Capdiamont’s Weblog

Well we saved the horses from slaughter, it is much more nicer for them to be shot, or for them to starve to death on their own. Sad.

By Laura Zuckerman Mon May 12, 8:15 PM ET

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – In the classic Hollywood western, a cowboy portrayed by John Wayne gallops across the sagebrush steppe and rocky ridges of the American West with only his horse for a companion.

What the films don’t show is the cowboy buying and hauling hay for his horse, or what happens to the horse when it is too aged, infirm or irascible to ride.

Those more mundane details are at the heart of a debate about growing cases of mistreatment of horses in the United States, at a time when hay and grain prices are skyrocketing and when options for disposing of unwanted horses are dwindling.

Just a year ago, the sale of an average horse suitable for recreation — one with neither prized bloodlines nor a performance record to heighten its status — would have fetched several thousand dollars.

Today, prices in some cases have dropped to just hundreds of dollars, largely because of higher costs for their maintenance and transport.

The situation for marginal horses — horses whose poor physical condition or disposition makes them targets for slaughter — is even worse, after a court ruling sought by animal-rights groups effectively shut down the U.S. horse slaughter industry last year.

The result is that a growing number of unwanted horses are being starved or turned loose to fend for themselves in the U.S. West, according to animal welfare advocates.

“What concerns me is a fate worse than slaughter,” said Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and an authority on the handling of livestock such as horses. “We’ve got people turning horses loose in fields, dropping horses off in the night — my worst nightmares are coming true.”

Such images have strong resonance in the West, the land of the rider on the range immortalized in art by Frederic Remington and in popular culture by actors such as the late President Ronald Reagan.

Far from Kentucky, where thoroughbreds race the Churchill Downs, owning a horse in the West is a middle-class occupation. The average horse owner rides for recreation and keeps their horse on their own land or land rented for the purpose, rather than at a commercially run barn.

Horses eat hay made from either grass or alfalfa, or a mix of both, and a modest amount of grain. Prices fluctuate, but in east central Idaho, hay prices have risen to $145 from $120 per ton a year ago, a jump of 21 percent. In northern Idaho it costs $220 per ton and as much as $300 per ton in parts of California. Feeding a horse can cost $2,000 a year or more.

TURNED LOOSE

The West is also the region where the historic practice of releasing domesticated horses into the wild — first by Spanish explorers and last by ranchers — gave rise to the herds of Mustangs, or feral horses, that still inhabit the vast public lands of Western states.

But the romantic concept of freeing a tamed horse to roam the West’s wide open spaces bears no resemblance to the reality, said Kirk Miller, livestock investigator in Idaho and Montana for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“They have no survival instinct in the wild, no clue as to what’s dangerous to eat, no knowledge of how to grub for food under the snow,” he said.

Miller and Colorado State’s Grandin are among animal experts who say the campaign led by the Humane Society of the United States to end domestic horse slaughter was well-intentioned but misguided.

Now the tens of thousands of American horses marked for slaughter are shipped to Canada and Mexico, where long, stressful journeys end in what some horse advocates say can be unduly painful deaths.

Most horses are slaughtered for human consumption, with Europe and Asia providing markets for their meat.

Some horse associations are siding with the Humane Society in its fight to end export of horses for slaughter altogether. But others are seeking to re-establish processing in the United States to broaden the outlet for unwanted horses and to ensure the animals are killed by a mechanical method approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Keith Dane, director of equine protection for the Humane Society, said for Americans to have their horses killed for their meat would be akin to sending their pet dogs to slaughter for human consumption.

But unlike its canine counterpart, a horse weighs an average of 1,000 pounds and disposal of its carcass after Humane Society-recommended euthanasia has become burdensome. Where permitted by law and where able, owners can bury carcasses on their own land or pay several hundred dollars in assorted fees to deposit the remains at a local landfill.

Those complications may be behind what state livestock officials and federal land managers in the West say is a spike in the number of horses shot dead and dumped on public lands.

Scot Dutcher, animal protection chief with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, said the abandoned horse cases officials are addressing now is a ripple compared to the wave that may come.

“If it becomes illegal to export horses for slaughter, we’ll be dealing with an equine tsunami,” he said.

Meanwhile, officials at some sale barns in Montana are asking owners of especially old or underweight horses to pay the auction house if the animals do not bring a sufficient price.

And horse rescues, nonprofit groups that rehabilitate and place unwanted and often abused horses, are reporting a rise in the number of calls they are fielding and the number of horses they turn away for lack of resources.

