One of 239 Ecological Illiterates in the U.S. House

Submitted by Ted Williams on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 07:07.

Here is a troubling letter from of 239 ecological illiterates in the U.S. House

about a dreadful, anti-native-wildlife bill that needs to die.

 

Knowing of your interest in ensuring that animals are treated
humanely, I wanted to update you on legislation that the House of
Representatives recently passed with my support to protect wild
horses on public lands.  I appreciate your attention to this matter.

As you may know, in the 1970s, Congress passed legislation to set
aside about 53 million acres of rangeland to be populated by wild
horses and burros.  Most of the land set aside was federal land in
the western United States that was managed by the Interior
Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and some of it was
managed by the Agriculture Department's Forest
Service.  Unfortunately, over the years the amount of land set aside
diminished to about 34 million acres.  As a result, BLM is now
holding more than 30,000 wild horses in captivity.



On July 17, 2009, the House of Representatives considered H.R. 1018,
the Restore Our American Mustangs Act, with my support.  H.R. 1018
would work to address this matter by setting aside 19 million
additional acres as rangeland for wild horses and burros.  In
addition, this legislation would establish new wild horse population
monitoring and control procedures.  Finally, H.R. 1018 would protect
the horse and burro populations by prohibiting them from being
slaughtered for commercial use.



You may be pleased to learn that the House of Representatives passed
H.R. 1018 by a vote of 239 to 185, with my support.  In order for it
to become law, the Senate must pass it and the President must sign
it.  During any future debates of this matter, you can rest assured
that I will continue to work to ensure that animals are treated as
humane as possible.



Again, thank you for your interest in this matter.  Please feel free
to call, write or email me on any issue that concerns you.



Sincerely,

Paul E. Kanjorski
Member of Congress

 

 

Below is my report from Audubon on the invasive, exotic feral equids that are draining tax dollars and destroying fish and wildlife habiatat:

 

Horse Sense

 

To Americans, the image of mustangs pounding across the range is a potent symbol of the Wild West. But it's a myth that harms wildlife and wreaks ecological havoc.

 

By Ted Williams

 

We know about them from magazines and coffee-table books: "wild horses"-a.k.a. "mustangs"-cultural icons, symbols of freedom and the American pioneering spirit. Usually they stand on their hind legs, pawing the gaudy sky, eyes flashing, nostrils flared and venting steam. Or they gallop across purple sage, long tails and manes streaming in the desert wind. Always they are in fine flesh. In the pictures.

 

I love horses. I grew up with them, trained them, competed in horse shows, rode to hounds in Old Chatham, New York. All my early girlfriends who hung around our barn whether I was there or not could accurately draw horses, mostly "wild" ones. Mobilized by "Wild Horse Annie"-a Nevada ranch wife named Velma Johnston-they and other grade-schoolers across America wrote impassioned letters to senators and congressmen, demanding that "wild horses" be preserved other than in dog food cans. The upshot was the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971, which placed all unrestrained, unclaimed equids (horses and burros) under government care and made it a felony to kill, capture, sell, or even annoy one.

 

Under this law the departments of Agriculture and Interior must manage free-roaming equids in such fashion as "to achieve and maintain a thriving natural ecological balance on the public lands." That mission is impossible for two reasons. First, the feds don't begin to have the capacity for nonlethal feral-equid management. Second, horses or burros cannot exist anywhere in North America in "natural ecological balance." They are aliens. The argument that equids are "native" to this continent because their progenitors were present during the Pleistocene -a mantra from the wild-horse lobby-makes as much sense as claiming that elephants are native because woolly mammoths were here during the same period.

 

Roughly 10,000 years after the extinction of North American horses, Spanish explorers introduced a larger domesticated species. But the continent's plant communities, having coevolved with ungulates that had cloven hooves and lacked upper teeth, were ill-equipped to handle solid hooves and meshing incisors. Result: ecological havoc.

 

Another mantra from the wild-horse lobby is that the "mustangs" extant in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming are closely related to animals unleashed by the conquistadores. They are not; they are mongrels-a genetic morass of breeds issuing mostly from recently escaped or discarded livestock.

 

"Revisionist history promoted by horse lovers to give mustangs historic status," is how Tice Supplee, director of bird conservation for Audubon Arizona, defines the Spanish-bloodline pitch. The definition preferred by Erick Campbell-a biologist who retired from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2005 and who frequently dealt with feral-horse issues during his 30-year career-is: "pure, unadulterated BS." Campbell told me this: "We managed everything from workhorses to Shetland ponies. Your daughter's horse gets old or she stops liking it. So you turn it loose. Prior to World War II ranchers were basically managing these herds for sale to the Army. And to keep the quality up the Army would give the ranchers studs to release."

 

Since the BLM is the primary caregiver for feral equids, I asked Campbell how they affect native ecosystems. He conceded that cows do more damage because there are lots more of them, but he pointed out that cattle provide food and livelihoods. Feral equids are just out there perpetuating a myth, and when it comes to habitat destruction, what they lack in numbers they make up for in efficiency. "They're worse than cows," he says. "They do incredible damage. When the grass between the shrubs is gone a cow is out of luck, but a horse or burro will stomp that plant to death to get that one last blade. When cows run out of forage the cowboys move them or take them home, but horses and burros are out there all year. They're not fenced; they can go anywhere. BLM exacerbates the problem by hauling water to them. Instead of just letting them die, we keep them going. There are even horses in Las Vegas, which is obscene. In the desert! The horse groups have tremendous power with Congress. They only care about horses; they couldn't give a damn about all the wildlife that's adversely affected."

 

The BLM rounds up feral equids-on its own land only and often by helicopter-then puts them up for public adoption. The system is hideously expensive. "No way is the BLM equipped to manage horses and burros," says Campbell. "It doesn't get the money." Still, the agency spends about $40 million a year tending feral equids. And this figure doesn't include the millions spent by the states and the U.S. Forest Service, Park Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service in vain efforts to keep them from destroying fish and wildlife habitat. For example, the half-million-acre Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada-fragile high desert-has removed about 1,150 horses since 2004, and it still has 1,000 left. The refuge provides important habitat for a host of troubled species, including sage grouse, pronghorns, and bighorn sheep. "The horses are turning our riparian areas and springs into mud holes," says refuge manager Brian Day. "We have Lahontan cutthroats, a federally threatened species, and the horses silt up the creeks and cover up the spawning gravel. They eat the meadows down to dirt. There are a lot of sensible people who like these horses. And then there are the other types who don't let the truth stand in their way."

 

As you remove feral equids, those that remain are less stressed and breed faster, increasing the population by as much as 30 percent annually. Natural equid predators-saber-toothed tigers, cave bears, and dire wolves-are extinct, and any unnatural predator has to be pretty desperate to risk getting bludgeoned by the hooves of a feral equid. ("Probably as many mountain lions have been killed by horses as horses by lions," says Campbell.) Although we can find $40 million annually to keep an alien on perpetual welfare, we invest only $74,472 a year trying to keep the average threatened or endangered species from going extinct. Such are the priorities of the American public.

 

Strapped though they are for adequate funding, BLM equid managers squander what they get. "It's frustrating to see them spend money in areas that can't maintain viable horse populations," says Nevada Department of Wildlife habitat bureau chief Dave Pulliam. "We see places where BLM has established a management goal of 15 or 20 horses when their own science indicates that 100 is the threshold for [genetic] viability. So when money is the issue why are they wasting it? Why aren't they zeroing out these herds? Sensitive desert species like bighorns, desert tortoises, and Gila monsters can't tolerate horses. And horses will stand over a spring and run off other animals." Even as feral horses proliferate in areas where they can't make a decent living, they evict native species that would otherwise thrive. As one of dozens of examples, Pulliam offers the East High Rock Canyon Wilderness, where his agency wants to rehabilitate about 30 seeps and springs once associated with lush meadows. "In desert country, seeps and springs are the most important habitats for a whole myriad of species-sagebrush obligate birds, mule deer, bighorns, pronghorns, everything," he says. "And they are absolutely beat to mud holes. Riparian habitat has disappeared. Water tables have dropped. Horse use is excessive to the point of rendering this habitat unavailable to wildlife. Our wildlife constituents don't get as vociferous as the horse lovers."

 

The BLM, which has a reputation for underestimating equid populations and has no reliable way of figuring them anyway, claims that just on its own land there are about 32,000 animals, mostly horses. An additional 26,000 are being maintained in holding facilities, awaiting adoption. At auctions held around the country the BLM adopts out about 6,000 feral equids a year. But it admits that that's not enough to keep the feral population in check, and there's a limit to how many feral equids the public wants. Generally, you pay a $125 "adoption fee," and after you get a vet to sign a statement that you've provided humane care for one year, you get a certificate of title and can do anything you want with your horse or burro, including selling it to a slaughterhouse.

 

Feral horses are big and dangerous. Arizona Audubon's Tice Supplee has a friend who showed up looking like he'd been in a bar fight after his adopted mustang had knocked him around and eventually skewered itself on a fence stake. Now it's in his freezer. In addition to knowledgeable horse people, the program attracts weird-pet fanciers-the ocelot-coatimundi crowd. Burros, often adopted as companions for horses, are less dangerous but more obnoxious. "What kind of a nut would want one?" Arizona State University zoologist Robert Ohmart asked me in 1985 when I reported on burros for Audubon. It was a question I relayed to my mother, who kept one in a failed effort to calm her semi-feral horses. It brayed from dusk to dawn and had the least efficient digestive tract of any creature I've known. People get tired of adopted burros fast. Twenty-one years ago the BLM was telling me it had pretty much "saturated the market."

 

The BLM is between a rock and the equine lobby. Two basic elements comprise this lobby-one somewhat practical, somewhat rational, and genuinely and rightly concerned about humane treatment of feral equids. In its more thoughtful moments the Humane Society of the United States might fit this description. While it doesn't worry about native ecosystems, it at least understands that population expansion leads to major suffering, and it is assisting the BLM in experiments with chemical contraception. "Where population reductions are well justified, nonlethal strategies like contraception should take the place of costly roundups," wrote HSUS president Wayne Pacelle in a letter to The New York Times. But until contraception is practical over large areas of the West, if it ever is, the HSUS favors roundups and adoptions over culling by rifle.

