The self righteous never give up on displaying how they lament over the lost American heritage even as they use their modern tools without regards for those who still feed the rest of the human population.


Minneapolis Star Tribune
Wild horse defenders criticize plan to manage mustangs, urge removal
of cattle in West
By MARTIN GRIFFITH , Associated Press
October 17, 2009
http://www.startribune.com/business/64666982.html?elr=KArksDyycyUtyycyUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

RENO, Nev. - A new federal proposal to manage wild horses is
rekindling debate over another fixture of the Western range: cattle.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last week proposed moving thousands of
mustangs to preserves in the Midwest and East to protect horse herds
and the rangelands that support them.

Interior Department officials had warned that slaughtering some of the
69,000 wild horses and burros under federal control might be necessary
to halt the rising costs of maintaining them, but Salazar said his
plan avoids that.

Many horse defenders and others who had been working to save the
romantic symbols of the American West and might have been expected to
welcome Salazar's solution instead stampeded the other way. They want
Salazar to remove livestock to make room for the mustangs and argue
that cows are the real threat to the range and native wildlife.

"Any proposal to improve horse and burro management in the West should
include removal of domestic livestock from public lands to make way
for horses and burros and wildlife," said Mark Salvo of WildEarth
Guardians based in Santa Fe, N.M. He said too much forage is allocated
to livestock in the arid West.

Wildlife ecologist Craig Downer of Nevada accused Salazar, a former
rancher, of acting on behalf of those who view mustangs as taking
scarce forage away from their cattle herds. Downer contends cattle are
more destructive to the range because they concentrate in high numbers
around water sources instead of grazing over a wider area as wild
horses do.

"Both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have the
right to remove livestock to ensure viable, healthy populations of
wild horses. But they refuse to exercise that," Downer said. "Their
master is primarily these traditional ranching interests."

BLM spokesman Tom Gorey said livestock grazing on the agency's lands
has declined by about 50 percent since 1941, but the agency has no
plans to reduce grazing levels further.

"Livestock grazing is an authorized use of the lands we manage," Gorey
said. "We think we administer the rangeland laws appropriately within
our multiple use mission."

Dan Gralian, president of the Nevada Cattlemen's Association, said
livestock overgrazing no longer is the problem it once was and cattle
don't cause more damage to the range than horses. He said 2.5 million
to 3 million head of livestock graze on public lands, down from 20
million cows and 25 million sheep in 1900.

"My reaction is they (horse advocates) are totally wrong," Gralian
said. "Our public lands today are in better shape than they've been in
100 years or so."

Federal land managers provide no count for the head of livestock
grazing on about 250 million acres of public land. Estimates by
conservation groups vary widely, ranging from 3 million to 8 million.

Chris Heyde of the Washington, D.C.-based Animal Welfare Institute
said he believes little has changed since the release of a 1990
General Accounting Office report that branded livestock as the primary
cause of degraded rangelands.

"People blame the horses, but if left on the ranges as they should be
they're not destructive at all," he said.

About 37,000 wild horses and burros roam on 34 million acres in 10
Western states, about half in Nevada. An additional 32,000 of them are
cared for in government-funded corrals and pastures.

The horses and burros are managed by the BLM and protected under a
1971 law enacted by Congress. But too few of the horses and burros are
being adopted as had been envisioned. Soaring numbers of horses and
costs to manage them that are expected to jump from $36 million last
year to at least $85 million by 2012 have prompted Salazar to propose
a new approach.

The BLM has set a target "appropriate management level" of 26,600
horses in the wild, about 10,000 below the current level. In 1971,
there were 25,000 of the animals on the range.

The wild horses and burros are introduced species. There for should not be put under protection. This might offend some people, but they should just eradicate them like all non-native species.