Ed Whitfield: “I certainly admire and respect the gentlemen who are offering this amendment and making arguments in favor of it. I…”

“I certainly admire and respect the gentlemen who are offering this amendment and making arguments in favor of it. I agree, however, with the gentleman from West Virginia that it has very negligible fiscal impact on the Federal budget. As has been stated, there are less than 20,000 wild mustangs and burros left on Federal lands in the West. And if they are concerned about the fiscal impact of not slaughtering a few horses, I would say there are over 214 million acres of Federal lands in the West that the ranchers and corporations that are leasing that land are paying the Federal Government less than 10 cents per acre per year. Now, that is much less being paid than what my farmers that I represent in Kentucky are paying for leased land. I recognize that this land in the West, much of it is arid, it is not really that rich. But there are lots of people who would be willing to lease land for less than 10 cents per acre. And I think we at the Federal level have a responsibility to protect these wild mustangs and burros; and as the gentleman before me said, at one time the population was around 2 million, now it is around 20,000 head, and we have an obligation to protect these animals. I want to commend the gentleman from West Virginia for offering this bill, H.R. 249, to restore the Federal protections of these animals that have been in effect since 1971.”