“I could have 500 horses here tomorrow,” said Brent Glover, head of Orphan Acres, an Idaho rescue operation that can maintain a maximum of 130 horses.

(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Eddie Evans)

Seems the high metal prices, are doing what the peace protesters couldn’t, stopping the military.

By CHELSEA J. CARTER, Associated Press Writer Tue May 13, 1:31 PM ET

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. – Hundreds of Marines were conducting a combat training mission in the Mojave Desert when an air patrol spotted something kicking up dust: A civilian pickup truck speeding across the barren landscape.

Behind the wheel was a suspected scrap metal thief who had been combing the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center for spent brass shell casings. His intrusion onto the base was the 12th time in six months that scavengers had inadvertently halted combat exercises.

Bombing ranges have become prime hunting grounds for so-called “scrappers,” who are motivated by soaring commodity prices to take greater risks in their quest for brass, copper and aluminum. The scavenging causes headaches for the military, which cannot patrol every inch of the remote bases where spent ammunition, shrapnel and unexploded ordnance are easy to find.

“This is not just some petty crime. This is dangerous business,” said Andy Chatelin, director of range management at Twentynine Palms, which at 932 square miles is the world’s largest Marine Corps base.

Illegal scavenging of military munitions has long been an issue at military bases. But as metal prices have climbed in the past two years, scavengers have become more numerous, more audacious and more sophisticated.

After he was spotted by troops last December, the pickup truck driver barreled directly at a Marine, who fired five shots at the vehicle. The driver swerved, flipped over and spilled hundreds of dollars in collected metal. He was taken by helicopter to a hospital and later charged with attempted murder.

The military loses hundreds of thousands of dollars every time it is forced to halt training. And when scrappers make off with unexploded ordnance, the public is at risk.

The Pentagon estimates up to 10 percent of all ordnance such as bombs, missiles and grenades fails to explode on impact. Some of it is left behind in training areas.

In May 2007, two suspected scrappers removed a Vietnam-era missile from the Twentynine Palms base. It later exploded in their Barstow home, killing both men and destroying the apartment. Earlier this year, two workers were injured at a Raleigh, N.C., recycling plant when ordnance suspected of coming from nearby Fort Bragg exploded.

“The expense we have to go through, not just to guard against the loss of training time, but the chance of this hazardous material getting out into the public, is enormous,” said Ronald Pearce, who oversees a training range in Yuma, Ariz., where the Marines and Navy practice aerial assaults. “You just can’t look the other way and condone it.”

No one knows how much scrap metal lies discarded on U.S. military bases because there are no records of the tonnage of exploded and unexploded ordnance. The number of illegal scavengers is also unclear because the military can only confirm a theft when there is an arrest.

After meeting with the Defense Department last month, the Institute of Scrap Recycling urged its members to stop accepting military scrap without knowing the source of the material. It also recommended the military create a system to account for the material it uses.

The Pentagon said it’s impossible to calculate the cost in interrupted training — including lost man-hours and wasted fuel — but they have begun tracking lost training time, which can climb into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

At the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, officials estimated they lost nine hours of aerial training between January and March.

To catch thieves, bases are combining technology with foot patrols and relying on help from sheriff’s deputies.

The Twentynine Palms base is using cameras to conduct video surveillance of base borders. It also has assigned Marines from its Special Reaction Team, similar to a SWAT team, to work primarily on nabbing scrappers and trespassers.

But they are often up against a savvy enemy that uses high-tech communications and GPS systems, and often works in teams.

During a recent patrol at the base, Marines hunted for scrappers in gullies, desert washes and mountain crevices where some thieves had previously hid from helicopters under camouflage netting.

Last year, Marines found an abandoned car in the desert and a dead man nearby, plus a second man who was on the brink of death from dehydration. The pair were believed to have been prowling for scrap metal. Similar deaths were reported in Yuma.

The military said most scrappers arrested in the past several years appeared to be either illegal immigrants or drug users looking for easy money. If convicted on federal charges ranging from trespassing to theft, they face up to 20 years in prison.

Because the Twentynine Palms base is so vast, officials cannot erect and maintain fences. Instead, they have posted signs warning against trespassing, only to see those signs stolen for the metal.

“We’ve seen all types,” Sgt. Timothy Warren said as he scanned the mountains with binoculars, looking for scavengers. “We’ve even arrested one guy, sent him to jail and then arrested him again a few days before he’s even gone to court.”

One of those ever increasing unintended consequences.

