterinary adviser, Laura Skippen, says. Kenya has been hit the hardest, but it is a crisis across the continent. Conditions within the legal donkey skin trade still regularly contravene the international OIE standards for humane slaughter and transport of animals. The illegal trade poses even greater welfare risks with donkeys transported for days without food or water. Methods of illegal slaughter are completely inhumane and also pose huge human health risks, with donkey carcasses not being disposed of correctly, which is a public health concern. The trade of donkey skins has been linked to the spread of disease before. In early 2019, equine influenza affected donkeys across seven West African countries, with up to 62,000 animals dying in Niger alone. The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) suggested the outbreak may have been a consequence of the unregulated global movement and trading of donkeys for their skins. Brooke has also voiced fears for the spread of zoonotic diseases such as anthrax – which can pass between animals and humans. Some countries, such as Senegal and Uganda, have responded by banning the export of donkey skins, but others, including Kenya, have kept the trade legal, meaning donkeys are being smuggled from neighbouring countries such as Ethiopia and Tanzania. All this is leading to a sharp decline in donkey populations and a catastrophic effect on communities. Source: Horsetalk
Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and a bipartisan group of lawmakers today wrote to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate appropriations panels with oversight of the Department of the Interior (DOI) to urge funding limits and additional clarity on a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) pilot program to manage wild horse populations in the West  The letter is directed to Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.), chair and ranking member respectively of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies; and Reps. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) and David Joyce (R-Ohio), the chair and ranking member respectively of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. CLICK HERE to read the letter. The House and Senate versions of the Interior-Environment appropriations bill – which are currently being reconciled – each include funding for an untested pilot project that calls for a dramatic increase in round-ups and removals. The House bill provides $6 million in additional funding for the program while the Senate bill provides $35 million, and each bill includes report language calling for a total removal of 130,000 horses over the next decade. As the authors point out, “That plan has never been presented for consideration in the authorizing committees of jurisdiction, would triple the number of horses and burros in holding, and could cost taxpayers billions.” They also note concerns that the House and Senate report language “opens the door to surgical sterilization procedures” that face opposition “by many stakeholders, including veterinarians.” The authors urge appropriators to take three steps in a final conference version of the funding bill:
In addition to Grijalva, the letter is signed by Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), who chairs the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands; and by Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.), Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), Dina Titus (D-Nev.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.). GOP Senators, Mike Lee and Mitt Romney, both of Utah, want to strike a regulation barring federal rangeland officials from euthanizing wild horses and burros.  Utah Senators, Mike Lee and Mitt Romney Lee and Romney co-signed a letter to the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies under the Committee on Appropriations. GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska chairs the subcommittee while Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico serves as the ranking member. “Western rangelands are in crisis. The current populations of wild horses and burros is devastating the land, negatively impacting other species living in the area, and prohibiting an effective multiple-use management of the land,” Lee and Romney wrote in a letter dated May 3, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forestry Service (USFS), two agencies under the Interior department, are tasked with managing increasingly overpopulated wild horses and burros on federal land. Horse and burro populations are roughly triple what experts say the land can support. “Removing this rider would greatly serve the health of both these animals and the rangeland,” Lee and Romney wrote. “Left unaddressed, the problem will only get worse, to the detriment of the environment and at the expense of the American taxpayer.” The Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 directs BLM and USFS personnel to “remove excess animals from the range so as to achieve appropriate management levels.” The BLM and USFS typically put animals up for adoption or inject them with contraception drugs to control the population. Neither strategy has proven effective at blunting the growing overpopulation. The federal agencies routinely round up hundreds of horses and burros to stick in federal corrals or place them with private ranches that are paid to care for the animals. The strategy has removed many animals from the land, but at an immense cost to taxpayers. The BLM spent $48 million, nearly 60 percent of its budget, on maintaining holding facilities in 2017. Source: The Daily Caller   |
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