 

The other element, a political juggernaut referred to by wildlifers as the "horse mafia," advocates more animals on public range; vehemently opposes birth control, roundups, and adoptions; and wants no feral equid to die from anything, anywhere, no matter what. In 2005, for example, the Colorado Wild Horse and Burro Coalition and the Cloud Foundation (named after a feral horse named Cloud) failed in an administrative appeal to stop the BLM from experimenting with chemical contraception in Montana's Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range. "BLM has used this herd as a science experiment, and it's a shame in a wilderness setting," declares Cloud Foundation director Ginger Kathrens. "It's a situation that can be managed by nature, but they don't value natural systems." When I asked her how a system with feral equids in it could be "natural," she said: "Wild horses are native to North America."

 

In the late 1990s National Park Service biologist Erik Beever, then a doctoral candidate at the University of Nevada at Reno, ran afoul of the horse mafia by discovering facts not to its liking. In the most comprehensive investigation ever undertaken of what feral horses do to wildlife habitat, Beever examined soils, rodents, reptiles, ants, and plants across nine mountain ranges at 19 study sites, documenting dramatic horse damage. For this the horse mafia viciously attacked him in the press, accusing him of whoring for the cattle industry, which doesn't like grazing competition from feral livestock. "It got pretty nasty," Beever recalls. His work provided the BLM with the means, if not the motivation, for determining how many horses should be removed from an area for their own good.

 

Finally, consider the injunction preventing the Forest Service from rounding up and adopting out as many as 400 horses in northern Arizona. They're domestic animals that escaped from the White Mountain Apache reservation in 2002 when a forest fire destroyed a fence, but the plaintiffs-In Defense of Animals, the Animal Welfare Institute, and the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Wild Burros-convinced a federal judge that they might be part Spanish. So before the Forest Service can remove them it must run DNA tests on each animal to make sure there are no ancient genes, an impossible task even if it had the funds. "We reseeded the fire area, and the horses are just hammering it," says Robert Dyson, public affairs officer for the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. "They're displacing wildlife. Channel 12 TV out of Phoenix reported that we planned to kill 'wild horses,' and our phones rang off the hook. We got letters from third graders all across Phoenix. We had carefully explained to Channel 12 that we'd be capturing the horses alive."

 

"The injunction was all over the equine rags this spring," says Supplee. " 'We won! We won!' These horses are in the heart of our elk country, and uncontrolled elk can hurt riparian systems, too. Here the Forest Service is telling Game and Fish to reduce their elk [through increased hunting], and meanwhile, they have 400 horses running around. The Forest Service really got outmaneuvered on this one."

 

Now and then, however, environmentalists outmaneuver the horse mafia. One of the first Important Bird Areas to be recognized in Nevada and possibly the best cottonwood gallery riparian forest left in the West is the Carson River delta-vital to all manner of birds, including western yellow-billed cuckoos and two subspecies of willow flycatcher. "The BLM had a management goal of 18 horses but let the population grow to 200 to 300," reports Don McIvor, Audubon's Nevada director of bird conservation. "They were hanging out in the riparian area, removing the understory, trampling willows, causing major habitat damage." The BLM wasn't doing anything about it, so McIvor and his colleagues complained to the Nevada Depart- ment of Wildlife, which prevailed on the BLM to remove all but 15 of the horses. The horse mafia never found out that Audubon was the driving force behind the roundup, so its full fury was directed at the state and feds.

 

With some sort of population control, horses and burros might make a decent living on grasslands-where their Pleistocene progenitors evolved-but those grasslands are leased or owned by cattle ranchers. So feral equids are restricted to arid and desert regions, where they suffer terribly. Supposedly they're managed as wildlife, but when there's a drought or food shortage the BLM tends as many as it can in the field or in holding facilities. Most animals, though, get left on depleted range, and the BLM can't go onto the land of other agencies. So all across the West horses and burros slowly starve. In a January 4, 2005, op-ed for The New York Times entitled "Live Free and Die," journalist and writing instructor Judy Blunt described a typical scene: "A cloud hangs over the Nevada landscape, caused by 500 half-starved horses pounding the high desert to powder, looking for food, stamping any remaining waterholes into dust. The foals are long dead, left behind as they weakened. Cowboys under contract with the BLM set out to gather the horses and move them, but a phone call redirects them to a worse situation in another area."

 

Native animals are also capable of intense suffering. All manner of wildlife depend on desert trees such as paloverde, mesquite, and ocotillo. Small mammals are nourished by their seeds; birds nest in their branches; reptiles find sanctuary in their shade; desert bighorn sheep browse on their tender tips. Horses and burros girdle them with their meshing incisors, then stomp them into the dirt with their solid hooves. Supplee used to conduct Christmas bird counts in what she calls "lush and canopied dry riparian washes with huge mesquite and paloverde trees." Feral horses moved in and trashed the habitat. "They broke off branches, stripped the bark, and killed the trees," she says.

 

Burros are even harder on native ecosystems because they can live in higher, drier areas. Supplee referred me to Art Fuller, a biologist who retired from the Arizona Game and Fish Department in 2001. "I fought the battle for years," he says. "Burros were wreaking havoc in the Black Mountains. My position was that there shouldn't be any burros in these desert mountain ranges, but a few would be okay if the BLM would do inventory every year and remove the excess. They used to; then they stopped. They said it was too dangerous for them to fly the aerial surveys. So we and the Park Service flew them, and even then the BLM sometimes would say they didn't have the funding to remove those burros. It was very frustrating. Burros are hurting big game, small game, passerine birds, nongame mammals, everything. We have a crisis with desert bighorn sheep."

 

In the 1980s, after the spectacular failure of the Fund for Animals' helicopter transfer of feral burros from the Grand Canyon to happy homes, the Park Service started shooting burros, accounting for 500 by the early 1990s. Such was the public uproar that the agency is again allowing burros to proliferate. Elaine Leslie, a biologist at Grand Canyon National Park until 2004 and now assistant superintendent at Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, tells me this: "You can find burros or burro evidence in the vast majority of Grand Canyon springs or seeps. They spread exotic grasses, contaminate water, trample wetland species, remove vegetation, and eliminate small mammals, birds, and amphibians. I have seen the only water source for 20 miles get so polluted backpackers couldn't filter it. It was once rich with wetland vegetation, an oasis for birds and frogs; now it's devoid of vegetation. We're spending all this money-as per President Clinton's standing executive order-trying to control exotic invasive species, and we're not doing anything about feral horse and burro populations. Do people really look at what happens to these animals a year after they're adopted? They're in a can of dog food."

 

So what's to be done? Congress hasn't a clue, but in December 2004 it did make its first feeble attempt to address the problem by passing a law that allows the BLM to sell a feral equid that is more than 10 years old or-for whatever reason, physical or behavioral-has been rejected for adoption three times. The Cascadia Wildlands Project warned that the legislation was really a scheme to remove horses "from their native habitat," the better to slaughter "thousands." And Wild Horse Preservation identified the program as a plot by the cattle industry to "funnel wild horses to slaughter." The following spring, when 41 feral horses found their way to a slaughterhouse, the agency shut down the new program until it had hatched a tough sales agreement that requires buyers to swear in writing they won't sell their animals for meat-this despite the fact that about 90,000 domestic horses were sold for meat last year. No feral equid has been slaughtered since, but the horse mafia is still in full cry.

 

"There's a train wreck coming," declares Bill Marlett, director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association. "In the Burns District in eastern Oregon alone, the BLM collects an average of 500 horses a year, and they're just maintaining the status quo. The corrals are full; they can't adopt them fast enough to keep up."

 

It is difficult to understand why Americans believe that starvation is more humane than culling. In Australia, where there are thought to be as many as 265,000 feral horses and 5 million feral burros, the government shoots them. According to its Model Code of Practice for the Humane Control of Feral Horses, "Shooting is considered more humane than capture and removal as the animals are not subject to the stresses of mustering [roundup], yarding, and long-distance transportation." Moreover, most other nations don't share our taboo against eating horse meat. It's considered a delicacy in Europe, and in Australia the commercial slaughter of feral horses, burros, and other livestock is a $100 million-a-year industry. Australia is working on chemical contraception, too, but an effective agent practical for field application may be decades away.

 

In the United States, at least, there is still time for an alternative to shooting and starvation-leaving and managing a few herds of feral horses and burros of alleged "historical significance" on adequate range, perhaps on retired cattle-grazing leases, but rounding up and caring for the others. As expensive as this would be, the main investment would end when the captured animals died of old age.

 

As it stands now, though, the powerful horse mafia won't hear of such a thing. And fish and wildlife advocates shudder at the Australia-style disaster that apparently lies ahead.

 

- 30 -

 

 



 

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Wild Mustangs

Submitted by Frank Mancuso (not verified) on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 10:55.

The uproar over killing our Wild Mustangs would kill the re-election chances of any politician guilty of signing on to the legislation. The American people have spoken out time and time again at its desire to have free roaming horses dispite the terms given to them, unwanted, ferel, livestock. Wild Mustangs are a LIVING symbol of freedom. To round them up and sell them for food to Japan would be as selling the Statue of liberty to China for scrap metal.

Symbol of Stupidity

Submitted by Ted Williams on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 11:32.

Yes.  The American people have “spoken out” because they are ecologically illiterate and because they have swallowed the line from the horse mafia that these feral equids are decedents of Spanish horses when they are actually recently abandoned livestock.  They are a symbol alright--a symbol of stupidity.  I do agree with you that the majority of politicians wouldn’t dare vote against it.  That doesn’t it right.  The majority of politicians voted with Joe McCarthy.

Wow. The Leader Has Spoken

Submitted by Jerry Finch (not verified) on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 14:25.

I am so thankful that you have become the leader of the "Let's kill and eat them" pack of horse haters. Your intelligence certainly shines through, perhaps filtered a little by the vicious fangs of slaughter, but I can tell that you have the best of intentions and that you are the type of person that can solve ALL of America's pressing issues. "Got a problem? Just kill them!" Easy solution.
I do sort of wonder why you think everyone else in the world is stupid, illiterate and totally mindless, but you must have a greater understanding and ability than all the rest of us, and for that, I am eternally thankful. Since everyone else is wrong and you are so perfectly right, then we can throw away all the studies and perhaps hang all those who disagree with you. Fact is, last time I was wandering around a water hole, I dang near got run over by a fleeing tortoise trying to get away from a gang of wild horses. Of course, they were trying to get to a water hole that the BLM has fenced off, but the BLM knows best, as I'm sure you realize.
The ranchers need this land - cheap grazing for their cattle - and the stupid people should realize that cows and tortoises get along extremely well, and no idiot would ever mistake a big horn sheep for a cow. Oh, that's right, you enjoy killing them, too. Sorry.
If you don't mind, I think I'll stay over here with the "Horse Mafia." They seem to be a little bit more sane and don't spit when they talk.
 

