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 The
majestic, free-spirited wild horses of northern
Nevada had sure made a mess of Sheldon National
Wildlife Refuge.
They'd stomped all over the creeks, muddying the
delicate gravel spawning grounds for the Lahontan
cutthroat trout. They'd nibbled away at much of the
upland vegetation, robbing the native pronghorn
antelope and mule deer of habitat and cover against
predators. Sensitive grasslands had been turned to
muck from so much of their trampling. Forget for a
second that whole idea about horses being some
noble, stirring symbol of the West. As U.S. Fish &
Wildlife officials tell it, the herds that roam the
575,000-acre Sheldon refuge are more like a bunch of
klutzy Clark Griswolds that, for all their harmless
intentions, leave destruction in their wake. But
it's hardly a laughing matter.
"It's a desert out here, and the problem we're
having is that too many horses concentrate on all
the water and damage the resources," says refuge
Manager Brian Day. "They're taking all the
vegetation off and turning it into a big mudhole."
Not exactly what Mother Nature intended. "These
horses are not wildlife," says Day. "What we
consider them is feral domestic livestock." Today,
refuge bosses figure there are about 1,500 of these
"feral domestic livestock" lording it over the area.
Thus in recent years wildlife officials began
chipping away at the growing herd of wild horses at
Sheldon. In the past two years, they took out about
1,100 of them. It's not a terribly controversial
decision in itself. Unlike the Bureau of Land
Management, which is bound by law to manage horses
on its lands, U.S. Fish & Wildlife is charged with
keeping things comfortable for native species -- and
are required to regularly remove horses for the
benefit of those species. In the case of Sheldon, a
half-million-plus-acre refuge at the northwest
border of Nevada, that includes the sage grouse,
pronghorn antelope, mule deer, bighorn sheep and
other animals. No spirited symbol of freedom on the
list here; horses are deemed invaders.
 "The
BLM in my opinion does a good job of managing wild
horses, but that's not part of our mission,"
explains David Johnson, deputy project leader for
the Sheldon/Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuge
Complex. "We're accountable to the American public
by following the processes in place and meeting our
mission of managing this place for wildlife."
The June 19-20 roundup of about 330 horses waspart
of a broader plan. After officials rid the area of
destructive cattle in the '90s, it was now the
horses' turn to go -- not completely, but almost. In
a bow to the public's appetite for oohing and ahhing
at wild horses, officials set a goal of keeping
about 100 horses on the range.
But what was supposed to have been just a routine
culling sparked a stampede of outrage -- and
accusations of carelessness, callousness and
cover-ups. Wild-horse activists say that in their
zeal to curb the number of horses on Sheldon,
federal officials ignored pleas to postpone the
removal and needlessly ran to death several colts
and foals. Further, they claim that the department's
scheme for mass adoptions will surely send some
horses to the slaughterhouse.
Why hate on the horses? advocates wonder. It's
nothing personal, officials say; it's part of the
preservation program. Critics characterize the
management culture of the wildlife refuge as a place
where the view of wild horses isn't that different
from the way most people view rats. And the fact
that wild horses are tough to rein in -- they're
fast breeders with no predators to keep them in
check -- has given way to a dismissive, get-rid-of-'em
attitude.
"They arbitrarily said they wanted 100 horses on the
refuge because that's what they can tolerate and get
away with," says Jerry Reynoldson, president and
founder of preservation group Wild Horses 4Ever. "If
they had determined 100 is the right amount due to
scientific research, I would support that. But how
did they arrive at 100? What is the science behind
that?"
But even if wildlife officials' reasoning was sound,
some say their timing of the removal was tragically
unsound.
 HEAD
'EM UP, MOVE 'EM OUT
The June horse removal at Sheldon was the latest
round in a long, exhausting game of catch-up for
U.S. Fish & Wildlife. For the past decade or so, the
region's wildlife managers had focused their work on
278,000-acre Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge
just over the border in Oregon, where the horse
population had gotten out of hand.
"Due to limited funding, we had to make a conscious
decision to determine where we were going to do our
roundups, and we decided to concentrate on getting
Hart Mountain horse-free. In the meantime, this
population [in Sheldon] went through the roof,"
Johnson says. Officials figure that in the mid-'90s,
there were about 250 horses in Sheldon; over the
next decade, the herds would supersize to more than
1,500.
Day explains: "They don't regulate their own
numbers, and there's nothing out that regulates
them. We just didn't have the time and resources to
do it." The roundup was a bit of long-overdue
housekeeping for the sensitive land.
Depending on whom you talk to, the June 19-20
capture at Sheldon either went off without a hitch
or was a vision of horse hell -- even to veteran
cowhands who've seen their share of roundups and
adoptions. The timing was controversial from the
start. While the breeding cycles of wild horses
vary, by most accounts June is the tail end of
foaling season, and the grim prospect of running
merely weeks-old horses to death didn't sit well
with wild-horse activists, and even refuge workers
were nervous about bad press. Despite pressure from
animal welfare groups, including the American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
Fish & Wildlife went ahead -- after all, the
contractor upon whom they relied wasn't available
later.
 Paul
Steblein, project leader for the Sheldon/Hart
Mountain refuges, says only two foals died -- one in
the corral from injuries, one in the refuge from
dehydration and exhaustion.
