NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
A2
Friday, July 26, 2019
Proposed surgery to sterilize Oregon wild horses raises hackles
By EMILY CURETON
Oregon Public Broadcasting
HINES — Wild horses
walk a fine line between icon
and unwanted. The Bureau
of Land Management is eye-
ing an Oregon experiment to
spay wild mares as a potential
model for the West.
Among the many horses,
fence panels and mounds of
manure at a Bureau of Land
Management wild horse cor-
ral, a nursing colt ducked
between his mother’s legs.
The mare swung around
him to watch a tractor lift hay
bales the size of cars. Like
more than 11,000 wild horses
last year, she was removed
from public rangeland. She
gave birth at this BLM cor-
ral in Eastern Oregon, and the
collar around her neck means
it could be her last foal —
she’d been tagged to undergo
surgical sterilization.
The procedure hasn’t been
widely performed on wild
horses before, but after years
of opposition, the BLM hopes
to operate on test mares as
soon as next month.
The National Academy of
Sciences looked at the practice
and issued a report in 2013,
saying it didn’t recommend
spay surgery due to risks of
infection and the difficulty
of providing follow-up care.
When the BLM published its
plan to move ahead with ova-
riectomy via colpotomy, ani-
OPB Photo/Emily Cureton
A nursing colt ducks between his mother’s legs at a BLM corral in Hines.
mal rights groups sued. Again
it triggered a strong reaction,
with more than 11,300 public
comments pouring into the
agency, according to a BLM
spokeswoman.
The BLM has long been
under pressure to bring down
horse herd numbers across 10
Western states without resort-
ing to slaughter. Relatively
few of the horses it rounds
up are adopted or sold —
just a few thousand last year,
compared to the 48,000 wild
horses kept in corrals or pri-
vate facilities and leased pas-
tures. The agency spends $50
million a year to run that hold-
ing system. The horses left on
public rangeland share it with
millions of privately owned
cattle, which are authorized to
graze under BLM permits.
“It’s a balancing act
between multiple uses, in
terms of identifying how
many horses can this area
sustain, without negatively
impacting wildlife habitat,
recreation and livestock graz-
ing opportunities,” BLM wild
horse specialist Rob Sharp
said.
The BLM claims that wild
horse herds double every four
years without intervention.
Federal law calls the horses
Forecast for Pendleton Area
TODAY
SATURDAY
Partly sunny and
hot
Mostly sunny
97° 64°
88° 55°
SUNDAY
MONDAY
Sunny and
pleasant
TUESDAY
Pleasant with
plenty of sun
Pleasant with
plenty of sunshine
PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
89° 57°
89° 53°
92° 61°
HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
101° 67°
91° 57°
92° 60°
92° 56°
96° 64°
OREGON FORECAST
Olympia
72/60
93/60
98/60
Longview
Kennewick Walla Walla
97/67
Lewiston
83/61
101/66
Astoria
71/60
Pullman
Yakima 98/65
84/60
99/66
Portland
Hermiston
90/62
The Dalles 101/67
Salem
Corvallis
86/56
Yesterday
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Records
La Grande
93/59
PRECIPITATION
John Day
Eugene
Bend
91/57
93/52
95/56
Ontario
97/67
Caldwell
Burns
90°
47°
90°
60°
109° (1928) 45° (1953)
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Last year to date
Normal year to date
Albany
89/56
Boardman
Pendleton
Medford
97/62
0.00"
0.01"
0.18"
4.56"
5.10"
5.88"
WINDS (in mph)
93/65
92/53
0.00"
0.04"
0.26"
9.61"
6.49"
7.84"
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Pendleton 90/52
89/59
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Last year to date
Normal year to date
HERMISTON
Enterprise
97/64
95/67
92°
49°
90°
60°
114° (1928) 42° (1897)
PRECIPITATION
Moses
Lake
86/60
Aberdeen
92/61
95/67
Tacoma
Today
Sat.