Symbol of Stupidity????

Submitted by D. Verret (not verified) on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 14:37.

Mr. (of course, I'm assuming) Williams:
You know,  individuals like yourself that make gross generalizations or blanket statements like, "...The American people have spoken out because they are ecologically illiterate..." is a fairly sanctimonious, condescending and superior mindset mentality that basically lacks logic, facts (although you spend a ton of type spewing) or tolerance. You are also guilty of emotionalism and probably, "if it moves, shoot it, catch it, kill it and eat it because it's all here for me(that would be you, Mr. Williams)". Basically, you are the pot calling the kettle black and guilty of the same "stupidity" that you claim supporters of HR1018 possess. And newsflash, equines were here 1000's of years ago...some areas have reintroduced from colonial periods and abandoned also; which is humorous for so many reasons, but not for this post. 
You spend all this time bitching about 37,000 equines and very little investigation or revelation on the leasing of that same land to agricultural, mining or forestry interests and the displacement of the mustangs and burros since 1971.  Sounds like selective ecological science to me.  But I'll keep playing. I also loved the jewel..."cattle are not as destructive as equines". Another revelation. Human consumption horse slaughter is the only form of slaughter for equines where the purveyor gets paid.  It is not humane.  I have no problem with gunshot; by which many fine, upstanding Americans with your philosophies have decided to take matters into their own judgmental minds and hands. You sir, are ill-informed. If you asked the local Audubon group, I'd venture to guess that they are not thrilled with hunters, campers, cattle, mining, development, etc. either. But quite possibly that information or the others that I recommend that you "flesh out" would not be supportive of your reasonably lucid diatribe.
I thought the Rep's response was intelligent and based in fact; although I might take issue with the acreage amounts still available. Next time the US has an advertisement requesting dictator needed, I'll send in your name with a copy of the job opening to you directly. You have a great day and happy hunting!

D.: One

Submitted by Ted Williams on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 15:43.

D.:

One diagnostic characteristic of the horse mafia is that they refuse to read and on rare occasions when they do dismiss facts they don’t want to know.  A cow is not as destructive as a horse.  That’s because horses, unlike all other ungulates, have solid hooves and meshing incisors.  North American vegetation did not evolve to cope with that.  Before you call me “ill-informed” read the article I posted.  Do you imagine that all the wildlife professionals I quoted are “ill-informed”?

Oh, Mr Williams! You are

Submitted by D. Verret (not verified) on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 15:45.

Oh, Mr Williams! You are beyond priceless..."awaiting moderation"???? And just exactly WHO moderates you?
Happy hunting and hooking!

re: mustands and burros

Submitted by ClrToCallOut (not verified) on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 15:49.

Someone could have a lot of "fun" picking this story apart, but it's a shame it wouldn't get printed if we did.
Burros "spread exotic grasses," for instance: Exotic grasses they got from where? Did they hop a plane to Malaysia,
then return to the range? The entire article includes information just like that, taken as gospel unless someone thinks to ask.
The article sounds good, it even has some valid points sprinkled in among the misinformation
just to keep it "honest". But it doesn't stand up to higher scrutiny.

Amy B.
Navasota TX

Read My Piece Jerry

Submitted by Ted Williams on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 15:53.

Jerry: Why do you imagine that I “hate” horses?  You and the rest of the horse mafia claim to love them, but you don’t love them enough to learn about them.  I grew up with horses, rode to the hounds, competed in horse shows.  Feral horses are not equipped to live in the range to which they’ve been delegated.  They suffer horribly so ecologically illiterate people like yourself can feel good about a faux symbol.  I’ll ask you the same question I asked D.  If you read instead of just spewing, read my article above.  “Everyone else” doesn’t agree with you, by the way.   All the wildlife professionals I quote in the article don’t have it wrong.

D. I'm the moderator. 

Submitted by Ted Williams on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 16:01.

D. I'm the moderator.  Welcome to my blog.  Now do some reading.

Thanks for the Demonstration

Submitted by Ted Williams on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 16:18.

Amy:

The horse mafia has tried and failed to “pick this story apart.”  I’m sure they had fun in their failed and idiotic attempts.  I certainly had fun responding.  Low-hanging fruit.  Do a Google search of Audubon’s letters section.  At Audubon we have a rigorous fact-checking unit that independently substantiates all information in every story we publish.  The fact that the piece appeared in print gives the lie to your claim that it contains “misinformation.”   And thanks for demonstrating better than I was able the fact that the horse mafia is ecologically illiterate.  You are ignorant of a fact of ecology so basic that I can well understand why you cannot grasp other salient points about the impact of feral equids on native wildlife.  Invasive exotic grasses (the vegetable versions of feral equids) have been here since the settlement of the West.  Their seeds are ingested by burros and other ungulates and defecated on to wild land where they sprout and grow.  Get it?

Holy Cow...you are an

Submitted by D. Verret (not verified) on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 16:52.

Holy Cow...you are an absolute HOOT!!!! Unfortunately like those of your mindset, you are hell bent on the removal of any "nuisances" AND KNOW ALL.   I didn't call all your wildlife resources ill-informed; I CALLED YOU ILL-INFORMED and suggested that you cherry pick statements and opinions from certain wild-life advocates/organizations. Obviously...you didn't read and my post was alot less windbag than yours.
NOW, let's move on to the "cattle are not destructive" crap you cite and choose not to respond to.  Any, I repeat any species will over graze based on weather patterns,  poor management and that my fine dictator includes cattle, sheep and my favorite, resource sucking humans. And you DID NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION! I'd say you are the flip one.
I read your tripe and it seems you have garnered the attention of a superior horseman in Jerry Finch (p.s....please go after him; your inferior attempts would make my day).  That I don't accept your post with it's mish-mash of crap doesn't make me the idiot...but I will say you are pretty smooth with the language but chuckle at YOUR TYPE  and font versus the Reps in the "piece". As to the "horse mafia"...where did you get that gem? You know who the horse mafia is?  I do.  The liars and cheats that purvey undocumented meat for humans to eat.  The overbreeders that count on slaughter to take their culls.  The breakers, the beaters, the jerks that round them up just because the Burns Amendment says they can. Need names?
Finally, caveman aka certified ecologist, biologist, animal scientist(man, you are good!)...I asked WHO is your moderator.  Your response...I am. Didn't answer the question, but I will continue to play with you.....Oh goody.  The fox is in charge of the hen house.
 

Nuisances

Submitted by Ted Williams on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 17:06.

So you are in favor of leaving “nuisances” on the landscape; and I take it your use of the word indicates that you consider feral equids such.  In this, at least, you agree with virtually all wildlife professionals.  You now differentiate me from the wildlife professionals I quote as “ill-informed.”  And yet I let they talk in the piece (if you will read it); and they say exactly what I am saying here.  Please explain.  I certainly agree that unmanaged cattle can overgraze.  But ALL feral equids are unmanaged.  If you bothered even to read the intro of this blog, you’d realize that I’m the moderator.

Geeze LOUEEZEEE!!! Just

Submitted by D. Verret (not verified) on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 18:05.

 

(1) I don't consider the remaining equines (37,000 of which I think it is much lower) "feral".

(2) My point was that (a) equines have been shunted off to some of the worst grazing area in the US and restriction of water acess.

(3) Many herd areas are zeroed out and overrun with cattle, sheep, mining, forrestry  AND entertainment for humans applications. So YOU and I will have a big problem defining "nuisances" on public lands

Reply

Submitted by Jerry Finch (not verified) on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 20:37.

"Don't love them enough to learn about them"?

Mr. Williams, I've been on and around horses for the past 60 years. No, I didn't dress up like some clown and go chasing after some toy fox, I worked cattle and horses on the range. I didn't compete in horse shows. I scooped poop, saddle, rode hard all day, fed, cared for and tended to horses from the time they were born till the day they died and never saw fit to eat one or sell it to some Frenchman so I could get my hands on a few extra bucks.

You calling me "ecologically illiterate" is a slap in the face to every hard working horse person who doesn't see your twisted point of view. Whomever you think you represent, it certainly isn't the American public, whom you truly believe are idiots and slobs.

 

Your Post Hast Been Cut

Submitted by Ted Williams on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 21:59.

Your post has been cut because you have violated my extremely liberal netiquette guidelines.  Here they are: A post must be mildly interesting; somewhat relevant; and moderately civil.  You flunked on all three.  But some of your post survived.  Here are my responses.

 


“(1) I don't consider the remaining equines (37,000 of which I think it is much
lower) ‘feral’.”

--

Then you don’t know what “feral” means.

“(2) My point was that (a) equines have been shunted off to some of the worst
grazing area in the US.”

--

You’re right about that.  Why haven’t you considered how they suffer on this inadequate range.

 

“(3) Many herd areas are zeroed out and overrun with cattle, sheep, mining,
forrestry  AND entertainment for humans applications. So YOU and I will have a
big problem defining "nuisances" on public lands.”

--

Very few herds are zeroed out, even when they are not genetically viable.  Take a break from your frenetic typing and read my article.


Scooping Poop

Submitted by Ted Williams on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 22:12.

Jerry: You “scooped poop, saddle, rode hard all day, fed, cared for and tended horses.”  Bully for you.  So did I and also for 60 years.  What’s your point?  Yeah, calling you “ecologically illiterate” is a slap in the face.  And that’s precisely what you and the rest of the horse mafia need.  You have one thing right.  I do not represent  the “America public.”  It has swallowed the line of the horse mafia, hook, line, boat and motor. 

Cattle do far more damage.

Submitted by Kenneth Cole (not verified) on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 11:03.

I'm not saying that horses aren't ecologically damaging, they are. I do however believe that the BLM wants to rid the country of wild horses mainly to reduce competition for cattle. The desert is no place for cattle yet they are stocked at obscenely high numbers there. The damage they do to streams, springs and seeps is horrendous and the BLM's response is to lie about it and blame that damage on anything and everything else including horses.