Not true, says another eyewitness who wished to
remain anonymous. Calling it a "disaster," he says
he saw six dead foals; they had apparently strayed
during the roundup, got lost and presumably died of
exhaustion. Three more found alive were taken to an
Oregon veterinarian. It only proves, the witness
says, the bad decision to round up near foaling
season. He says not even the BLM, whose job is to
gather horses, will round them up at such a
sensitive time of year. Little wonder, he says, that
security for the gather was tightened up thisyear --
guarding the corrals and the horse trap -- for fear
that activists would try to document an episode in
which bad timing becomes animal cruelty. He says
that among the 330 or so horses gathered, nearly 60
were foals -- about 18 percent --giving the lie to
officials' claim that they're well out of horses'
birthing season. Despite that tight security, the
witness managed to take photos, which are on the
website of the American Wild Horse Preservation
Campaign, an umbrella group of more than 30
horse-welfare organizations. The photos include what
appear to be dead foals.
 "The
numbers [of dead foals] purported [by critics] is
very unlikely," Steblein says when asked about the
website's photos. "We covered the area of the gather
three times by helicopter [to check for lost
foals]." He says that many horse-advocate groups are
against any type of gathering, and will
spin and distort information for alarmist ends.
"Irrespective of the politics of horse roundups,
there were some major problems with this one,"
counters Virginie Parant, the preservation group's
campaign director. "You're just looking at pure
animal cruelty. They did not have to let it come to
this. There are responsible ways of handling things,
but instead they let things go awry, and then
conducted a completely irresponsible roundup."
 "If
you look at their [American Wild Horse Preservation
Campaign] web pages, there are seemingly dozens more
dead and injured, and that's not the case. The
injury and mortality rates of this gather are easily
comparable to anything previous."
CAMPFIRE STORIES
If the timing of the roundup initially sparked the
indignation of horse activists, the web fed the
flames. In weeks leading up to the removal, a viral
storm of angry e-mails and Internet postings took
shape among wild-horse advocates -- and was directed
at federal officials.
Talking to wildlife bosses, it's clear this is
largely a bitter propaganda war in which they find
themselves hastily posting documents online to
counter the sometimes-hysterical claims of
overzealous horse advocates. Virginia-based
wild-horse campaigner John Holland, for instance,
has written that Sheldon broke federal law by not
doing proper "environmentalevaluation" studies
before the June roundup. In response, last week
Susan Saul, a regional outreach specialist for U.S
Fish & Wildlife, posted three documents online to
prove they're following the National Environmental
Policy Act -- the 1977 Sheldon Horse Management
Plan, the 1980 Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge
Renewable Natural Resources Management Plan Final
Environmental Impact Statement, and the 2000
Environmental Action Memorandum. "We're not required
to do an individual document for every horse
gather," she explains. She's also put up factsheets
and articles explaining why the feds need to
periodically cull the horses. The government will
try to get the last word when it gets started on the
Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive
Conservation Plan later this year.
And if every last horse happens to disappear from
the refuge? Officials point out there are more than
30 BLM herd-management areas within a 200-mile
radius of the refuge.
Other critics have said federal officials are being
pressured to radically lower the horse count in
order to raise the number of game animals -- which
brings in sought-after hunting-tag revenue. But
wildlife officials point out it's the state, not the
federal government, that reaps the benefits, and the
state denies leaning on the refuge to get rid of the
horses.
"We have always cooperated with our federal partners
and provided input into their land-use planning
process," says Dave Pulliam, habitat bureau chief at
the Nevada Department of Wildlife. "We have exerted
no pressure on them to remove horses, but have
identified horses as having a negative impact on
Sheldon in the past."
A SEMANTIC CAN OF ... HORSES
According to BLM figures, in 1971 -- when the Wild
Horse and Burro Act was passed -- there were 17,300
wild horses in the United States. Their number
peaked in 1981 at about 52,000 -- and then it
plunged again. As of 2005, there were more than
27,000 wild horses roaming the states, mostly in
Nevada. But it's not as though wild horses are in
danger of riding off into the sunset ... right?
Jerry Reynoldson of Wild Horses 4Ever says it's not
such a far-fetched notion. He says in 10 states,
wild horse populations have dropped by 50 percent --
not due to cautious horse management, but due to
overzealous gathering that stems from flawed science
pegging wild horses as the culprits for all sorts of
environmental damage (whereas Reynoldson blames
factors such as drought and previous cattle damage).
But he cracks open a broader can of philosophical
worms when he questions how government officials can
arbitrarily decide what counts as a native species
and what counts as a feral invaders. Gee,
goes the reasoning of the devil's advocate,
can't humans be considered feral invaders, too?
Such cheek aside, the rift in terminology reflects a
rift in philosophy. According to officials at
Sheldon, which was established in 1931, wild horses
aren't native. This particular refuge's feral stock
took root largely from escaped and freed U.S.
Cavalry horses that were no longer needed as the
military was gradually mechanized. By Reynoldson's
reasoning, the horses were there before the refuge
was officially established, so why aren't they
considered native? Moreover, their connection to
horses that evolved in North America over millions
of years (and then disappeared about 10,000 years
ago, then returned to the continent thanks to
Spanish explorers) gives them a sort of
grandfathered VIP pass to exist.........
For more of this story by
ANDREW KIRALY -
Click Here
Image credit:
Wild Horse Preservation.org
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