By JOHN K. WILEY, Associated Press Writer Mon May 12, 6:30 PM ET

REARDAN, Wash. – Mom-and-pop service stations are running into a problem as gasoline marches toward $4 a gallon: Thousands of old-fashioned pumps can’t register more than $3.99 on their spinning mechanical dials.

The pumps, throwbacks to a bygone era on the American road, are difficult and expensive to upgrade, and replacing them is often out of the question for station owners who are still just scraping by.

Many of the same pumps can only count up to $99.99 for the total sale, preventing owners of some SUVs, vans, trucks and tractor-trailers to fill their tanks all the way.

As many as 8,500 of the nation’s 170,000 service stations have old-style meters that need to be fixed — about 17,000 individual pumps, said Bob Renkes, executive vice president of the Petroleum Equipment Institute of Tulsa, Okla.

At Chip Colville’s Chevron station in this eastern Washington town, where men in the family have pumped gas since 1919, three stubby, gray pumps were installed when gas was less than $1 a gallon. They top out at $3.999, only 30 cents above the price of regular gas at Colville’s station.

“In small towns, where you don’t have the volume, there’s no way you can afford to pay for the replacements for these old pumps,” Colville said. “It’s just not economically feasible.”

The problem is worse in extremely rural areas, where “this might be the only pump in town that people can access,” said Mike Rud, director of the North Dakota Petroleum Marketers Association.

Demand for replacements has caused a months-long backlog for companies that make or rebuild the mechanical meters — and that’s just for stations that can afford the upgrade.

For many station owners — who, because of relatively small profit margin on gas, aren’t raking in money even though gas prices are marching higher — replacing the pumps altogether with electronic ones is just not an option.

“The new ones run between $10,000 and $15,000 apiece,” Colville said. “It’s an expense that’s not worth it.”

Mechanical meters can be retrofitted with higher numbers when pump prices climb another dollar. The last time that happened was in late 2005, when gas went over $3 a gallon, and owners of the older pumps installed kits that went to $3.999.

This time around, owners of the old pumps will need to install another kit that can handle prices up to $4.999, and possibly higher. Industry experts say those changes could cost as much as $650 per pump.

It costs less to change the meter to raise the maximum price from $2.99 to $3.99 a gallon, but that option raises the risk of a breakdown, said said Pete Turner, chief operating officer for APS Petroleum Equipment Inc. of Anniston, Ala.

“The computer that they’re upgrading was not designed to go any more than what it’s going now, and if you do it, they don’t last long enough,” Turner said. “They run so fast that the gears are wearing out.”

The price of fixing the meters jumped in the past three years because old pumps are being phased out for new electronic pumps and demand for refurbished meters is down, Al Eichorn, vice president of PMP Corp., which makes the mechanical meters.

The Avon, Conn., company has hired extra employees who are working overtime but still has a 14-week backlog of orders, Eichorn said.

To deal with the problem, some state regulators are allowing half-pricing — displaying the price for a half-gallon of gas, then doubling the price shown on the meter.

In North Dakota, regulators recently told service stations their mechanical pumps could use half-pricing, provided they use signs to alert costumers and find a permanent solution by April 2009.

South Dakota is preparing similar rules, officials say. And in Minnesota, rural service station owners whose pumps cannot display the right price are being told to cover up the incorrect numbers.

“The consumer can only see the gallons turning,” said Bill Walsh, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Commerce. “Then they just have to settle up with a calculator, basically.” Colville and about a dozen other service station owners in Washington have received temporary variances from the state to allow them to half-price fuel.

Stations granted variances are required to post signs telling customers that the final price they will pay is twice what the pump meter indicates.

“No, that don’t bother me. The price does,” said Jim Puls, a third-generation rancher who pulled up to Colville’s diesel pump to fill up his flatbed truck at $4.41 a gallon. “I can understand what they have to do.”

Nationally, the average price for a gallon of gasoline rose past $3.70 Sunday, while diesel was selling for an average of $4.33 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

Small stations are struggling to make a profit on gas, even as the price rises. Its small profit margin makes it less lucrative that snacks and other products the stores sell inside.

“If gas is the profit driver and you are one of those guys with the old pumps, you’re either evolving or getting out,” said Jeff Lenard, spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores, a trade group that represents about 115,000 stores that sell gasoline.

“If you’re just that kind of image of the ’50s gas station where you have a conversation, fill up and have a cup of coffee, that’s in the movies.”

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Associated Press Writer Dale Wetzel in Bismarck, N.D., contributed to this report.