If you look at what taxpayers are asked to sacrifice, besides money, to maintain someone's "custom and culture", wolves, bears, lions, coyotes, ravens, buffalo, elk, and a whole array of wildlife are killed outright so they can maintain their custom and culture. Other species have disappeared and are disappearing because of their abusive grazing practices so they can maintain their custom and culture. Habitat is being destroyed, water is being polluted and the land is pounded into dust so they can maintain their custom and culture. They have "captured" university range departments to concoct science to justify their carnage upon the land so they can maintain their custom and culture. They have killed literally thousands of buffalo under the guise of disease management which turns out to be a scheme to protect grass so they can maintain their custom and culture. They cherry pick science to deny the fact that their domestic sheep kill OUR bighorn sheep so they can maintain their custom and culture. They destroy vast areas of important sagebrush steppe and piñon/juniper habitat by mowing, poisoning, hacking and burning under the guise of habitat improvement or "fuels" projects but which are in reality ways to increase forage for livestock so they can maintain their custom and culture.

Everyone here knows that livestock grazing dramatically impacts fish habitat and has cause the disappearance of fisheries all over the west. The BLM and USFS lie about how livestock impact salmon, steelhead, and bull trout habitat in Idaho, even in critical habitat. Entire streams are dried up to maintain water and forage for livestock.

I have visited many livestock allotments on BLM and USFS lands and over and over I have seen spring "developments" where there is a bandaid exclosure at the head of a spring and all of the water from that spring is piped to a leaking trough that is pounded to death and covered with cow flop and weeds. Often times the permitee never installs or maintains the bird ladders so there are dead animals floating in the troughs and when the BLM or USFS is informed about this it is ignored even though it is one of the very few terms and conditions of the permit.

Those springs and seeps that are not developed are destroyed by congregating cattle when they remove the riparian vegetation and trample the wet areas creating enough surface area to dry them out completely.

It's about scale. Horses do damage but livestock damage is several orders of magnitude higher.

Public lands ranching is a big scam that will never pay for itself and ruins fish and wildlife habitat across 250,000,000 acres of our lands at the taxpayer's expense. It should go long before the horses.

Your Point?

Submitted by Ted Williams on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 11:27.

Ken: First, this isn’t a BLM-Forest Service conspiracy.  Wildlife professionals in the state game and fish agencies, Fish and Wildlife Service, Park Service and the NGO community are doing most of the complaining about feral equids and with good reason.  They have a problem with overstocked cattle, too--as do I; in fact, I recently wrote a piece about cattle damage in Audubon.  Second, as I stated in the piece posted here, cattle do more damage but only because there are more of them.  One feral equid does far, far more damage than one cow for reasons I’ve explained in this thread.  Third, there is virtually NO competition with cattle because the places where feral equids live can’t support cattle.  Fourth, what’s your point about all the other wildlife we’ve displaced?  Do you imagine that this somehow justifies leaving feral exotic animals on range that they are destroying for themselves and all the creatures you mention?  That’s like saying cancer kills more people than AIDS so we shouldn’t worry about AIDS.

HR 1018

Submitted by vicki (not verified) on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 13:26.

Have all cattle been reclassified as wildlife or only the 7.5 MILLION that have taken over the land legally reserved for our wild Mustangs, burros and wildlife? When are the cattle going to be "managed" to under 20,000 like the Mustangs?

Refuting prejudiced claims against wild horses

Submitted by whecologist (not verified) on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 13:33.

Wild Horses are native to the North American continent where they both originated and had their long standing evolution.  Also the burro branch of the horse family had its origin and long standing evolution here. In truth these animals restore the North American ecosystem in so many places, having so much that is truly beneficial to contribute. BUT they are being targeted by certain vested intesests for discreditation and elimination or reduction to such tiny numbers that they risk inbreeding or chance die out. This has all been a nasty narrow minded conspiracy and the writings of Ted Williams epitomize this extreme prejudice. This haunts back to the Final Solution proposed by the Nazis only in this case targeting the wild horses and burros, animals that in fact enhance and restore the ecosystem and contribute harmony and lend beauty. But, as they say, there is none so blind as he who will not see!  Please refer to www.americanherds.com or www.wildhorsepreservation. or www.thecloudfoundation.org  to get a less lopsided account on the true value of these animals and the gross unfairness that is being perpetrated upon them and their freedom, as well as the public majority that supports them.

My point

Submitted by Kenneth Cole (not verified) on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 14:07.

(I think my previous comment was sent to the spam filter as it contained links. I am resubmitting it without the links. Sorry if it gets posted twice.)

While I do have a problem with horses on public lands I think that the damage they do pales in comparison with livestock. The real, and bigger, problem for fish and wildlife is livestock yet the agencies and NGO’s you cite are diverted from tackling this bigger problem because they are afraid of the political power that the livestock industry has. They fail to tell the truth because it might hurt their bottom line and they won’t get to “collaborate” with ranchers to give away resources and look good in the media.

Yes, cattle do more damage but it’s not simply due to the fact that there are more of them, it is due the fact that they are invasive species just like the horses and weeds are. They evolved in conditions with greater amounts of water and not in the deserts of the west. In large expanses of the Great Basin there were no large ungulates such as horses, cattle, or bison. Cattle spend far more time wallowing in and destroying riparian areas than horses do. That, combined with the destruction of these riparian areas by the agencies themselves, is beyond dispute. I have seen damage by horses and livestock alike and it’s bad but in general the damage caused by horses is more limited to specific areas where horses feel safe from predation. Cattle use the entire riparian area (if there is a large one) while horses only spend a short time in these same areas due to predation concerns. I’m not trying to diminish the damage that horses do but the damage is different. These ecosystems did not evolve with either of them but to diminish the damage that cattle do by making the comparison between the two is a diversion from the real problem.

I take issue with your statement that “there is virtually NO competition with cattle because the places where feral equids live can’t support cattle”. This is simply not true. I review and appeal cattle grazing permit renewals all of the time from Nevada and I can cite many areas where there are cattle and wild horses. In fact, nearly every horse management area on BLM lands also has cattle competing for resources and is behind the rational for proposing to remove 100% percent of the horses from them (which seems to contradict something you said to another comment).

This is a quote from one such proposal:
The BLM Egan and Caliente Field Office’s propose to capture 100 percent of the current population of wild horses or about 350 wild horses in August 2009. Of the animals gathered, approximately 350 wild horses, including all those living outside the Seaman and White River HA boundaries, would be removed and shipped to BLM holding facilities where they will be prepared for adoption and/or sale to qualified individuals or long term holding.

Another:
The BLM Caliente Field Office proposed Action is to capture 100% of the current population of wild horses (or about 270 wild horses), including any horses outside the HA boundaries. All of the animals gathered would be removed and transported to BLM holding facilities where they would be prepared for adoption and/or sale to qualified individuals for long term holding. The estimated population remaining on the range following the gather would be about 0 wild horses.

I’m pointing these proposals out not because I think that the horses should stay but because I think it is a diversion from the real issues involved. I think that removal of livestock from public lands would go much farther towards recovery of the values you cite. Until that happens nearly everything done to recover many species and values will be fruitless. Current proposals amount to rearranging the deck chairs.

I also have qualms with the bill. Since the livestock industry is so powerful and the wild horse and other supporters of the bill are so weak there is no language that will reduce livestock damage to areas where the two share range. I think it there is language that should have been added to the bill to do just that. Now, if this becomes law, the damage from both livestock and horses will become worse because the cattlemen and BLM can always blame cattle damage on horses and not have to adjust their operations either.

I think your argument is like saying that since horses damage lands we should not tackle the real issue which is livestock. Or to use your analogy, “That’s like saying cancer kills more people than lightning so we should worry about lightning and minimalize the damage cancer causes.”

Also, I don’t appreciate the name calling that you engage in. I think it is demeaning to the arguments you make which I think are mostly valid.

Irrelevant Mantra

Submitted by Ted Williams on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 15:22.

“While I do have a problem with horses on public lands I think that the
damage they do pales in comparison with livestock.”  Why is it that apologists for feral equids chant this true, but utterly irrelevant mantra.  Unlike horses cows can be managed, moved, brought in in the winter, and they’re a business.  Despite your claims horses don’t compete to any significant extent with cattle.  In fact, the horse mafia makes this point when it repeatedly claims there are so few of them.  What feral horses compete with is wildlife.  Re. name calling: It’s about time someone started IDing this morons for what they are.  If more of us had done it earlier we wouldn’t be facing this horrendous bill.

Brainless Mantra

Submitted by Ted Williams on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 15:30.

Vicki: Of all the mantras chanted by the horse mafia this is the most brainless.  Yes, cattle do more damage to wildlife habitat that feral equids, as I carefully explained in my piece.  That’s because there are more of them.  So what?

 

If you won’t read my Audubon piece, read my shorter op-ed below:

 

 

Wild Horse Annie’s Legacy


By Ted Williams

 

They are wild and free.  They are icons of America’s past, symbols of our pioneering spirit.  Eyes flashing, nostrils flaring, lips foaming, tails obscured by dust, they tear across the landscape.  While they didn’t evolve on this continent, a similar species did; and, anyway, they’ve been here a long time.  I am, of course, referring to feral hogs.

 

Having grown up with horses and burros and having fed our garbage to the neighbor’s hogs, I can attest that hogs are more intelligent than equids.  And while feral hogs are horribly destructive of native ecosystems, they are no more so than feral equids.  So why have we not embraced feral hogs?  Why are we not spending $40 million a year rounding them up, tending them, feeding and watering them in the wild, and vainly encouraging the public to adopt them?  Why are there no feral-hog support groups fighting their elimination or even diminution from public lands? 

 

Happily for fish and wildlife, there has yet to be a Wild Hog Annie.  But mobilized by a Nevada ranch wife named Velma Johnston (aka “Wild Horse Annie”), ecological illiterates all across America wrote impassioned letters to ecologically illiterate senators and congressmen, demanding that feral equids be protected forever.  The upshot was the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971, which placed all unrestrained, unclaimed equids under government care and made it a felony to kill, capture, sell, or even annoy one.

 

It’s hard to blame Mrs. Johnston for objecting to the gory harvests conducted by the “mustangers.”  On the other hand, she and her followers converted a resource to a pest and, in the process, subjected feral equids to far greater suffering.  Equids, which evolved in grasslands, are not equipped to live in the arid and desert regions to which they’ve been relegated.  (Nor is the vegetation they consume equipped to cope with meshing incisors and solid hoofs, adaptations lacking in all our native ungulates.)  In a recent New York Times op-ed entitled “Live Free and Die” journalist Judy Blunt describes a typical scene:  “A cloud hangs over the Nevada landscape, caused by 500 half-starved horses pounding the high desert to powder, looking for food, stamping any remaining waterholes into dust. The foals are long dead, left behind as they weakened.  Cowboys under contract with the BLM set out to gather the horses and move them, but a phone call redirects them to a worse situation in another area.” 

