Big Government Wastes Your Money Trying to Reduce Number of Wild Horses

Wild horses are an iconic symbol of the West. (Indians had hunted horses to extinction in the Western Hemisphere, but Europeans reintroduced them.) Naturally, Washington doesn’t want there to be too many of them. The Department of Interior ties this in with the apparent central purpose of the federal government — to waste our money:

Federal records show that HSUS [Humane Society of the United States] was awarded $715,000 last year from the federal government. Most of that money came from the Department of Justice, with another chunk of change coming from the Department of the Interior. …

For the Department of the Interior, moneys to HSUS included … $65,000 for testing the contraceptive drug PZP [porcine zona pellucida] on feral horses in northwest Arizona. HSUS wants the costly PZP to be used broadly to control wildlife populations, as an alternative to hunting–and taxpayers would foot the bill.

Ironically, Bureau of Land Management officials think PZP is a waste of time. According to a Government Accountability Office report released last month, “Due to the costs, limited duration of effectiveness, and the difficulty of accessing most areas, administering the treatments on a large scale is not currently cost-effective for maintaining most wild horse populations at sustainable levels, according to agency officials.”

Maybe we should strew the prairies with horse condoms. It wouldn’t be more idiotic than most government programs.

Speaking of idiotic,

moneys to HSUS included $99,000 for “training on new penal code to improve enforcement of wildlife laws in Vietnam” …

About 58,200 Americans died fighting the communists who now run Vietnam.

It’s not as if HSUS needs the money:

HSUS has $50 million sitting in offshore Caribbean accounts, according to its latest tax return, and has enough money to pay 44 people over $100,000 a year in compensation. It spent $70 million on fundraising last year—couldn’t HSUS cut back on the junk mail solicitations to help care for some dogs?

Presumably they also spend some money lobbying bureaucrats in Washington. But that is more investment than spending, since it comes back manyfold.

On a tip from Dragon’s Lair.