Rules for catching wild horses

by ppeggy | January 23, 2008 at 08:46 am

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There are wild horses roaming the Alberta landscape. Not many, but some. Why anyone wants to round them up, use them for dogfood, break them down at rodeos or shoot them for sport beats me. The Alberta government, in its profound wisdom, has decided to put some limitations on how they are caught. No guns; no snares; no trucks hounding them into dead-ends. Other than that, just get yourself a permit and away you go. Why is it that no one seems to want to just let these creatures be? Is it like that in other parts of the world?

Published: Wednesday, January 23, 2008

In response to concerns that weapons, snares and even vehicles were being used to round up wild horses, the province has rewritten rules around their capture.

The new regulation specifies these methods can't be used to chase down horses, said Dave Ealey, a spokesman for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development. Instead, they must be humanely corralled on designated land.

"It wasn't something that we advocated or wanted to happen, but it wasn't written into the regulation to deny that from happening," Ealey said.

"This removes all doubt."

The Alberta government, however, stopped short of eliminating its sanctioned roundup. This omission left Bob Henderson, president of the Wild Horses of Alberta Society, shaking his head.

Henderson, a retired veteran of the Calgary Police Service, continues to lobby for a moratorium, contending too few horses remain. He also wants to province to prohibit private landowners from shooting the animals when they stray onto their land.

"We believe the horse regulations are still inadequate for protection," Henderson said...more...