 

Feral-equid support groups, known collectively among wildlifers as “the horse mafia,” chant three mantras.  Mantra 1: Cows do far more damage than feral equids.  That’s like saying we shouldn’t worry about AIDS because more people die of cancer; and at least cows provide humans with food and income.  Mantra 2: Feral equids are native because a similar species evolved in North America, then went extinct 10,000 years ago.  That’s like calling elephants native because mastodons lived here 10,000 years ago.  Mantra 3:  The “mustangs” infesting the West are historical treasures because they’re closely related to animals unleashed by the conquistadores.  They are not.  They are mongrels--a genetic morass of breeds issuing mostly from recently escaped and discarded livestock. 

 

Erick Campbell--a BLM biologist who dealt with feral equids for 30 years until he retired in 2005--offers this: “We managed everything from workhorses to Shetland ponies.  Your daughter’s horse gets old or she stops liking it.  So you turn it loose….   [Feral equids] are worse than cows.  They do incredible damage.  When the grass between the shrubs is gone a cow is out of luck, but a horse or burro will stomp that plant to death to get that one last blade.  When cows run out of forage the cowboys move them, but horses and burros are out there all year.  BLM exacerbates the problem by hauling water to them.”

 

Feral equids are proliferating far faster than they’re being adopted.  BLM doesn’t begin to have the funds to take care of them, and it squanders the funds it has.  “We see places where BLM has established a management goal of 15 or 20 horses when their own science indicates that 100 is the threshold for [genetic] viability,” declares Nevada Department of Wildlife habitat chief Dave Pulliam.  “Why aren’t they zeroing out these herds?  Horses will stand over a spring and run off other animals.  In desert country, seeps and springs are the most important habitats for a whole myriad of species--sagebrush obligate birds, mule deer, bighorns, pronghorns, everything.   And they are absolutely beat to mud holes.  Riparian habitat has disappeared.  Water tables have dropped.  Horse use is excessive to the point of rendering this habitat unavailable to wildlife.  Our wildlife constituents don’t get as vociferous as the horse lovers.”

 

“Vociferous,” is an understatement.  Confronted with facts, the horse mafia spews ink like a startled squid, mostly in the form of junk science.  It confounds the media, bullies the environmental community, terrifies Congress, beats up the BLM, and savages the one group which, to ease the suffering of feral equids, is trying to develop chemical birth control.  That group--which appears almost rational in comparison with the horse mafia--is none other than the Humane Society of the United States.

 

- 30 -

I Got it Wrong

Submitted by Ted Williams on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 15:38.

I got it wrong.  There is one mantra from the horse mafia even more brainless than “Cows Do More Damage.”  Calling the abandoned livestock that pollute our wildlife habitat “native” because a different species of equid evolved on this continent (and went extinct 10,000 years ago with the rest of the ice-age megafauna) is as brainless as saying that elephants are native to America because wooly mammoths were here 10,000 years ago.

I'm not apologizing for feral horses.

Submitted by Kenneth Cole (not verified) on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 16:33.

I think that both livestock and feral horses should go or at least be severely reduced. I think that there should be a higher priority to remove livestock though.

I'm glad you wrote an article about cattle damage in Audubon but we need to be talking about proportion since cattle cause 1000 more times damage to the lands, water, wildlife, vegetation and fisheries. By all rights you should be writing about 1000 times more articles about that damage. I don't think this issue should be ignored but it certainly needs to be put into proportion.

Livestock are a menace to the arid west and they ARE NOT managed in a way that benefits the values that are important to fish and wildlife despite your assurances that "cows can be managed, moved, brought in in the winter, and they’re a business". In fact, I'm not sure they can be managed for ecological benefit, especially in the arid west. I can think of no benefit to conservation from welfare ranching, only destruction. In essence it seems you justify the damage that livestock cause by pointing out that they can be managed (even though they hardly are and that "they're a business". I don't believe that their damage can be justified for such reasons.

I don't support the bill and I think the horse people missed an opportunity to insert some good language in the bill which would have proportionally limited the impact that livestock have on the ranges which are being reserved for horses but they didn't want to upset the livestock lobby.

I look at all of the NGO's out there who have carved out a little niche for their individual causes that are severely impacted by welfare ranching but are afraid to confront the issue head on. Defenders of Wildlife doesn't want to disturb the rancher because they are worried that they might not tolerate wolf recovery (like they ever did), NRDC moved away from it and so many others as well.

Do I need to give you a list of all of the imperiled species due to livestock grazing on public lands? How many of those are imperiled due to wild horses? I'm sure there are some but proportionally how do the impacts compare?

HR 1018

Submitted by vicki (not verified) on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 19:11.

Mr. Williams, I asked you a specific question and you answered in double-talk, which seems to be your specialty. The land was granted in 1971 to wild Horses, burros and wildlife. Since then, the wild Horses have been systematically exterminated and replaced with cattle. My question was specific. Have cattle been reclassified as wildlife? If the answer is no, then they do not belong on the land. It is not a mantra, it is fact. If there is a mantra, it is the propaganda being chanted by the pro slaughter supporters and those bent on exterminating the wild Mustangs. There is plenty of evidence and documentation that the wild horses are indeed native. You are entitled to your opinions but choosing to ignore the documentation does not make your opinions, fact.

Read the Law

Submitted by Ted Williams on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 21:44.

Vicki: Why and how do you imagine that the land “was granted in 1971 to wild horses”?  Baloney.  The Wild Horse and Burro Act never excluded cattle or wildlife.  Nor have the feral equids been exterminated.  In fact, they’re multiplying far behind the land’s or BLM’s capacity to sustain them.  Your question was brainless and reflects your ignorance of the law.  Public land is managed for multiple use under the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960.  There is no such thing as “wild mustangs.”  They are recently abandoned livestock--feral equids.  Anyone who argues that feral equids are “native” is an ecological illiterate.  Are African elephants native to America?  Cheetahs?  Sloths?  Distant relatives were here once.  They became extinct.  Exotic, alien, very different relatives of extinct native equids are now extant.  So what? 

What Have Cattle to Do With the Price of Putty in Brazil?

Submitted by Ted Williams on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 21:59.

Kenneth:

Why are we talking about cattle?  What have they got to do with feral equids?  That’s a whole other topic.  So what if cattle cause more damage?  Can’t  you understand that this is about feral equids?  By your logic no one should write about cattle before they’ve written 1000 articles on global warming.  Why are you incapable of sticking to the topic?  I said cows “can be manged, moved, brought in in the winter.”  That doesn’t mean they always are.  So what?

 

Generic Response

Submitted by Ted Williams on Sun, 07/26/2009 - 07:56.

In addition to many letters that voiced enthusiastic support for my piece in Audubon and congratulated the publication for having the guts to report the real story about feral equids while the rest of the environmental community is scared to death of the horse mafia here are the negative responses (Go to: http://www.audubonmagazine.org/letter/letter0611-w...).  Virtually every brainless argument in support of this alien scourge that has been voiced in this thread is voiced here.  My response is completely applicable here as well.  Here’s the text:

 

Ted Williams responds:

Herewith, a few salient points that readers who objected to my piece missed or were unaware of. 

 

Ms. Lenz has it right when she states that “there are many people who have adopted mustangs and believe them to be the best horses they ever owned.” I made the same point in the piece. But I’d remind her that there are also many people who have had dreadful experiences with feral equids they’ve adopted (including sustaining serious injury) and who, after one year of heartbreak and frustration, have legally sold them for dog food.

 

The contention by Parant, Hughes, and Youngquist that we shouldn’t worry about the impact of feral equids because cattle are a greater ecological threat is nonsensical—like arguing that pertussis is okay because pneumonia kills more people. As I reported in “Horse Sense,” cattle do more damage than horses because there are more of them but one horse does far more damage than one cow.

 

This last point is central to the rebuttal of the common and fallacious argument (expressed here by Mr. Updegrove) that if North American vegetation could tolerate millions of bison, it should be able to tolerate thousands of feral equids. First, unlike bison and all native North American ungulates with which North American vegetation co-evolved, equids have one-piece hooves and meshing incisors. Second, bison move widely around the landscape, while equids tend to hang out at water sources. Third, while a few feral equids might make a decent living on the Great Plains if they had some sort of natural control (which they don’t), they most definitely cannot make a decent living in the bare, arid regions into which they have been pushed, and desert vegetation, which has evolved no defense against solid hooves and meshing incisors, cannot tolerate their presence. Therefore everyone loses—the horses and burros, the native vegetation, and all the creatures sustained by that native vegetation.

 

I’m glad Ms. Lamson enjoyed the piece, but she might not have disagreed with its conclusions had she read with care. While I do want feral equids removed from public range, it is hardly to make room for cattle. (In fact, removal would make virtually no room for cattle.) And I’d remind her that there are hundreds of invasive exotics that also “survive without turning tricks for the ungodly human hordes that have taken over this planet” and that are “neither slave nor entertainment nor potential food”—mute swans, feral goats, feral hogs, dingo dogs, gray squirrels, feral house cats, nutria, red foxes, grass carp, black carp, snakeheads, sea lampreys, cane toads, red-eared sliders, brown tree snakes, zebra mussels, starlings, and English sparrows, to mention just a few. Like feral equids, they wreak havoc on native ecosystems.

 

I’m surprised that Ms. Dreistadt (and other readers I’ve heard from) cannot perceive the difference between loving an animal and hating its presence in the wrong place. I doubt that anyone loves his or her dog more than I love mine, but because I hate to see him digging in the tulips or playing in the traffic, I have installed an electric “Dogwatch” fence. 

 

Finally, Ewa Winogrodska makes the case for removal better than I did. Feral horses indeed “degrade streams” and have indeed “been driven away from their traditional water holes (which they usurped from native wildlife),” and their “suffering and poor condition” is indeed one of the reasons why they should be removed and properly cared for. I’d love to see the cows removed along with them, both for humane reasons and the welfare of fish and wildlife. (In fact, as I reported in Fly Rod & Reel magazine, “If a Yankee dairyman kept his stock in this condition, he’d get busted by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”) But I have news for Ewa Winogrodska: It ain’t gonna happen.

 

 

Wild horses

Submitted by Robert Hoskins (not verified) on Sun, 07/26/2009 - 13:18.

