Oct. 18, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Debate on wild
horses revived
Some say cattle hurt ranges more
By MARTIN GRIFFITH
the Associated
Press
RENO
-- A new federal proposal to manage wild horses is rekindling debate over another fixture of the Western range: cattle.
Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar last week proposed moving thousands of wild horses to preserves in the Midwest and East to protect horse
herds and the rangelands that support them.
Interior
Department officials had warned that slaughtering some of the 69,000 wild horses and burros under federal control might be
necessary to halt the rising costs of maintaining them, but Salazar said his plan avoids that.
Many
horse defenders and others who had been working to save the romantic symbols of the American West and might have been expected
to welcome Salazar's solution instead stampeded the other way. They want Salazar to remove livestock to make room for the
wild horses and argue that cattle are the real threat to the range and native wildlife.
"Any
proposal to improve horse and burro management in the West should include removal of domestic livestock from public lands
to make way for horses and burros and wildlife," said Mark Salvo of WildEarth Guardians based in Santa Fe, N.M. He said too
much forage is allocated to livestock in the arid West.
Wildlife
ecologist Craig Downer of Nevada accused Salazar, a former rancher, of acting on behalf of those who view wild horses as taking
scarce forage away from their cattle herds. Downer contends cattle are more destructive to the range because they concentrate
in high numbers around water sources instead of grazing over a wider area as wild horses do.
"Both
the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have the right to remove livestock to ensure viable, healthy populations
of wild horses. But they refuse to exercise that," Downer said. "Their master is primarily these traditional ranching interests."
BLM
spokesman Tom Gorey said livestock grazing on the agency's lands has declined by about 50 percent since 1941, but the agency
has no plans to reduce grazing levels further.
"Livestock
grazing is an authorized use of the lands we manage," Gorey said. "We think we administer the rangeland laws appropriately
within our multiple use mission."
Dan
Gralian, president of the Nevada Cattlemen's Association, said livestock overgrazing no longer is the problem it once was
and cattle don't cause more damage to the range than horses. He said 2.5 million to 3 million head of livestock graze on public
lands, down from 20 million cattle and 25 million sheep in 1900.
"My
reaction is they (horse advocates) are totally wrong," Gralian said. "Our public lands today are in better shape than they've
been in 100 years or so."
Federal
land managers provide no count for the head of livestock grazing on about 250 million acres of public land. Estimates by conservation
groups vary widely, ranging from 3 million to 8 million.
Chris
Heyde of the Washington, D.C.-based Animal Welfare Institute said he believes little has changed since the release of a 1990
General Accounting Office report that branded livestock as the primary cause of degraded rangelands.
"People
blame the horses, but if left on the ranges as they should be they're not destructive at all," he said.
About
37,000 wild horses and burros roam on 34 million acres in 10 Western states, about half in Nevada. An additional 32,000 of
them are cared for in government-funded corrals and pastures.
