IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING WILD HORSES, BY CRAIG DOWNER: False Claim #1: Wild horses and burros are not native to North America; they are just exotic species. Most of the wild horses and burros that roam our public lands are descendants of the horses who helped the pioneers settle the American West over 150 years ago. Others came over with the Spanish Conquistadors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But of crucial importance is the fact that the DNA of all wild horses and burros around the world originated in North America. Wild horses and burros inhabited North America for nearly sixty million years as did the entire horse family, Equidae. This is their “cradle of evolution.” Though some educated authorities claim the horse disappeared several thousand years ago, this has been called into question by some noted biologists and paleontologists who point to fossil finds and other evidence indicating that horses were never completely absent from North America. (You can read Chapter I of The Wild Horse Conspiracy as an eBook preview.) Even if you assume that the modern horse vanished for a few to several thousand years, this would be a drop in the bucket compared with its vast ascent in North America. Remember the American Indian saying: ”the grasses remember the wild horses,” for there is so much wisdom in this! False Claim #2: Wild horses and burros damage our ecosystem. This is utterly false! Such propaganda has, no doubt, been created by the anti-wild-horse and -burro groups, including their traditional enemies, particularly ranchers. Thus they invent a pseudo-justification for getting rid of wild horses and burros in the wild. However cleverly disguised, this is not motivated by a quest for greater truth or justice but to satisfy greedy interests aimed at exploiting nature. Forgotten is the natural place of the returned native horse and burro cousin species in North America and the many ecological services they offer, as semi-nomadic, post-gastric digesters. In order to substantiated their false claims, many wild horse/burro enemies, including government officials, take pictures of wild horses/burros while they are roaming through areas whose vegetation and soils, streams and riverbanks have been degraded by cattle and sheep. Then they present these pictures as “evidence” that the wild horses/burros are damaging the ecosystem. Even if you are not a scientist or don’t have the time to research, gather, and analyze all of the information and data on this issue, just use your intuition and ponder the following question: Who is causing the massive damage to our public lands ecosystems? Is this the 20,000 wild horses and burros with their post-gastric digestive systems and who are perfectly suited for many regions of North America particularly in the vast open spaces of the West where they restore the soils and seed many species of plants? These animals constantly move about, often roaming hundreds of miles in a week, thus, more evenly distributing their grazing pressure on the land than do the domesticated cattle and sheep. Is it not rather the many millions of cattle and sheep who are given the hog’s share of the forage on the vast majority of our public lands, including in the very areas that are principally designated for the wild horses and burros?! Possessing no upper incisors, cattle and sheep often rip the grasses and other herbs from the ground using their tongues, lower teeth and upper hard palates; and they often cluster in large numbers and camp upon many western stream- or lake-side habitats which they over-graze, over-trample and pollute. False Claim #3: There are too many wild horses and burros and they are multiplying too fast because they have no real predators or other controls. As the architects of the Wild Horse & Burro Act of 1971 knew very well, the carrying capacity for wild horses in the herd areas and territories on our public lands is relatively high. As recently as 1980, the total number of wild horses and burros was 60,000, but due to subterfuge, this relatively small number was branded as overpopulated and targeted for drastic reduction, precisely because wild horse and burro enemies were placed in charge of our nation’s wild horse and burro program and rightful BLM (Herd Areas) and USFS (Territories) public lands. When the Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Act of 1971 was passed, there were about 34 thousand wild horses and burros (Sussman, ISPMB). This was when Americans of all stripes justifiably considered the wild horses and burros as being in grave danger of disappearing from the American scene. Including citizen activists such as Wild Horse Annie, wildlife ecologists and statesmen, the Act’s conceivers knew these lands could easily support numbers in the 100,000s, even millions. More specifically, they sought to design and allocate manageable Herd Areas/Territories that would support long-term viable and naturally adapted and balanced wild horse/burro populations. Our nation’s wild horse and burro program was to be based on a scientific evaluation known as the Soil-Vegetation Inventory Method (see pp. 65-66 of The Wild Horse Conspiracy); and biologists were in the process of fairly and intelligently identifying carrying capacities for each of these manageable Herd Areas/Territories. However when Reagan took over from Carter, this benign program was destroyed by a mentality that had no love for the horses and burros living freely in the natural world nor for restored, wild-equid-containing ecosystems. Mountain lions, wolves, and bears prey upon wild horses and burros, and coyotes are even known to take their very young as well as their very old, and also the sick or dying. But these North American predators have been targeted for elimination from many regions or been held at sub-viable, endangered population levels. In large part, this is done to prop up the public lands ranchers and big game hunters. Yet, it has been proven in places like the Montgomery Pass wild horse herd in California’s Inyo National Forest and Arizona’s Cerbat wild horse herd that puma and other predators naturally limit the wild horse populations. Such limitation has also been observed with the Pryor Mountain wild horses, famous for its creamy white stallion named Cloud. Basically, food, water, shelter, and other basic habitat requirements naturally limit a wild horse or burro population, provided people have the wisdom and patience to allow these animals to fill their natural ecological niches and stabilize their populations as the climax species they are (See Chapter IV). Because of natural checks operating in nature, wild horses and burros can stabilize and come to a harmonious balance within their life community. And this is a beautiful process to observe, with patience, with understanding, with appreciation! Of course, this totally contradicts the misleading, wild and often hysterical claims by wild horse and burro enemies that wild horses and burros multiply uncontrollably, like the boom-and-bust lemmings — a sub-climax species. As the old saying goes: “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Sheer prejudice lies behind the draconian “gathers,” or roundups we are witnessing today. One or more helicopters stampede terrified horses or burros, pushing them to run for several to many miles, causing them to smash their hooves, bones and muscles to pieces on uneven, rocky terrain or to fall into ground-squirrel holes and break their necks, etc. Finally these frantic, desperate animals are penned into small metal corral traps; and it is very common for a number of horses, including pregnant mares and foals, and very old or young colts and fillies, to be badly injured and killed in the process. BLM officials often minimize this suffering; and far more than the reported two percent fatalities occurs, especially if we follow through on subsequent depression, injury, and disease these victimized horses and burros experience after they are so ruthlessly deprived of their natural freedom.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 04:07:57 +0000
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