The front page of the Sunday, July 20, New York Times includes an article, by Felicity Barringer, headed, "Mustangs Stir a Debate on Thinning the Herd."
Unfortunately the article begins with a focus on arguments from some environmentalists in favor of removing mustangs from federal land. [Note: Thanking the Monkey's Chapter Seven, "The Greenies" makes clear that we cannot assume that all environmental groups are animal advocates.]
Barringer tell us:
"The champions of wild mustangs have long portrayed them as the victims of ranchers who preferred cattle on the range, middlemen who wanted to make a buck selling them for horsemeat and misfits who shot them for sport. But the wild horse today is no longer automatically considered deserving of extensive protections.
"Some environmentalists and scientists have come to see the mustangs, which run wild from Montana to California, as top-of-the-food-chain bullies, invaders whose hooves and teeth disturb the habitats of endangered tortoises and desert birds.
"Even the language has shifted. In a 2006 article in Audubon magazine, wild horses lost their poetry and were reduced to 'feral equids.'''
We learn:
"The federal Bureau of Land Management, the legal custodian of the wild horses and burros, recently proposed euthanization. For years, the bureau has been running the Adopt-A-Horse program, selling mustangs from the range to those who would care for them. But 30,000 once-wild horses were never adopted and are being boarded by the agency at facilities in Kansas and Oklahoma (another 33,000 run wild). As feed and gas grow more expensive, the rate of adoptions plummets."
We hear from Steven L. Davis, an emeritus professor of animal science at Oregon State University, who says: ''Many of the wild horse supporters claim that the horses have a right to be there. I reject that argument. They damage the water holes. They damage the grasses, the shrubs, the bushes, causing negative consequences for all the other plants and critters that live out there.''
But Shelley Sawhook, the president of the American Horse Defense Fund, is also quoted, saying the federal government ''mismanaged the program from the very beginning.'' We read, "She added that 'their proposal to euthanize is a stopgap measure' to cover what she believes is an overly aggressive policy of removing horses from the range for the benefit of cattle interests."
The article continues:
"Accusations of mismanagement have dogged the bureau across Democratic and Republican administrations; a decade ago The Associated Press found that a few agency employees were adopting mustangs themselves and selling them to slaughterhouses."
We read:
"Today, the fundamental rift between the bureau and its critics involves two judgment calls: how many horses can a range of 29 million acres support, and how should that level be maintained?"
And we learn that an Audubon article, "infuriated the mustang advocates even more than the agency's proposal to resume euthanasia." We read, "Ms. Parant laughs at the idea of attributing the range destruction to horses when cattle greatly outnumber them."
We also read:
"Jay F. Kirkpatrick, a scientist who is the director of the Science and Conservation Center in Billings, Mont., wrote in a rebuttal to the Audubon article that Mr. Williams had not given sufficient weight to birth control options, which could make 'serious inroads' on horse populations."
The article ends with:
"After Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, raised questions this month about the euthanasia proposal, the bureau agreed to make no decision until after completion of a Congressional audit of the program, which is due in September."
[Note: This issue is covered in Thanking the Monkey in the section "Kill a Horse to Eat a Cow" which begins on page 150. It notes that while the BLM currently argues about how many thousand horses the land can support, in the 1900s ago the mustangs numbered two million. ]
You'll find the full New York Times article on line at
www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/us/20mustangs.html
You can send a letter to the editor at letters@nytimes. com
Decision makers look to letters pages as barometers of public opinion, so do not underestimate the power your letter can have.
Always include your full name, address and phone number.
Also, activist Elizabeth Borin, who made sure we saw the mustang article, has also sent us a link to the
"BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program Feedback Form."
The BLM suggests:
"Please use this form to express your views on BLM's management of Western wild horses and burros."
http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/wild_horse_and_burro/feedback.html
OR http://tinyurl.com/6kgenr
I am going to gently remind animal advocates that the BLM link is not a place to just vent! Further alienating the BLM would only hurt the animals -- but reasonable persuasive arguments could help them. So please drop a quick polite line.
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to read reviews of Karen Dawn's new book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals” and watch the fun celebrity studded promo video.
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Date: Mon Jul 21 13:13:33 2008
