A JOINT MEMORIAL

SUPPORTING EFFORTS TO SAVE WILD HORSES AND REQUESTING AN APPROPRIATE INTERIM LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE TO STUDY WAYS TO FURTHER PROTECT AND PRESERVE WILD HORSES IN NEW MEXICO.

WHEREAS, New Mexico has a long association with wild horses, many of them descending from the Spanish colonial horses brought to North America five hundred years ago; and

WHEREAS, the first horse race ever recorded on American soil was held near Bernalillo in 1541; and

WHEREAS, congress enacted the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act in 1971, providing for the protection, management and control of wild horses and burros on public land, under the auspices of the United States department of the interior and department of agriculture; and

WHEREAS, the only federally recognized wild free-roaming horses in New Mexico are found west of Dulce in the Carson national forest, on La Jarita mesa near Ojo Caliente and in the bureau of land management's Bonito Atravesado wild horse area east of Socorro; and

WHEREAS, the bureau of land management showed a count of only seventy horses in New Mexico in 2000; and

WHEREAS, there are numerous bands of wild horses throughout New Mexico, not included in this count, that have been verified by local residents as wild and not strays; and

WHEREAS, because most of New Mexico's wild horses have no protection, they are being rounded up, auctioned and slaughtered at the rate of thousands per year; and

WHEREAS, these wild horses by their very nature roam across lands belonging to the state and federal governments, sovereign Indian lands and private land, which creates jurisdictional issues; and

WHEREAS, these unclaimed and unprotected horses belong to the people of New Mexico and are part of our living history;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the appropriate interim legislative committee be requested to study ways to save the wild horses of New Mexico from extinction and that the committee work in cooperation with the bureau of land management, appropriate state agencies, tribal governments and wild horse advocacy groups; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the committee report its findings to the legislature by the second session of the forty-sixth legislature; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the New Mexico legislative council, the bureau of land management, appropriate state agencies, tribal governments and wild horse advocacy groups.