Tell you what Ted.  If you'll support removing cattle from the public lands, I'll support removing wild horses from same.  The two problems are inseparable, but there's no doubt in my mind which problem is the worst both politically and ecologically.
Reading your rather rigid responses above to Ken Cole of the Western Watersheds Project in Hailey, Idaho--an organization that knows more about livestock damage to Western  rangelands than any other in the Rocky Mountains, and certainly is doing more about it than any other organization, especially collaborationist organizations like Audubon, which recently participated along with The Nature Conservancy in an obscene "Thank A Rancher" billboard campaign here in Wyoming--it's clear that you are not in possession of, or are deliberately ignoring, all the facts surrounding wild horse management. 
There are two problems: political and ecological.  You've covered the ecological problems, but have ignored the true politics--the problem of the livestock industry.  The so-called Horse Mafia, about which you mightily complain, not that I care much for it either, is the least of it.  Until we solve the political problems with the livestock industry, which has functioned for over a century as a well-entrenched oligarchy controlling land, water, and wildlife, contrary to the public interest and the public trust, we will never solve the ecological problems caused by wild horses.  It is likely that if we solve the livestock problem by getting rid of cows, the wild horse problem will solve itself.
It is indisputable that the political pressure to control wild horses here in the West, even here in Wyoming, with its bucking cowboy tradition, comes not from any commitment by the B(ureau of) L(ivestock and) M(ines) to sustainability, but from cattle ranchers and the oligarchic livestock industry.  Numerous comments above speak to this fact, which conservationists here in the West see displayed on a daily basis; I don't understand why you refuse to give it its due.  
Wild horses, as few as they are compared to cattle, still compete with cattle for declining forage and water, as do big game animals--elk, deer, pronghorn--not mention all other wildlife.  If it's not a cow, get rid of it, is the rancher's rule. 
In short, just as ranchers put pressure on state wildlife agencies to artificially deflate big game populations--primarily by liberal late-season cow-calf/doe-fawn seasons that distort herd population dynamics, a problem that later is falsely blamed on wolves and other predators--to protect livestock access to forage, they put pressure on the BLM to control wild horses.  (For the same reason, control of grass and wildlife migrations, ranchers have forced the Wyoming Game & Fish Department to operate disease ridden elk feedgrounds that now are threatened by an epidemic of chronic wasting disease).  No rancher ever saw a blade of grass that he thought was better suited to wildlife instead of cattle.  These people could teach Wall Street something about greed.
Wild horses and cattle, big game and cattle, birds and cattle, desert turtles and cattle, land and cattle, water and cattle--it's all of a piece.  The critical path is livestock.  They don't belong any more than do wild horses.
It is undeniable that the BLM uses fences and other management practices to force wild horses onto the worst range--not that any of it is in good shape, thanks to cattle--and attempt to deny them access to grazing allotments and water developments, per the demands of ranchers.  Were the BLM committed to sustainable wild horse management, wouldn't it allocate forage and "better" range to horses more equitably?  (That's a rhetorical question, unfortunately).  Further, it makes little ecological difference the damage one abstract cow does to the range as compared to the damage done by one abstract wild horse when you consider that in reality cattle outnumber wild horses on the Western range by a couple of orders of magnitude.  It is a well known fact of basic ecology that impacts on land increase geometrically with population numbers that increase arithmetically.  It's a matter of scale as well as a kind of malthusian fact about density.  With millions upon millions of cattle on the degraded Western range, most of these cattle badly managed or not managed at all by the way, 30K wild horses are little more than a pin-prick. 
Let's get rid of the cows; then let's talk about wild horses.
I hope you can see this as a rational, ecologically nuanced response to the issue.  Yes, wild horses are a problem for the range, but compared to cattle (and domestic sheep), they're a problem that can wait.  For myself, I find the arguments that we need to deal with wild horses right now entirely unpersuasive, because dismissive, for whatever reason, of the much worse problem. 
Certainly, getting rid of wild horses won't solve the ecological problems with land, water, and native wildlife on the Western range you so cogently point out. 
Robert Hoskins, GravelBar, Crowheart WY
P. S.  As a working naturalist as well as a conservationist, I get myself and my gear into the mountains with an all-mustang pack string.  They're from the Wyoming prison training program.  My saddle horse, a mustang nearly 16 hh, is the best lead horse I've ever been on.  I myself trained him to work in the mountains.  Last year, he stared down a grizzly bear on the trail.  Yes, they are difficult to work with, but when you gain their trust, there is no better mountain horse.  The adage of natural horsemanship, there are no bad horses, only bad trainers and riders, is doubly or triply true with mustangs.  This is one reason adoptions are so difficult and not really a good option for wild horse "management," because most horse people, at least the ones I encounter here in the West, lack the patience or knowledge to work with mustangs.  They are in fact wild animals despite their domestic heritage.  Do not doubt that.
 

Cattle

Submitted by Ted Williams on Sun, 07/26/2009 - 14:32.

Robert:

I have been advocating the removal of cattle from public range since 1970, a good deal longer than the Western Watersheds Projects has been in existence.  This is my most recent effort.

http://www.audubonmagazine.org/incite/incite0603.html

After you read it, please explain to me why a “naturalist” such as yourself could state that his advocacy of removing feral equids from wildlife habitat is contingent on someone else’s advocacy of removing cattle.  And please explain to me how supporting the removal of cattle from public range has anything to do with supporting the removal of feral equids from public land.  You have not done so in your post.

 

Does it not seem strange to you that an alleged “collaborator” like the National Audubon Society would allow such a critique of the cattle industry to be printed in its official publication?  When you read that piece please inform me as to what facts you imagine I “missed.”

 

I have not “ignored…the problem of the livestock industry.”  Again, read my “Sacred Cows.”  I’m allowed 3,500 words for my column.  That’s longer than any of our features, but it means I have to stick to the topic.  The topic for the column posted in text above was feral equids.  Another topic, which I also covered in another column, was cattle on public range.  The two topics are only joined in the minds of the horse mafia who wrongly imagine that public objection to feral equids is merely a plot by stockmen to make way for more cattle.  Bull. 

 

The “wild horse problem will solve itself.”  Are you kidding?  How?  Are they just going to stop reproducing?

 

Wildlife agencies are not “artificially deflating big game populations.”  They are trying (and failing) to deflate them because they have been artificially inflated by lack of predators and lack of adequate hunting pressure.  Are you not aware that elk in virtually all their range are far over natural carrying capacity?  Have you not heard that white-tailed deer are so overpopulated that they’re destroying the habitat of all manner of wildlife including themselves?  Audubon assigned me to do two pieces on why we need more big game hunters to control these blights. 

 

Because ranchers pressure BLM to control wildlife horses, why do you imagine that wildlife advocates are wrong in doing the same for different and selfless motives?  “No rancher ever saw a blade of grass that he thought was better suited to wildlife instead of cattle.”  Why would you write such an irrelevant statement in a thread about feral equids?  It is also an incorrect statement.  Do you imagine that Larry Haverfield in Logan, County Kansas who has fought and sued to keep prairie dogs on his ranch so that the Fish and Wildlife Service could reintroduce black-footed-ferrets doesn’t want to share his grass with wildlife?  Your statement that “horses and cattle….” are “all of a piece” is nonsensical.  But you then correctly state that cattle don’t belong any more that do wild horses.  A patient is suffering from prostate cancer and tooth decay.  The urologist deals with one problem, the dentist with the other.  Both are diseases but neither is related and they are not “all of a piece.”  Why is this simple fact so difficult for you to understand?

 

“Sustainable wild horse management.”  Why should alien, feral livestock be sustained at all?  Should we also sustain in the wild hogs, mute swans, starlings, goats, snakeheads, abandoned house cats, abandon dogs?

 

“Let's get rid of the cows; then let's talk about wild horses.”  You cannot be serious.  If you believe that this is politically possible you are hopelessly naive?  Cattle are a business.  Wild horses--aka “mustangs” are a myth.  What’s more, your logic is warped.  Should we not talk about, say, endangered species recovery until we have cured global warming?

 

 


I

Wild horses etc.

Submitted by Robert Hoskins (not verified) on Sun, 07/26/2009 - 20:09.

