Dear HCN,
Lynne Bama’s wild horse
story is an excellent introduction to many of the philosophical and
practical problems attendant to management of a large, sacred,
feral domestic ungulate on the public lands (HCN,
3/2/98).
Although ecologically responsible
management of feral horses and burros under current laws and
policies is theoretically possible, censuses and removals are
perennially short-stopped, either by lack of funding or by the
legal maneuvering of horse protection groups. This is a program
driven by a few narrowly focused, ecologically naive, but
politically and legally savvy, interest groups. In the end, the
range and the horses suffer.
But to many Bureau
of Land Management insiders, the most discouraging aspect of the
horse and burro program is that it saps huge quantities of public
attention, and scarce natural-resource dollars from far more
important issues, such as the West-wide decline of indigenous sage
grouse, and the replacement of native plant communities by
monocultures of fire-prone exotic weeds. The public is rarely
exposed to these issues.
Forgive me for remaining
anonymous; many BLM careers have been sacrificed to the horse
gods.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A postscript from anonymous.
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