Anti feral horse organizations

The single biggest danger on this entire issue, is permitting anyone to accept or promote the implicit assumption that the only good landscape is one untouched by human hands. That is what is at the heart of treating people like a disease, and environmentalism as religion with "gaia" as its deity. Don't ever accept these viewpoints, as they dehumanize people - and that is always the first step in forcible removal and elimination of people. Dehumanization.

If you want to see people forcibly removed, restricted, and eliminated from enjoying public lands, the first step is permitting our dehumanization by treating us as a disease.

To that end:

1) The issue isn't "not native", the issue is "invasive" - which is an issue of destroying habitat for native species. There is no problem with non-native.

2) Our goal is not pre-human "pristine", lands untouched by humanity - the goal is sustainable balance. That means human intervention, human use, and human recreation as fundamental requirements.
Well, my entire premise is hinged on managed... And sustainability.

No native vs invasive... I agree with you, but the majority of the people against invasive horses are ranchers. You think they want more deer, or more cows?

And again, my point is the optics. It's hard to win people over when there's something they can see that's even a little bit valid that they can point to.
 
If there as a magic button to eliminate all horses and nonnative trout I’d press it. BUT, non-native is not the same as invasive.

Around here at least the nonnative trout are not invasive. They are triploid so can’t reproduce, and can’t even survive outside a narrow habitat like a tailwater or artificial lake. If the G&F wanted to get rid of them they’d be gone within a few months at most and if human management disappeared they’d be mostly gone in a few years.

On the other hand horses are reproducing out of control, eating every scrap of nutrition until they’re starving, but humans are intervening to prop them up with feed. And they directly harm native wildlife by running them off water sources. I don’t see any real comparison except maybe Asian carp
So you still have native trout in abundance?
 
my point is the optics.

100% agree on this - even too many hunters romanticize the "wild mustangs roaming the West", without respecting the tremendous damage they do with unchecked population numbers. Even when looking at the evidence at their feet on any given mule deer hunt in the Great Basin.

As to ranchers or hunters having a bigger problem with feral horses, I guarantee you far more hunters experience the damage than do ranchers - but ranchers have to live with them daily. And hunters typically aren't getting their horses stolen by feral studs the way some ranchers and locals do have to deal with.

But overall, the optics issue is the #1 thing preventing this issue from getting resolved - it's not a far left radical issue the way some obscure smelt or snail is. It's kind of symbolic of the West and American freedom, so it would take a lot of public education and communications campaigns to get the average voter to see it's an unchecked problem.
 
So you still have native trout in abundance?
Did we ever have native trout in abundance in Arizona? No. Either way, no honest horse supporter could point to put and take triploid rainbows in an artificial pond for the winter and the horses and say they’re equivalent.
 
Did we ever have native trout in abundance in Arizona? No. Either way, no honest horse supporter could point to put and take triploid rainbows in an artificial pond for the winter and the horses and say they’re equivalent.
Oh? Arizona...

Yeah, the rainbows absolutely out compete Gila trout...
 
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