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Horse rescuers penned in by recession
Horses congregate at an animal sanctuary. At a time when horse rescue centers are dealing with increasing requests to take in animals, they're facing a decrease in funding.
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Chris Vilmer, Lifesavers' vice president
Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States
Non-profit worker James Gulledge and Rico, the horse he adopted and returned to Lifesavers.
Rico, an 8-year-old mustang, was returned to Lifesavers because his owner could no longer afford to take care of him.
Bill Radke: Now here is another effect of the recession to add to your list -- "homeless horses." There are thousands of them across the country. Their owners can't afford to care for them anymore. A lot of horse rescue centers are not in a position to help. Daryl Paranada filed this report.
Chris Vilmer: He knows that mare. They're friends.
Daryl Paranada: Chris Vilmer runs Lifesavers horse rescue center just north of Los Angeles. She boards and cares for more than 150 animals. In an office overlooking her 46-acre ranch, Vilmer says demand for her services has kicked into high gear in the past few months.
Vilmer: I'm fielding calls of people that just can't afford to pay for their horses anymore. That need to place them somewhere.
Donations are down and she can't afford to take in any more animals.
Vilmer: More horses need us, but donations are dipping.
It's the same story at the more than 500 organizations like Vilmer's across the country.
Wayne Pacelle is president of the Humane Society of the United States:
Wayne Pacelle: I think so many of these sanctuaries and rescues that help horses have always struggled to make ends meet.
And the bad economy has made things even worse.
Pacelle: All nonprofits are tightening their belts in our sector. I think we're talking, you know generally speaking, a 5 [percent] to 10 [percent], maybe 15 percent drop in revenue.
The falloff couldn't come at a worse time for many horse owners. Los Angeles resident James Gulledge recently had to return his mustang, Rico, to Lifesavers.
James Gulledge: It was just getting too expensive.
Boarding and caring for a horse can cost up to $4,000 a year. Gulledge works for a nonprofit that helps people with learning disabilities, and it's having its own problems finding money these days.
Gulledge: Being in the nonprofit sector, everything is very uncertain at this point, and so I realized I needed to prepare for worst-case scenarios for me.
The worst-case scenario could be in store for many unwanted horses. Few buyers are coming forward, even though trade magazines and Web sites advertise horses for as low as a dollar. And a handful of states are considering bills to reopen slaughterhouses. To which the horses at Lifesavers say:
Horses: Neigh!
That's horse talk for no way.
In Los Angeles, I'm Daryl Paranada for Marketplace.
Please tell me the person who did this piece is a summer intern. The cutsie ending is unprofessional. This is a serious issue.
It's as hard to sell a horse these days as it is to sell a house. Rescue facilities are overwhelmed and operating in the red from coast-to-coast. Rescue owners and volunteers are spending their own money to care for animals that live to be 30 years old. Horses are being turned loose on public and private property.
There is no one easy fix to the problem. However, closing America's horse processing plants played just as big of a part in creating the crisis as does the faultering economy.
Follow the timeline of news stories at www.AMillionHorses.com.
We round up horses from the west so that we can "save" it for cattle. We are making the problem worse by adding to holding pens when most of the wild horses are doing just fine. We would have more resources for the tame horses if we left the wild ones alone.
I listen to marketplace nearly every day and was so disappointed to hear this story this morning! Talk about a piece of fluff!
To start with, what kind of news story humanizes animal? You can not put words in an animals mouth and be taken seriously.
Emmitt makes excellent points about wild and domestic horses starving to death and suffering for years with disease and ailments because there is not where to go with them. As someone who has made my living with horses and can say I would much rather my horse have a quick death in a processing plant than a drawn out one.
As guardians of the animals we are charged with providing them not only with a humane life, but also a humane death.
A pity Daryl couldn't have dug a bit deeper.
The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service have been increasingly inundated with horses even before the economic meltdown.
The BLM because the wild horse legislation is overly restrictive, now eating the entire wild horse budget just to store the ones they have.
The Forest Service because when they closed the horse slaughter barns and the rescue agencies were full, there was no where else to dump them but the forest.
So now tame horses are left to fend for themselves and starve in the forest because slaughter was too cruel.
Unintended consequences rule when busybodies get on their "high horse".