Well, Ted, as my Greek philosophy professor at Chapel Hill used to say, "you could say that, but you'd be wrong."
Bottom line--we could get rid of every wild horse on the western range and it wouldn't make a ha'penny's worth of difference for the overall ecological problem, which is severely livestock-damaged range.  (See Debra L. Donahue's The Western Range Revisited, Un. of Oklahoma Press, 1999, or George Wuerthner's Welfare Ranching, Island Press, 2001).  No way around that problem, no matter how much you want to try.  Both politically and ecologically, cattle and wild horses and wildlife are inextricably linked, but the critical path for problem solution is cattle.  Rationally and logically speaking, in a conservation campaign it makes sense to address fundamental rather than peripheral problems, which suck up valuable campaign resources, and quite frankly, the horse problem is a peripheral problem to that of cattle, by at least two orders of magnitude measured in numbers. That is a rational and logically supportable conclusion.  If we can implement a political solution for cattle, which is get them off the public lands--and to do that, we'll have to destroy or damage the political power of the industry to control land use--then we'll be able to implement a political solution for horses.  With $20 gas coming, maybe there'll be a use for horses in our economy again. My own mustangs are working horses, not pleasure.  If I wanted pleasure, I'd get a Tennessee Walker.  We don't solve the cattle problem, it won't matter what happens with wild horses.  It really won't. 
Now, why isn't that clear?
Let's take your issues in turn:
1)  Here in Wyoming, the WGFD is most certainly deliberately and artificially deflating ungulate populations in response to the demand of ranchers/landowners for fewer elk, deer, and pronghorn, primarily through late season cow-calf/doe-fawn hunting seasons; these hunts used to be called "depredation hunts," where a hunter got on a list and when a rancher whined about too many XYZ on his "propity" in December, January, February, or March, maybe April, then G&F called that hunter to come shoot an XYZ.  Lot's of XYZs have been shot over the years; you can't have wildlife taking grass out of the mouths of cows, can you.  (Same issue with horses).  Here in the Upper Wind River Valley, from 1998-2003 G&F ran a deliberate herd reduction program on the Wiggins Fork Herd because Steve Gordon at the Diamond G complained about too many elk on his ranch in the Dunoir.  Over that five years, we elk hunters targeted an additional 1500 antlerless elk.  Is that not a deliberate deflation of numbers by targeting the reproductive capacity of the herd?  Of course it is.  Surely, you're not going to claim that these late hunting seasons aren't occurring; and when you admit they are occuring, you are logically bound to admit that they are occurring to artificially deflate ungulate numbers as the ranchers demand.  It's part of the G&F tithe to the ranchers--a tithe that comes out of my hunting and fishing license fees, something to which I object mightily.  As for natural carrying capacity, from a strictly technical, scientific standpoint, we in fact don't know what the ecological carrying capacity is for various herds, for the simple reason that  G&F has been so heavily controlling them through hunting for so long in accordance with rancher perceptions of "overabundance" that carrying capacity has become largely a social, rather than ecological, concept.  When we say elk are over "over objective" here in Wyoming, what we're actually saying is that elk numbers are above an arbitrary limit set largely by ranchers and landowners and not the public in accordance with ecological data.  I've been watching this objective setting process for the 17 years I've lived in Wyoming; it's no secret.  I just don't like it.  My own considered view is that the ecological carrying capacity for wild ungulates here in NW Wyoming is a good deal higher than the oligarchically set objectives, even in the presence of wolves, which themselves are so heavily controlled that we have no clear idea how many packs the habitat and prey base could support.  Every time a wolf gets in "trouble," somebody shoots it.  How's that for pack stability?  In any case it is precisely this fact of deliberate deflation of elk numbers to meet an artificial carrying capacity set by the livestock industry that confounds the claims from G&F, ranchers, outfitters, and hunters about the impact of wolves on elk throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.  Having studied wolves and wolf control in Canada, and having some facility with various ecological concepts, I see no evidence that wolves are "regulating" elk anywhere, and quite frankly, I think the evidence for predator regulation of prey, at least in terran ecosystems, is pretty minimal.  It really is more bottom up than top down.  It's a lot more complex than people want to believe, whether pro or anti-conservation.  Environment and habitat regulate prey, with predators in a largely supporting role, with some exceptions.  It's different for hunters, because hunting tends to be so specifically targeted.  In other words, hunters do tend to regulate their prey.  And here in Wyoming and the West, they're doing so primarily due to the demands of ranchers for fewer elk (not to mention deer and pronghorn).  This is an indisputable fact.  Whitetail deer in the mid-west and east are a different matter.  I make no claim about that situation, not having studied it.  I do recall from growing up in rural North Carolina in the late 50s and 60s that hunting whitetails took enormous skill, since there were hardly any deer at all, they having been shot out long before, mostly by farmers to protect crops.  As in Faulkner's "The Bear," you found your game in the sun-dappled impenetrable thickets along the rivers and streams, and nowhere else.
2)  I most certainly am serious about "get rid of cows, then talk about horses."  I spent a numbers of years as an Army Special Forces officer.  I've seen politics that would sear all your elk caddis flies and your tippets too, not to mention warp your fancy Vietnamese bamboo rods.  Naive?  Hardly.  However, since cows are no less a myth than wild horses, aside from being pretty bad economics as well as ecology, and since cows really are more destructive than horses--I do live here, after all, and can see it for myself--I don't intend to capitulate to the Stockgrowers the way Audubon and the other sclerotic big name enviro groups have.  I've given up on them all.  Collaboration; isn't that a word from France after May, 1940?  It's one thing to talk about getting rid of cows in a glossy magazine full of corporate advertising--how many of those corporations own cattle ranches, I wonder?  It's another thing to actually do something about it, as the Western Watersheds Project is doing, lawsuit by lawsuit, while Audubon and the Nature Conservancy are sponsoring laughable "Thank A Rancher" billboard campaigns in Wyoming.
3)  Actually, I never said I support wild horse "conservation" a la the Horse Mafia, did I?  Just because I "own" mustangs doesn't mean I think we should just ignore them on the range.  I myself have taken on quite a personal financial burden in adopting mustangs, little enough though it is to the scale of the problem, such as it is.  Doing my own little part in managing them because they really are the best "breed" for the mountains.  What I said, and say again, is that it's simply a waste of time to make them a priority because they aren't the real problem.  That was Ken Cole's point, and it's a good one, especially for working conservationists with only so much time and resources for action.  Solving the range problem is not contingent on solving the wild horse problem.  In the scale of things, horses are a minor problem.  The true problem is the oligarchical control that the livestock industry wields over land and land use for its own selfish purposes, causing still untold ecological damage.  With the status quo, all controlling wild horses accomplishes is to strengthen the status quo--ranchers fully in charge of the BLM, and even more cows on the public domain, since AUMs reflect cash value.  To hell with that.  My statement about the blade of grass is most certainly relevant to the wild horse question, since it's to deny wild horses those blades of grass that the livestock industry is doing all it can to control wild horses (not to mention wildlife).  Quite frankly, if you take a blade of grass out of a wild horse's mouth, do you really think it's going to go into an elk, deer, pronghorn, or bighorn's mouth?  Not if the rancher can help it.  It's going  to go into a cow's mouth.  In a very real sense, the problem of wild horses and wild game is the same--the cow.  Politically, horses and big game rise or fall together, because they have one common enemy.  If you don't see that point, maybe it's your own intellect that's lagging, not mine. I'm not in the habit of spouting nonsense or charging off on illogical tangents.
4)  It really bugs me when rancher apologists trot out their favorite individual stewards of the land.  I'll simply note that all apologists seem to have are their favorite individuals, like you have Larry Haverfield, but we never quite get to the question of the stewardship of the collectivity--of ranchers as a whole.  For the collectivity, their land stewardship is pretty dismal, not to mention greedy, and the cattle culture simply will not tolerate improvement, since improvement would cost them something.  That's why these guys and gals always have "outstretched palms," as Aldo Leopold called them.  My good friend George Wuerthner, among others, has written widely on what's wrong with the livestock industry.  Having studied the topic for some time, and having dealt with it in the trenches for a long time, I've not found George's findings incorrect or irrelevant.
So, once again, as an experienced campaigner, it's clear to me that all this emphasis on wild horses serves only to divert peoples' attention from the real problems--cows and the oligarchic livestock industry that spreads cows over the public domain and leaves both  wildlife and wild horses slim pickings indeed.  That was also Ken's point.  Neither he nor I denied that wild horses are having a negative impact on the public lands, but compared to that of cattle, it's clearly negligible--as I said before, it's at least two orders of magnitude less than cattle, measured in numbers.  The ecological impact of cattle is nearly incalculable.  It makes no sense to me to complain about wild horses when a considerable part of their ecological impact is the political pressure brought to bear on the BLM to manage wild horses as undesirable livestock, denying them range and water, while pretty much allowing cows to wander about the public domain, not to mention Forest Service lands, as if they were wildlife, because that's what the ranchers want.  No interference in cattle "management." But I don't call turn out in June and round up in September or October management.  I do call it negligence.
As for the so-called wild Horse Mafia, I do wish they were better attuned to the ecological facts.  But at least they seem to understand the politics of cows.  You want to beat up on someone, I'd recommend beating up on the livestock industry, not the wild Horse Mafia.
Yrs,
RH
 
 
 
 

Read My Sacred Cows and Welfare Ranching

Submitted by Ted Williams on Sun, 07/26/2009 - 22:08.

Robert: Why are you on this ridiculous kick?  Getting rid of the horses on fragile desert land too arid to support even cattle would make a huge difference for native wildlife.  Your Greek philosophy professor doubtless understood that calling someone wrong doesn’t make them wrong.  Talk to the same wildlife professionals I interviewed in the article and you will be told the truth.  You didn’t read my “Sacred Cows” did you? If you had you'd have realized that George Wuerthner’s “Welfare Ranching” was my major source.  You can’t make a case that cattle and feral equids are “linked” merely by repetition.  Let’s hear some evidence.  But you don’t have any because there is none.  “Why isn’t that clear?” you ask.  Because your have offered no evidence, merely verbiage.  You could not have picked worse example than Wyoming to attempt to make a case that ungulates are being “artificially deflated.”  Instead of balancing ungulates to the habitat Wyoming has opted for feed lots.  As a result they have gross overpopulations and disease.  Rancher Gordon may have complained about too many elk, but just because a rancher complained doesn’t mean there aren’t too many elk.  There are way, way too many elk in Wyoming and other Western states, even Montana.  “A deliberate deflation” is precisely what wildlife and even the elk themselves need, especially in Wyoming.  With all due respect I’ll trust the peer-reviewed research of trained wildlife professionals over your “own considered view.”  Who said wolves are “regulating elk”?  They’re not.  Neither are hunters.  That’s the problem

 

Disney and how it can ruin sound wildlife management Management

Submitted by WRO (not verified) on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 01:31.

Ted,
Good article, reading this has opened my eyes to the illogical unedcuated behavior of the horse mafia. Armed with nothing but feelings and misguided anthropromorphism (sp) they continue to thrive. I have seen the damage done first hand by wild horses in the desert and mountains in areas sans cattle and sheep. Most of your "informed" posters on this thread have not. Its sad, wild horses are a plague and deserve the austrailian model which is the most humane btw. One well placed bullet and a trip to the slaughterhouse would be a good solution to this problem.

Horse Non-Sense

Submitted by Patricia M. Fazio (not verified) on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 18:55.

