Posted on 08/03/2009 11:45:58 AM PDT by jazusamo
Geld the stallions and you control the breeding. I also own horses and if memory serves correctly, it’s pretty tough to increase the size of your herd without a stallion. I may be wrong but I don’t think so.
Serious failure of logic here: if the wild horses are over-grazing the federal land, then why is the federal government leasing the land to ranchers so that they may graze their cattle?
Horses are on the land 12 months of the year and cattle are on lease land about 6 months of the year.
I don't really have an affinity for one over the other . . . I just see ranchers paying, what, $12/year to graze a cow and a calf? BLM is probably the most corrupt federal agency in existence for that reason.
The "damage to the environment" claim is the worst, coming from people with big, fat dollar signs in their eyes. If they paid anything approaching fair market value to lease that federal land, maybe they would start taking care of it.
the wife of T.Boone Pickens is behind this mess and Pickens is supporting her.
I don’t know the ranches you seem to know, but ranchers and farmers are much better “stewards” of the land than the GOV or cityslickers who want to roar allabout tearing up the land with RVs!
The rancher that leases the land has a vested interest in keeping it in good condition so he can grow his cattle on it for years to come.
Yes, that is so. Many ranches large and small grow hay and alfalfa in the growing season to feed their cattle in the winter months in pens. Believe it or nor they still go out and round them up in the fall.
The lease money that’s paid for grazing cattle is 100% more than what the government gets for feral horses grazing on federal land. In fact these horses are costing the taxpayers millions every year to control them and feed them in BLM pens because they double in numbers about every 4 years.
Something has to be done about them and as is pointed out in the article just increasing land they can graze is not the answer because they’ll continue to grow in numbers. They have no natural predator so that leaves it up to man.
Ranchers not only pay the fees for grazing cattle they improve the federal lands at their expense. They put in section fencing and water holes, guzzlers and truck water to different areas in dry years that also benefit wildlife.
Thanks, I guess that doesn’t surprise me.
Exactly!
For the ranchers who use lease land they have the greatest incentive to keep that land in good condition there is, that's his survival as a rancher.
It's not his land, he doesn't care. He's leasing it. Do you understand the difference?
Because cattle cannot range over the winter months, and need large amounts of food to survive. Yet (most of) the wild horses survive the winter on limited supplies. So clearly, the horses are more destructive. Like I stated, it's a failure of logic.
Oh, and wild horses have natural predators. Where did you come up with the idea that the opposite is true?
If the Federal Government would just get the hell out of the way, and allow the states to manage the populations, it would cost next to nothing to deal with it. Hunters will actually pay for the privilege of managing the population for the state.
My friend, you asked where the cattle were the other six months and I aswered you. You keep moving the goal posts and it’s clear you know not of what you speak.
Here’s a novel idea, why not sell large swaths of federal land to help with the deficit rather than buying up a bunch more?
I’m not the guy who assumes that cattle do less damage to land than horses because they aren’t on it year-round. To me, it sounds like you’ve never seen what a herd of cattle can do in six months.
I agree this should be left up to the states but I believe the biggest cause of the current problem is due to enviro and animal rights nuts. They believe the heritage of having “wild” horses to see, even though they’re not native horses is more valuable than having ranchers lease the land to raise cattle, it’s an excuse to put the ranchers out of business.
One more thing, tell me the part about wild horses not having natural predators, again.
“Range cattle are more destructive to the land than wild horses, by the way”
Sorry, but I think this a very wrong statement. I could get into the design of cattle hooves (split = good for the earth) compared to the design of horse hooves. We could talk about the different grazing styles of cattle and horses (horses pull much more of the plant out of the ground).
I don’t disagree with your overall post, but horses are much more destructive to grasslands and pastures than cattle!
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