Call for stiffer penalties in wild horse slayings

LAS VEGAS - An advocacy group is calling for stiffer penalties for those convicted of killing wild horses and burros. The appeal comes in the wake of the slaughter of six animals in a scenic area northwest of here.

Meanwhile, federal investigators continue to search for clues in the shooting deaths of four wild horses and two burros.

The U.S. Forest Service has received several calls on a tip line, but "no solid leads at this point," Melody Stehwien, an investigator for the agency, said Friday.

Laurie Howard, a spokeswoman for the Las Vegas-based National Wild Horse Association, said the wild horses and burros were a Nevada resource that needed more protection. There are about 40,000 wild horses in the United States, half of them in Nevada.

"We're fighting for these horses to be able to remain in the wild and be managed properly," Howard said Friday. "Now we have the additional concern that there is someone out there randomly killing them.

"This is really scary," Howard said. "Mental health experts will tell you that often serial killers start out by mutilating animals, then move to humans. Anyone who would go out and injure an animal and let it suffer for days before it dies, then go and do it a second time, what else would they do? They're very deranged."

A reward fund has climbed to $7,500 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons who shot the animals as they roamed a scenic area near Mount Charleston, 40 miles northwest of here. They were shot at different times during the past month. The incidents were reported Wednesday.

Howard said the organization would push for $25,000 fines and more jail time "for malicious acts of this nature."

Under a 1971 federal law, anyone convicted of killing a wild horse or burro is subject to a fine up to $2,000 and/or jail time.

A veterinarian reported the animals did not die quick deaths, Howard said.

"Some were wounded in the back, the shoulders, basically disabling them but not killing them," Howard said. "Some had gritted their teeth. One was leaning against a tree and apparently bled to death. They were not clean shots.

"This is not the work of a true hunter," she said. "True hunters would not sanction this. They just went out like shooting fish in a barrel."

The carcasses were found in three different locations in a half-mile radius.

The discovery of the shootings came a year after a similar incident east of Reno. In that case, more than 30 horses were found shot to death. Three men from the Reno area have been ordered to stand trial in April on charges of maiming or killing another person's animal.

Five wild horses were shot to death in the Red Rock Canyon area west of Las Vegas in January 1991. Shooting sprees in rural areas around Battle Mountain and Lovelock in 1987 and 1988 left 660 wild horses dead.

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