The War Against the Horse

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_war_against_the_horse_20100504/


On June 22, two men will go on trial for allegedly killing five wild horses in Nevada. The federally protected horses were gunned down in December at a time when the debate over the plight of the country’s mustangs had reached a fever pitch. Last week, the men accused of the killing appeared in a Reno courtroom and pleaded not guilty to the crime, as a crew of citizens who have devoted much of their lives to defending wild horses looked on.

It is a sad fact of American life that this horse killing is not an anomaly. In fact, such episodes have been playing out across our land for decades. As I learned while working on my book “Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West,” a two-pronged war against wild horses is under way and at this moment the country’s great icon of freedom is losing.

One front in this war involves agencies tasked with wild horse management, primarily the Bureau of Land Management. It recently carried out a mandated although deadly mustang roundup in Nevada during which foals were harried by helicopter over rough terrain until their hooves apparently fell off and other horses later died of stress and exhaustion.

The other front involves lone operators who venture into the wilderness and kill wild horses—which is illegal, although arrests are rarely made and when they are, the cases often fall apart. Many of these incidents have occurred in Nevada, where more than half of the country’s wild horses still roam, having gone there like others to hide. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” may be a cute reflection of the local condition, but behind that is another statement that surfaced in an official piece of state travel literature several years ago: “Seize life and throttle it like a rag doll.”

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As a result, ours is a history that includes a long list of mustang killings; I’ll skip the incidents that occurred before federal protection went into place in 1971 (the law that was unraveled under the Bush administration and remains in tatters, although a new law called the ROAM Act—Restore Our American Mustangs—awaits attention in Senate committee after passing the House last year by a wide margin). But for the record, let this be known: In 1973, in Howe, Idaho, ranchers on snowmobiles and saddle horses chased a herd of 32 mustangs for 45 days, driving them into a narrow canyon and trapping them on a shelf. Some jumped off the cliff to their deaths. Others panicked and jammed their hoofs into rocks, breaking their legs. “We didn’t know what to do,” one rancher said. “We disposed of them by cutting their legs off. I mean it was gruesome.” A few days later, the dead and mutilated horses were found at the foot of the cliff.

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But perhaps most heartening of all is that as I travel the country and talk about our war against the wild horse, I have learned that the mustang is the one issue, if I may reduce this magnificent creature to an overused word, that cuts across all party lines. In fact, it is through the wild horse that I see America and it is through the wild horse that Americans of all persuasions are coming together.
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[TwilightGardener]

1. That is sickening.

[KittyWampus]

2. It's curious that the symbol of wild America is actually a fairly recent introduction

and not a native species.

As for the carnage? If you're going to cull herds, do it responsibly. What's reported here is indeed sickening.