WSW 4-8
WNW 6-12
WSW 10-20
W 8-16
SUN AND MOON
Klamath Falls
90/51
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2019
Sunrise today
Sunset tonight
Moonrise today
Moonset today
5:31 a.m.
8:32 p.m.
12:53 a.m.
3:17 p.m.
New
First
Full
Last
July 31
Aug 7
Aug 15
Aug 23
NATIONAL EXTREMES
Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states)
High 109° in Needles, Calif. Low 25° in Stanley, Idaho
By GARY WARNER
Bend Bulletin
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
LOW
Yesterday
Normals
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Spokane
Wenatchee
84/64
GOP: Recall
needed because
Brown’s policies
went against ballot
initiatives passed
by voters
PENDLETON
TEMP.
NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY
SALEM — Some promi-
nent Oregon Republicans say
their party’s effort to recall
Gov. Kate Brown isn’t a good
use of limited energy, time
and money.
“I am only speaking
for myself, but I have mis-
givings about the peti-
tion drive,” said Deschutes
County Republican chair
Paul deWitt. “Kate Brown
deserves to be recalled, but
we also need to elect Repub-
licans in 2020.”
DeWitt said the county
party would circulate peti-
tions for the recall, launched
July 15 by Oregon Republican
Party chair Bill Currier. “The
petition will be on our table at
the county fair,” deWitt said.
“We’ll do our part.”
But deWitt is among a
mostly quiet group of critics
within the party who say the
recall will undercut efforts to
win seats in the Legislature
and mount a strong run for
three statewide offices on the
ballot in 2020.
Most of the critics won’t
speak on the record out of
concern of seeming disloyal
to an official state party effort.
But some think the stakes are
too high to remain quiet.
“We need a strategy, and
a recall isn’t it,” said Julie
Parrish, a former Republi-
can state representative from
West Linn and longtime polit-
ical consultant.
Currier said July 15 the
recall was needed because
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70s
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GOP to channel that energy.
“If you ask people in the
grassroots to do something,
there should be a solid path to
success,” Parrish said. “I don’t
see it. Unless they are going
to spend a boatload of money,
anger in the grassroots isn’t
going to get you there. You
just end up disappointing
people.”
Rather than recall Brown,
GOP critics say the party
should focus on electing
Republicans to the Legisla-
ture, flipping swing districts
won by Democrats last year.
A second priority is to try
to elect Republicans as sec-
retary of state, treasurer and
attorney general — all on the
2020 ballot.
Critics say there are too
many ways for the recall effort
to turn into a deflating failure.
The GOP recall already
finds itself competing with a
different Brown recall started
by Michael Cross, a political
activist from Salem.
“It’s confusing,” deWitt
said. “People will be say-
ing, ‘I already signed a recall
petition.’”
If Republicans can’t reach
the signature requirement
in time, the GOP will look
weak. Forcing a recall elec-
tion and then having voters
retain Brown in office would
also look bad.
Even if the Republican
recall gets what it wants —
a vote to remove Brown —
the immediate result would
be to replace her with Trea-
surer Tobias Read, another
Democrat. Read would hold
the office until a special elec-
tion in November 2020 to fill
the final two years of Brown’s
term.
“We do all of this and Read
is governor — is that so much
better?” deWitt said. “From
what I see, he supports the
same issues as Brown.”
high
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Brown’s policies went against
ballot initiatives passed by
voters. He also said she over-
stepped her constitutional
authority by saying she could
use an executive order to insti-
tute policy the Legislature had
failed to approve.
“The people of Oregon
deserve and expect a governor
that honors the will of the vot-
ers and works for the good of
all citizens,” Currier said.
Recall proponents have
until Oct. 14 to submit just
over 280,000 valid signa-
tures to the Oregon Secre-
tary of State’s Office in order
to force a recall election late
this year.
