Suppose you adopt a mom-baby pair at one of the BLM off-range corrals, captured earlier this year in a wild horse roundup.
How much does the on-range population change?
What is the change in resource loading?
How many public acres were conserved?
Zip, zero and zilch, respectively.
So why would the writer of an opinion piece in today’s edition of The Nevada Independent peddle wild horse adoptions as conservation?
Because they free-up space in the corrals, allowing more horses to be taken off the range, conserving resources for the public-lands ranchers.
The author forgot to mention them.
“The equines generally inhabit rugged, remote, arid landscapes where they compete with mule deer, pronghorn, sage-grouse and other wildlife for water and forage.”
There aren’t many predators in those areas because they have been minimized in the name of animal agriculture.
Public lands in Nevada can’t support 38,000 wild horses and burros but they can support livestock equivalent to 173,000 wild horses.
The Property and Environment Research Center advocates for market solutions to conservation so let’s put labels on range-fed beef saying it was produced on public lands at the expense of America’s wild horses and let consumers pick the winners and losers.
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Western Horse Watchers Association 