Anti feral horse organizations

[displacedtexan]

Chukar, pheasant, brown trout and rainbow trout serve a purpose. What purpose does a feral horse serve?

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What purpose? Particularly the trout.

 

[svivian]

What purpose? Particularly the trout.

Revenue from license sales to start…as well as food.

Horse meat is a little sweet for my taste

 

[JREG19]

Don't even get me started on feral horses. I'd rather they are not around at all, but if they have to be, manage them as a game species, sell tags for 50 bucks and set a quota/season. There are plenty of rednecks like me who'd be more than willing to go shoot one and take it home for supper.

Instead they waste millions of dollars rounding them up, castrating them, training them, feeding them (for years), and then they can't even give them away. Idk if it's still going on but a couple of years ago they were paying guys (if I remember right) $10,000 to take them. There were a lot of stipulations on that, but still.

Not to mention the devastation they cause to the landscape.

Ok, I'm done.

 

[canyonhunter47]

Horses are one of those species, like dogs, cats, and dolphins, that many humans, particularly women, think are "special". Almost equal to humans in their minds.

Displacement of maternal instinct

 

[Tilzbow]

Any rancher that thinks that there will be more cow if horses are removed is kidding themselves. However if horses are removed or even numbers brought under control, the rancher will benefit because their cows will do better.

My solution, Issue the horse advocates grazing permits. The BLM range specialists get to determine the appropriate number and it is the horse advocates responsibility to keep the numbers within the permit. Failure to do so and the horses are treated just like someone with cows would be. The federal government should not be in the wildlife business, that is the states job. Nor should the government be in the livestock business.

AMLs (Appropriate Management Levels) are already established as part of the wild horse and burro act. If the population were kept at this level most of the problem would go away. I’d love it if the horse advocates were responsible for keeping the herds at these levels and actually did that but it’ll never happen.

As far as states managing feral horses, that’s already being done and done poorly. A herd that’s classified as “feral”, such as the 4,000+ horses around Reno known as the Virginia Range herd, are managed by the state department of agriculture. That’s working out even worse for the range land than the “wild” horses the BLM is responsible for managing.

 

[Andrew12gauge]

What's the fine like for shooting one?

Federally protected so probably pretty high if you get caught. What are the odds a guy would get caught though is the question that needs to be asked


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[wyosam]

Federally protected so probably pretty high if you get caught. What are the odds a guy would get caught though is the question that needs to be asked


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Seems like unless Karen from the HOA watches you do it, odds are probably ok for no one caring.


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[bayoublaster7527]

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.

100%. Ranchers (just like the rest of us) are firmly under the boot of the urban dominated single political party here in Colorado. Rural (and suburban for the most part) voices are completely shut out. This is reflected in wildlife commission appointments as the GOV continues to build an anti-hunting, rewilding majority on the commission. In ten years there won’t be a single actual livestock producer in the commission.

 

[wyojdubya]

Well, much of this is regulated by the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 and Public Rangelands Improvement Act (PRIA).

Because of optics...

I'm very pro management.

The first witness in the Senate committee hearing on the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act was a nine-year-old Michigan girl. Her opening line: “Every time the men come to kill the horses for pet food, I think you kill many children’s hearts.” None other than Frank Church went on the record to express his thanks for the “many heartfelt letters the committee has received from schoolchildren throughout the Nation urging the preservation of wild horses and burros.”

Quite the political optics problem, indeed.

If someone did start one, it has to be a 501c4 so they can lobby. Thats the only way anything could change but anything actually ever happening large scale has a near zero chance.

What should we call this 501c4?

 

[TurkeyReaper69]

“Wild” horses have a ton of nonprofits advocating for them and an army of brainwashed worshippers. Is there an equivalent org that focuses on reducing and removing them?

I’m aware of a few conservation organizations and pro-ranching organizations that occasionally speak out on the topic, but they are dismissed as having ulterior motives (“they just want more animals to kill” “they just want to replace the horses with cows”) and it’s not their main focus.

Case in point, the mayor of the City of Scottsdale wants to let the Salt River herd expand into the McDowell mountains preserve, which forms the eastern border of the city and holds a pretty large area habitat for deer, javelina and other native species. She’s getting some pushback from citizens, but not the concerted effort to make any proposal DOA.

I'm not of aware of any "anti-feral horse" groups on the national level. It is mostly a talking point for other conservation and ranching organizations, amongst other issues in their sphere.

The national pro-horse/burro groups are awful though. AWHC & WHE I am convinced will bring an end to the Horse and Burro Act or serious amendments to the law, due to the amount of litigation they bring against the BLM. (And I don't see that change in the law going in their favor). Personally I question if these two groups even care about the horses (their staff, not the volunteers) or whether they are just in it for the litigation money, you can thank the Equal Access to Justice Act for that.

To answer your question though, there are many local groups (that are still pro-horse) but understand the management issues that the BLM deals with and advocate for BLM removal and achieving AML for rangeland and herd health. A good example of this would be the group Piceance Mustangs who volunteer with the Piceance-East Douglas herd in Colorado. They recognize the overpopulation degrades the rangeland, volunteer with fertility control treatments, and assist in the adoption program to get their horses out of BLM holding. There are a couple other examples of local groups like them out there.

Unfortunately this is a topic that is guided by emotion.

The amount of 501C3 predatory rescues that are out there are a whole other conversation. They prey on guilt ridden women for donations. A few months ago I watched a lady who just received an inheritance after a family member passed give the entire (sizable) inheritance away to a rescue to come to a BLM adoption event and "rescue" a few horses.

Eventually a lot of these rescues go belly up, the horses they "rescued" go right back into the "slaughter pipeline" as they call it, and another rescue comes in soliciting donations to repeat the process.