Buoyed by a 2018 election
that returned Brown to office
and enlarged their majorities
in the Legislature, Democrats
passed statewide rent con-
trol, taxes to support educa-
tion and health care and driv-
er’s licenses for unauthorized
immigrants.
Bills on a carbon cap, guns
and vaccines were scrapped
as the price Brown and Dem-
ocrats were willing to pay to
end two Senate Republican
walkouts that blocked hun-
dreds of other bills.
Brown has declined com-
ment on the recall effort.
Democratic supporters say
voters endorsed her agenda by
returning her to the governor-
ship in November.
“First, Republicans held
the legislative process hos-
tage; now they want to undo
the entire election,” said
Thomas Wheatley, a longtime
Brown political adviser.
Republicans say large ral-
lies at the Capitol this year
against the carbon cap, gun
control and vaccination bills
show a groundswell of disen-
chantment with Brown’s pol-
icy positions.
Parrish agrees but says the
recall is the wrong way for the
CORRECTION: The Umatilla County Fair guide published Wednesday had the
incorrect date for the Umatilla County Fair parade. The parade is Saturday, Aug. 3.
Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.
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animal the owners don’t put a
lot of value on,” Turner said.
At her clinic, several
spayed mares are used as
“stimulus animals” to collect
semen from stallions.
“If you have a mare that
has no ovaries, she never has
high progesterone, so she’s
always receptive to the stal-
lion, pretty much 24/7, 365,”
Turner said.
Mares typically won’t
breed most of the year. One of
the concerns raised by oppo-
nents of spaying wild horses
is how a major change to their
reproductive organs could
alter how the horses interact
with each other.
“They’re not livestock.
They’re a specially protected
species. They’re the only
other animal protected under
federal law besides the bald
eagle,” said Suzanne Roy of
the American Wild Horse
Campaign, a group that has
sued to block the spay study.
She called the surgery “a
completely inappropriate pro-
cedure” and “invasive and
inhumane,” but she agrees the
herds need to be managed.
Roy supports a birth control
vaccine called PZP — a shot
that costs more than perma-
nent surgery. It also requires
getting close enough to dart
mares with annual boosters.
Because of that, the BLM
has said PZP is not not a via-
ble fertility-control option for
most wild horse herds.
Some Oregon Republicans
question effort to recall governor
ALMANAC
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Seattle
“living symbols of the his-
toric and pioneer spirit of the
West,” but it limits where they
can roam to areas identified
50 years ago. Water sources
in those areas have run dry
before. Sharp said, in Eastern
Oregon, the BLM has trucked
thousands of gallons a day to
keep wild horses from dying
or trespassing onto private
land in search of water.
“The general public does
not stand to see starving and
dying horses on the range,”
Sharp said. “Unfortunately,
I think that will be the
impetus for major change in
this program.”
The BLM’s wild horse and
burro program is eyeing the
Oregon spay experiment as a
model for the West. Stallions
have been castrated before,
but Sharp said that’s not effec-
tive for long-term population
control, since one stud can get
many mares pregnant.
The spay procedure is
increasingly outdated among
domestic horse veterinari-
ans, said Dr. Regina Turner,
head of the Equine Repro-
duction & Behavior Service
at the University of Penn-
sylvania. She’s not affiliated
with the BLM or any advo-
cacy groups commenting on
the spay study. She last per-
formed ovariectomy via col-
potomy — the kind of pro-
cedure the BLM is planning
— in the 1990s.
“It can be done humanely,
with minimal stress to the
mare, if it’s done with proper
pain control, and done effi-
ciently and quickly by some-
one who’s experienced at the
procedure,” Turner said. “But,
I’ll be honest, it would not be
my first choice,” she added.
The procedure involves a
surgeon making an incision
and using a chain to crush a
mare’s ovaries internally by
feel, without help from the
tiny cameras Turner deploys
in her practice. Spaying isn’t
used as a birth control method
for domestic horses, and is
more often performed to alter
behavior “usually if there is an
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