The Deford test- a society is judged by how they treat their beaches and their animals

[underpants]

In this Sunday, July 13, 2009 photo, a helicopter pilot rounds up wild horses from the Fox & Lake Herd Management Area in Washoe County, Nev. Dozens of wild horse advocates plan to go before a federal advisory panel here on Monday, Dec. 7, 2009 to try to persuade public land managers to change their plan to relocate thousands of free-roaming mustangs from the West to preserves elsewhere.
(AP Photo/Brad Horn)


BLM officials feel the appropriate number of wild horses and burros that can be supported on the range is about 26,600.

The agency said last year it would have to consider destroying wild horses because of their escalating numbers and the costs of caring for them. But earlier this year, Salazar said the BLM, a part of the Interior Department, would instead ship 11,500 to 25,000 horses from the range to pastures and corrals in the Midwest and East.

The exact destinations have not been decided, but Salazar believes Plains states would make the most sense in terms of water and forage, said Don Glenn, chief of the BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program. He said Salazar also wants at least one site in the East.

Horse advocates accuse the government of grossly inflating mustang numbers, saying they believe the count is more like 15,000 horses in the wild. They'e seeking an independent analysis of the population.

The relocation plan is part of a long-running feud over wild horses in the West, where mustangs have roamed ever since they arrived with Spanish settlers centuries ago.

Ranchers view wild horses as a menace to their grazing land, and the killing of them was allowed until 1971. The government has made numerous efforts of its own over the years to control the population, including using a contraceptive vaccine. But capturing and injecting mares with the vaccine one at a time has proved costly and time-consuming.

In recent years, the BLM has rounded up and relocated wild horses to government-funded holding facilities in and out of the West.

Helicopters are used to drive the mustangs toward cowboys with lassos. The cowboys then put the horses onto trucks.

The California-based Defense of Animals strongly opposes roundups, arguing that the horses are an integral part of the ecosystem and that using helicopters can traumatize, injure or kill the animals.

The BLM spent about $50 million this year to feed, corral and otherwise manage the nation's wild horses, up from $36 million last year. Without contraception or other such measures, mustang herds can double in size about every four years, authorities say.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/08/us/AP-US-Wild-Horses.html

[BrklynLiberal]

1. The hubris of man, in assuming he has dominion over all other creatures on this planet, will

eventually come back to bite us on the ass.

[rd_kent]

2. So, are you for or against this?

Whats the point of the post?

[underpants]

3. The point is......

this is ridiculous

aside from the history (because there is no money in that) or the moral issues (no money) is that this revolves around the cattle and sheep industries who want to use the land at preposterously low grazing rates which of course are set by the herd they own on DC. Horses don't do near the damage that cows and sheep do to the land.