Plenty of room for all that cattle, but horses are overgrazing?
This Cliven Bundy issue has so gotten out of hand and even Sean Hannity and U.S. (R) Senator Dean Heller have defended Bundy as a patriot. BTW, too late to back peddle now, you're out of the closet!
Bundy is a Nevada rancher who illegally grazed his cattle for 20 years on thousands of acres of public land, totaling up to $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. What many people are overlooking and should be outraged about is that American taxpayers are footing the bill. Oh yes, I've heard that the IRS should be closed down and their terrorists incarcerated. But that's future pondering as I wonder how this country will function without our tax dollars!
As distasteful as BLM appears, they and the U.S. Forest Service manage approximately 250 million acres of public land. And what do they do to manage the public land, you might ponder? Fire and resource management, trail and roads, parks and recreation, plus educational and scientific research, to name a few.
It seems that one month's grazing on federal land is a fee of $1.35 per cow/calf, which is substantially below the present-day cost of $16-$20 per month to graze livestock on private land. So if the ranchers refuse to pay the grazing fees, the direct loss to taxpayers is around $123 million a year. According to Wild Earth Guardians, the indirect but related costs push the total to as high as $1 billion, all to produce less than 3% of the nation’s beef supply.
The ranchers are lobbying BLM to remove the wild horses at the public's expense. Their claim is that horses are overpopulated and degrade the land upon which the cattle graze. However BLM's estimate of 33,780 free-roaming wild horses and 6,825 burros seems almost insignificant when compared to the millions of cattle and sheep that graze at the public’s expense. Furthermore, BLM allocates less than 20 % of forage for wild horses, but over 80% going to cattle and sheep!
Yes the rangeland is suffering, but if the truth be known it is due to overgrazing of cows and sheep. The horses are only affecting the greed of wealthy ranchers.
Wildlife ecologist Craig Downer, states: "wild horses are flight animals that exist in family bands, ranging widely from diverse riparian areas, where they drink before moving on to forage in areas sometimes as many as 15 miles away. There’s a reason helicopters are needed to round them up. In addition to their environmentally efficient migratory patterns, wild horses repair western ecosystems by not lingering in riparian areas, consuming dry forage that would otherwise ignite destructive brush fires, and distributing undigested seeds through their manure, which reseed grassy plains, deserts and mountains. Additionally, their feces add significant humus to the soil, making it more nutrient-rich and water-absorptive".
Anyone who has spent much time around cattle and horses should know there is a big the difference in behavior between bovine and equine. Cattle will drink, forage, defecate and urinate in the same area.
Nonetheless, ranchers are focused on removing wild horses and pretty much refuse to cut back on the large number of cattle grazing on public land. And I guess as long as Americans feast on the almighty hamburger, more and more cattle are needed.
Well, as a native of the American West and lover of horses, I take great offense to Bundy being made into an icon of an American patriot and his posse the heroes like with Paul Revere.
