Cattle vs Horses, the Saga of the New West!

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. 

Wild Horses as Invasive Species Compared to Pythons

Just Send Them to Slaughter!

Well followers, I am totally outraged by how narrow minded, uninformed people can get attention in the news media today. 

Chuck Klosterman’s "The Ethicist" is supposed to be a thought-provoking column in The New York Times magazine.  One of his readers (name omitted but I shall call him Mr. Opinion for want of better names) wrote his opinion of the wild horses as being an invasive species that are not much different from pythons in Florida or the Asian long-horned beetle.

 What I gather from Mr. Opinion's view point is the only reasonable alternative with the horses destroying all the grasslands and ruining the water sources, is to send them to slaughter.  And that needs to be done before they starve in a harsh winter or die of thirst from the summer drought.    

Very logical thinking Mr. Opinion.  Let's ponder this:  wild horses are able to eat and digest native desert plants that are unsuitable for cattle and furthermore, horses favor steep hilly areas.  Unlike a cow that grazes by pulling the grass out by the roots, a horse's teeth are built to clip the grass where it will easily grow back.

Additionally, the horse's digestive system does not fully degrade the vegetation. The pooped out seeds are then able to become replanted and continue growing.   For this very reason, in the 1950's the state of Nevada passed the first wild horse protection law to keep horses on the range to help prevent brush fires.

As for destroying water sources, I beg to differ with Mr. Opinion.  It is a proven fact that cows are the ones who trample, defecate in and destroy water sources.  Horses drink from a water source and then warder off as they graze. 

And in conclusion Mr. Opinion, as far as horses being an invasive species, there is a 25,000 year old horse head fossil that was discovered by one of the Tribal members and can be seen on exhibit at the Pyramid Lake Paiute Museum in Nevada.

  http://wildhorsepreservation.org/wild-horses-and-ecosystem

Foie gras, Straéca or Hamburger

When is a Delicacy to Inhumane for Dinner?

In the news was an interesting controversy that forced the cancellation of an event at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada on February 15th.  It seems that people were upset due to a foie gras tasting at an art museum because the delicacy of duck and geese liver is inhumane to the birds.  They are force fed so that the liver will grow larger. 

However also in Nevada, the town of Elko's county commissioners have voted to give $10,000 to NACO Nevada Association of Counties and the Nevada Farm Bureau Federation toward a suite filed with a federal court in Reno, arguing even though wild horses and burros have long been a part of Nevada’s landscape and heritage, their populations have grossly exceeded appropriate management levels.  Wild horse advocates fear that this is a measure to eliminate more horses and eventually send them to slaughter.  Many questions and rumors have been surfacing about what is actually done with all the horses that BLM has been rounding up over the years--at Tax Payer's expense. 

So I guess it's inhumane to raise fowl for foie gras but not to stampede horses with helicopters and then do who knows what with them.  This really has me pondering!