“Horse Sense” was published in Audubon magazine’s “Incite” section (September-October 2006, pp. 36-43), regarding wild horses in North America http://www.audubonmagazine.org/incite/incite0609.html. When it came out, this piece caused a great deal of up-roar among wild horse enthusiasts... but that, in fact, was its purpose... to "incite." However, while this opinion piece generated a lot of heat, it created little light. We, as readers, need to separate scientific fact from personal opinion. Opinion is not science. Science is not opinion. Neither do opinion pieces nor blogs always serve to educate people (with some exception) but more often they mislead the reader. Civility between those who post on blogs (frequently with an online tag) can deteriorate to an alarming degree, when blog gatekeepers fall asleep at the wheel or wave the Freedom of Speech flag. 
Forwarding the theory that horses are a native wildlife species in North America seems to bring out extreme rage in those who choose to disagree. Just why this is so would make a fascinating dissertation research project for an intellectually well-equipped psychology major. I hypothesize that wild horse activists generate more hatred than the horses themselves. Too, imbroglios often arise from a distinct cultural divide, as well as from conflicting values. "East is East... West is West, and never the 'twain shall meet." It's "Them danged Easterners, telling us what to do again." Could this division also stem from a divergent definition of "emotion?" Emotion in Wyoming is defined as irrationality, instability, whackoism, or an unbalanced, unrealistic mind-set. Compassion, kindness, love, caring, sympathy, empathy, helping, working together for a common good... All that is nonsense. Cowboy up... Let men be REAL men. No wonder our state mental health system is rated "F" by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and why we are consistently in the top four states for adult and teen suicide. Attitudes toward animal welfare follow the culture. The correlation is clear. When kindness and compassion are deluted, a population eats its own young.
Argument is not a negative thing. In fact, it is the backbone of our American democratic and academic systems. Just watch C-SPAN or C-SPAN2, when Congress is in session. However, even in the hallowed halls of the U.S. House and Senate, argumentation is not always data-driven. The ROAM bill (H.R. 1018, Restoring Our American Mustangs Act) is under attack by wild horse haters, and the term "feral" is becoming a household word for detractors. Well... I have some data-driven news. Wild horses are not "weeds." They are native wildlife in North America. The peer-reviewed data, based on mitochondrial-DNA and paleontological evidence is irrefutable. If you wish to refute this, may we please examine your refereed papers? We have ours... neatly in place... stacked up alphabetically... filed in our filing cabinets... waiting in our libraries for a good read. 
And finally, we see a new angle being used by wild horse detractors... I call it the "ecological gap" argument. As genetic data grows firmer for endemic status, the "feral horse" followers feel they need to hook onto the period after horse extinction (13,000-11,000 BP), when horses were not present on the American landscape, that is, until Columbus returned them to the New World in 1493. The "gap" idea states that the ecosystem changed drastically during this extinct period and, thus, horses returned to a completely different environment. Wrong, again... Vegetation communities did migrate north during late-Pleistocene global warming, but various ecosystems stayed intact. And, yes, original horse predators had become extinct... but how does any of this alter the genetic makeup of the horse?  It does not. Show me your data? I have advocated, for 31 years, that BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program should be data-driven, not moderated by the agricultural and big game communities. The program has now become a sham and a shame, driven into the ground, and designed to fail. We need a whole new approach. We shall let you have your fish and game, if you will let us have our horses. I wonder... How many species of fish and game are stocked non-natives?
Patricia M. Fazio, Ph.D., Statewide Coordinator, Wyoming Wild Horse Coalition, Cody.
 
 
 
 

“Pique and Despair”

Submitted by Ted Williams on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 20:24.

Patricia: I do not know what kind of a  “doctor” you are.   But I do know you’re not a wildlife biologist or ecologist.  “Pique and despair” (not “extreme rage”) are the correct modifiers for those of us perpetually confronted with the asinine claim that the feral livestock you call “mustangs” are “native.”  Pique at the dishonesty of phonies and BS artists such as that seen in the screed of the pseudo scientist you attempted to post here.  Despair at the ecological illiteracy exhibited by the American public, including you.  There is not a shred of “peer-reviewed data” that remotely indicates horses are native to North America.  The species of native equid that went extinct with the rest of the ice-age megafauna was significantly different than the species of feral livestock that now pollute our wildlife habitat.  The difference is roughly that between a mastodon and an African elephant.  By your logic African elephants are “native” to North America.  Cheetahs were present on this continent.  Is it your “peer-reviewed” contention that they also are “native”?  “We shall let you have your fish and game, if you will let us have our horses.”  That statement alone illustrates your ecological illiteracy.  Feral horses preclude fish and game.  That’s the whole problem.  Read my piece; and pay attention not to what you wrongly imagine are “opinions” but to the statements and data offered by the many wildlife professionals I quoted at length.  Finally, allow me to enlighten you about “Incite.”  The title of my column was created a quarter century ago by Les Line.  Despite your notions, it is beneficial to “incite” people to thought and action and, in the case of feral equid proliferation, anger.  Also it is not an “opinion” column.  If you will read it, you will see that it is environmental reporting albeit with a point of view.  And if an author doesn’t know enough about his subject to have a point of view, why should readers pay attention to him?  Of course, the piece caused an “uproar” among the horse mafia; it contained facts they didn’t want to know.

Should we reintroduce Elephants as well Patty?

Submitted by WRO (not verified) on Wed, 07/29/2009 - 14:21.

They went extinct around the same time as the Native horses, perhaps we should add them? With the predators going extinct it allows them to have an unregulated population at the detriment to true native wildlife and ecosystems. If you thought  logically instead of emotionally, you would recognize that. Feral cats are cute little buggers too, but hell on the ecosystem;  they all deserve no quarter. As for the non-native fish and wildlife, many are working at this very moment to get rid of them across the West.  I got a better idea, why don't you take your horses and we'll keep our native ecosystems..

Horse Non-Sense 2

Submitted by Patricia M. Fazio (not verified) on Wed, 07/29/2009 - 18:23.

Ted...
I will stop posting here and now, as I don't seem to be getting through the blood-brain barrier, and I am not appreciative of attempts to depreciate me, my credentials, or my scientific abilities. However, may I simply add that we, the "Academic Horse Mafia," have peer-reviewed papers, education, and experience aplenty to support our position that wild horses are native wildlife in North America. If the American Museum of Natural History agrees, I wonder what it would take for you and other "neigh-sayers" to lift the concrete defense fence you have all erected. Should you wish copies of papers we have produced, feel free to communicate with me via my e-mail address, and I will send them as attachments. Others may call me at (307) 587-3353 to obtain these articles.

I attempted to post shorter versions of these papers, with Literature Cited, on this blog, but they were "flushed," as you call it. However, I do work closely with a Cornell-educated reproductive physiologist and equine geneticist, Dr. Jay F. Kirkpatrick, Director, The Science and Conservation Center, ZooMontana, Billings. Doc Kirkpatrick has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers. We have been working on the horse as native hypothesis since  2003 and racheting up the theory as time goes by. I assure you, we are not going to stop, just because individuals with lesser qualifications than ourselves choose to attack us for political, not scientific reasons.
I ask, once more, where are your refereed papers to prove YOUR assertions? I am especially interested in the long-held belief of wildlife ecologists, wildlife biologists, and sportsmen, that wild horses damage the ecosystem disproproportionately to other "native" wildlife or even cattle. I have yet to see a valid study on this purported effect of "pest horses" on range and riparian areas. If you can give me even one citation, I would be appreciative. Casual observation does not count. I am seeking hard data, as a long-time field biologist, range scientist, and animal scientist.
Patricia M. Fazio, Ph.D., Statewide Coordinator
WYOMING WILD HORSE COALITION
Cody
 
 

Your posts will not be missed

Submitted by Ted Williams on Wed, 07/29/2009 - 19:33.

Patricia: Your posts will not be missed by any person who advocates and understands native wildlife.  “Peer-reviewed papers” by what peers?  Other ecological illiterates?  The American Museum of Natural History does NOT allege that feral equids are “native.”  On the contrary, it correctly reports that: “Spanish brought these animals to North America in the 1500s.”  No we do not “wish copies” of the rubbish you have hatched.  I have read the drivel issuing from Jay Kirkpatrick.  This is the guy who once tried to convince me and Audubon magazine that white-tailed deer can be controlled in the field with chemicals.  Supposedly, this would preclude the need to hunt them.  Right.  I’m glad you termed his and your bizarre notion that feral equids are “native” as a “hypothesis.”  Webster’s College Dictionary defines a “hypothesis” as “a mere assumption or guess.”  In this case it’s an asinine guess, as I have attempted to explain to you.  Where are my “refereed papers to prove” that abandoned livestock AREN’T native?  What sane, sober person would conduct such an idiotic study?  That’s like conducting a study to “prove” that it gets dark when the sun goes down.

Heffalumps and Woozels, Oh My!

Submitted by KarlBob (not verified) on Wed, 08/12/2009 - 13:23.

Actually, there was a serious proposal published in Nature to relocate some African elephants, camels, big cats, and other large mammals to North America, to replace the herds exterminated by humans. The Nature article was cited online by New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7862-elephants-and-lions-unleashed-on-north-america.html
 
So yes, there are scientists (ecologists and conservation biologists) advocating the return of extinct large mammals to North America. Politically speaking, it's not going to happen, but the idea did not originate with ecological illiterates.
 
I agree that feral horses and domestic cattle damage native North American habitats and wildlife. Without humans, neither species would be here today. I just wanted to point out that the elephants-as-surrogate-mastodons idea has been seriously proposed.

Insane Idea

Submitted by Ted Williams on Wed, 08/12/2009 - 15:23.

Thanks KarlBob.  But I don’t agree that “the idea did not originate with ecological illiterates.”  This idea is insane, and no matter what their diplomas say, these guys are wackos.  As you’re probably aware, there are plenty of good projects that have nothing to do with the asinine idea of returning alien relatives of extinct megafauna to North America.  These projects are genetic banks to PREVENT extinction in the animals’ native habitats.  I have raised money for an “Asian turtle bank” in which grievously endangered Asian turtles (the Chinese eat them because they think they’ll make them live longer) are being bred here for future release in Asia.

 

Very well said,

Submitted by Ted Williams on Fri, 08/14/2009 - 10:52.

Very well said, Retrieveman.  Actually the extinct horse was a substantially different species than modern horses.

horses

Submitted by Retrieverman (not verified) on Fri, 08/14/2009 - 11:10.

Also, if they think that free range domestic horses are the same species as Equus lambei, then why is it not also valid that we develop the following "wolf " reintrodruction program. We go through every dog pound in America and take all the big strong dog and then turn them loose. Aren't dogs and wolves the same species, as all DNA studies seem to indicate?
Now, I'm sure that virtually all  wolf experts would be incensed. Dogs and wolves don't behave the same way when released into the wild (which is quite obvious.) Dogs very often can't survive unless they have humans to scavenge off of, and they are also a hazard to public health because they are much, much more likely to attack people and carry diseases. They also form megapacks around human settlements that you would never see in wolves.
In the same vein, we don't know whether Equus lambei behaved anything like domestic horse. They seemed to be able to forage in much colder climates than domestic horses ever have. The specimen on which all of these genetic studies are based was found in the Yukon-- which is why it's called the Yukon wild horse. It probably had specific adaptations to the Beringian steppe climate that the domestic horse never will have. After all, all attempts to use domestic horses in Arctic exploration were dismal failures. I've read of accounts of early settlers to the northern part of Labrador and how hard it was to keep horses in that part of the world.
I think it is valid to think of Equus lambei as a chronotype for Equus ferus, but to assume that the modern animal could be replaced for the chronotype is a major leap of faith. It's just like saying that feral domestic dogs could replace wolves. It's just nonsense and romantic bloviation.
 
 

Exactly!

Submitted by Ted Williams on Fri, 08/14/2009 - 14:53.

Exactly, Retrieveman.  That was the point I was trying to make with my elephant/mastodon analogy.  But try telling this to the horse mafia.  You can’t reason with these people.  It’s like a religious cult.

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