The U.S. House Thursday voted to prevent the government from selling off for slaughter any wild horses and burros that roam public lands in the West.
The vote was 277-to-137. It would restore a 1971 law, preventing the Bureau of Land Management from selling horses or burros for commercial processing.
The protection was removed in 2004, when former Republican Senator Conrad Burns, of Montana, inserted a measure in a spending bill allowing the sales.
Nevada is home to about 60 percent of the fewer than 30-thousand mustangs that officials say still range across 10 Western states.
Horse protection advocates say the American icons have been ending up on the plates of diners in France and Japan.
The House voted last year and in 2005 to end the sales. The Senate never took up the issue.
The BLM halted sales of wild horses and burros in 2005, after 41 of the horses it sold were killed. Sales resumed later, under tougher restrictions against selling animals for slaughter.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
