Political Quotes

“Wild free-roaming horses and burros are a living symbol of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West, like in my home State of Colorado. {time} 0000 My amendment will help to prevent the Bureau of Land Management from destroying this iconic symbol using funds allocated in this bill to be used for surgical sterilization of horses. What distinguishes America's wild horses from their domestic counterparts is their natural behaviors and their complex social organizations. Surgical sterilization will take the wild out of wild horses by removing the horse's ability to utilize the reproductive organs that drive their natural behavior and changing their hormonal structure. It turns them into little more than pasture horses, destroying their complex social organizations and inalterably changing the free-roaming behaviors that Congress sought to protect when we passed the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. The way surgical sterilization of our horses is conducted under the guise of population control is simply cruel. A 2013 National Academy of Sciences study report identifies many strategies for fertility control and supports the use of PZP, or immunocontraception, which has been underutilized. Rather than using taxpayer funds and do expensive roundups and expensive operations, we have effective dart-delivered birth control that is a fraction of the cost and is more humane and preserves the wild character of the herds.…”