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...
 
Oh? Arizona...

Yeah, the rainbows absolutely out compete Gila trout...
Where does the Arizona game and fish have an out of control rainbow trout population impeding their gila trout restoration effort? Which streams? I’d be curious to know because besides Lee’s ferry, every rainbow trout in the state is individually put there by the game and fish.
 
Where does the Arizona game and fish have an out of control rainbow trout population impeding their gila trout restoration effort? Which streams? I’d be curious to know because besides Lee’s ferry, every rainbow trout in the state is individually put there by the game and fish.
One of the keystones of that recovery program was removal of non native fish...

Of course that's not part of the problem NOW.
 
I've heard the same thing said time and time again, the ranchers run the west with politics. The horses hurt the grazing ranchers just like the hurt the hunters, get the ranchers on board with the hunters to start an anti-horse group.
 
One of the keystones of that recovery program was removal of non native fish...

Of course that's not part of the problem NOW.
That’s my point. If horses were a tightly controlled non-native like trout, there wouldn’t be a problem.

Try to suggest that the government take similar steps to control and drastically reduce the horse population and you’ll have a stampede of middle-aged women neighing down your neck wanting to geld you instead
 
the ranchers run the west with politics

This hasn't been true at the state level since the 1970s-1980s, and even then mining and forestry were always up there as part of these Big Three in the good ol' boy power networks balancing them out. At the county level, there are regions where you'll get a handful of counties where the influence is substantial, but it's largely a thing of the past.

These days, the Western states are entirely controlled by the handful of cities that dominate our populations - Vegas/Reno here in Nevada, Boise, Denver, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle/Tacoma, Montana's university towns, CA's port cities, Albuquerque and Santa Fe...these tiny geographies of densely populated urbanization absolutely obliterated the power of rural counties by the end of the 1990s/early 2000s, and it's only gotten worse.
 
This hasn't been true at the state level since the 1970s-1980s, and even then mining and forestry were always up there as part of these Big Three in the good ol' boy power networks balancing them out. At the county level, there are regions where you'll get a handful of counties where the influence is substantial, but it's largely a thing of the past.

These days, the Western states are entirely controlled by the handful of cities that dominate our populations - Vegas/Reno here in Nevada, Boise, Denver, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle/Tacoma, Montana's university towns, CA's port cities, Albuquerque and Santa Fe...these tiny geographies of densely populated urbanization absolutely obliterated the power of rural counties by the end of the 1990s/early 2000s, and it's only gotten worse.
This is what I said, you took one little tiny piece of it and change the entire meaning....

I've heard the same thing said time and time again, the ranchers run the west with politics. The horses hurt the grazing ranchers just like the hurt the hunters, get the ranchers on board with the hunters to start an anti-horse group.
 
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