Posted on 12/24/2009 7:25:05 AM PST by Constitutions Grandchild
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration said Wednesday it is going forward with a contentious plan to round up about 2,500 wild horses in Nevada.
A spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said herds in the Calico Mountains Complex in northwestern Nevada are overpopulated and need to be reduced to protect the horses and the rangelands that support them.
"The current population in the five Calico herd management areas is three times what the range can handle, so this gather will ensure high-quality habitat for the wild horse and burros and other wildlife while protecting the public rangeland from overuse," said spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
His stories inspired my imagination of the "West", along with The Lone Ranger, Tonto, The Cisco Kid and Poncho. Merry Christmas to all my friends at Free Republic and let's keep those memories of our country alive and well.
/facepalm
Congress "solves" this problem nearly every session (although the judge is correct that it is ultimately Congress' responsibility).
Unfortunately, most of these horses will probably end up in Mexico at slaughter plants, and, considering there is a viable alternative of equine birth control. This is typical of our governments inept abilities, which is grossly reflected in the upcoming human health care fiasco.
Guess what the first song I learned was....
Too few of them get adopted.
My father, also a member of the Musician’s Union until the day he died, was probably the piano player. ;-) He taught it to me on our front porch swing while playing his guitar. I believe I learned to sing, before I learned to walk. They tell the story that my first performance was on the bar at Doc’s Blue Ribbon Tavern at the age of 18 months. I was still in diapers, belting out “Five Foot Two”.
They need to be regulated (by hunting or roundup), like any other species... there is a historical reason to keep some of population as they are part of our heritage...
But they are only in this country 400 or so years and are not a part of the natural ecology.
One could make the point that they did exist here 12,000 ago, and they were wiped out at that time along with other mega fauna....either by human means...or some unknown catastrophe....
but these horses are the domesticated species not wild horses like tarpans or Prezwalski wild horses that come from Eurasia...
One point, though certainly not my main interest in this post, is that we have been rounding up mustangs since the early 1900s to reduce the population. My connection is second-hand through my father who was a part of that history. I just loved the stories about the round-ups and my love of horses and the West are simply an outpouring of that time in childhood where all is mystery and wonder and imagination. In my mind, I held on to every buck as my father recounted those stories.
So you want to go out & hunt them as in shooting them? Maybe you want to eat them too? Before this got so out of control we should have done something. We should have gelded some of the males long ago. I don’t favor shooting them nor letting them starve but something needs to be done. I think this is really sad.
We used to use common sense and had a use for them. It worked out nicely. Now, we need an Act of Congress to think for us. This really wasn’t meant to be a divisive post — just an interesting one. Not EVERYTHING is politically driven, sometimes it’s just nice to remember how we were. I really didn’t mean to go to what we’ve devolved to.
You bring back some memories with that! But, I think the Cisco Kid’s cohort spelled his name Pancho! I loved that show, growing up.
BTW, we had a wild horse and donkey sale in my neighborhood a couple of months ago. There were very few animals available (perhaps 10), and you had to pass strict requirements to bid on one. I live in what is known around here as “horse country”, but I notice that fewer and fewer of my neighbors keep horses any more. Too many people have subdivided their land and cut off the riding trails that used to network across property lines by gentlemens’ agreement.
I said they should be regulated like other species by either hunting or roundup...
In Australia, they shoot ‘Brumbies’ as a control.
in America up until the 1960’s they rounded up mustangs and slaughtered them for dogfood.
I pass no judgment on any of these methods. like I said, they are part of our history and need to be here to a certain extent, but not to the extent that they are destroying the range of indigenous species....
Besides these horses, many other horses are starving in private pastures due to lack of food. If they’d allow the export of horse meat to Asia again & re-open the slaughter houses this problem could be solved.
I’m not a horse owner but from what I understand due to the economy the value of horses are minimal these days & that is if you can sell them. It’s hard today to even give a horse away because many people simply can’t afford that luxury anymore.
ridiculous. there is a much more humane way to handle this like you said birth control. geesh if only humans had to endure what these poor animals do.
“nature groans in travail waiting for its own redemption” the bible
My wife and I have horses.
If things get really tough we will kill and eat her horse.
That’s the one that kicked me in the nuts.
A day is coming when you will wish you could have some horse meat.
Mr and Mrs. Herr came running to see if I'd pulled a shelf of canned goods down on my head. I was standing in the middle of the aisle (well-scrubbed hardwood in those days) bellowing like a moose for the loaf with the Kid's picture. I excuse my momentary lapse of good breeding on the fact that I was 3 at the time. Guess that doesn't cut it around here, but it never happened again — I didn't get to go to the store with Daddy anymore to pick up a loaf of bread either. ;-)
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