Kill the wild horses to give ranchers more grass
 

at cut-rate leases on Federal property.

Makes perfect sense.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/wil....ap/index.html

Wild horses suck.

Maybe the feds can get Bono on board:

"Who's going to kill your wild horses?"

Are these native, Nephite horses or European imports? That makes a difference to me.

Did you hear about the curelom find in the Atacama?

Seriously, Indy has some comic talent. He's very, very dry.

Like the Atacama.

I don't understand the animal activists who oppose culling when it actually is in the best interest of the entire ecosystem. Not sure that is the case here, where the roundup of mustangs appears to benefit the cattle rancher; but the true principle remains that death to artificially large animal populations is healthier for ecosystems, and the animal activists who put the welfare of individual animals above the health of the entire ecosystem seem very shortsighted to me.

Deer out here in the East are like rats; they're pests with no surviving natural predators.

As an aside, the range and high country in the West is an absolute mess due to the BLM's subservience to the ranchers. We need to reclaim the natural resource of the highland prairies before they all disappear like our prairies in the plains have.

If we culled enough humans, there wouldn't be a need to remove prairie land.

They're nihilists. Their attitude is, "America, you've fucked up the ecosystem so totally beyond repair or redemption that to go out slaughtering animals to fix it is just obscene and pointless. Everything is doomed anyway." That was the attitude when the California sea lioins were pigging out on and wiping out the steelhead run behing my house.

I couldn't be bothered to read the article. Are they going to let us sportsmen hunt these horses or is it off to the glue/dog food factory? While I'd prefer the former I'm still ok with the latter.

Steelhead is one word dip-shit!

Hell, I might get one of these BLM horses and use it to mow the yard and commute.

How about they're in stead of their. That was the biggest gaff and you missed it, dip shit.

So is it "dip-shit", "dip shit", or "dipshit"? I am so confused.

It's one word. Any 2nd grader knows that. :)

You mean "instead" and "gaffe"?

This is fun.

Puhleaze.

Give me a break. Most BLM land is f...ing worthless and most ranchers actually improve through proper maintenance. Eastern bureaucrats romanticize the western wastelands, but you and other are grossly misinformed about BLM land management. This is not to say that some ranchers don't abuse the land, but most are responsible.

People who romanticize "mustangs" have never spent time around them.

Correct.

A good friend of mine works for the BLM. He is pro-rancher. He describes his job as having to help ignorant eastern eco-nuts to understand that they don't know what the hell they are talking about when it comes to managing western lands.

Addendum: I saw a troop of wild horses in the grasslands along US 20 in the Thunder Basin National Grasslands. Very cool to see, but the stupid horses took off running when I stopped to take a picture. I guess it's against the rules of the Wild Horse Union to have photos snapped.

Tell me how thousands if not millions of cattle on federal land are good for the land.

I would like to hear this explanation.

General hyperbole to the rescue.

I'll give a you a thumbnail sketch of the issue. In the west at least and I cannot speak for the east or midwest, BLM managed land is usually the most arid, least useful land. In our cities, we often trade any good land of BLM for not so good land of private or municipal ownership.

A Rancher will often blend BLM with other land to graze his cattle. But a good rancher does know when to rest the land and when to rotate just as good farmers know good resource management.

Ranchers pay taxes on permitted land. The land if not used by ranchers would fall in disrepair.

You try to make horrific an issue which you know not, Mike. Or if you do, then shame on you for misrepresenting it. Ranchers are among the most respectful land managers, and they are fighting a battle which must be fought unless we wish to be entirely reliant upon foreign beef.

If you believe for any reason that over-grazing is the norm then you're believing the bullshit spin of environmentalist, not the real persons who are there and who can see it.

Again in other regions the issues may be different, but I'd be more than happy to show you the "idyllic" Nevada BLM land which you believe ranchers are raping. You're in for a surprise.

Without their grazing, the fire hazard is increased.

The land, without millions of cattle, would fall into disrepair? Was it in disrepair before the white man came?

That's really a new one. I've never heard that cattle are important to prevent fires. Do we have a source for that one?

My source is my departed grandpa who was a cattleman. He cared about the land, as it was what allowed him to graze his cattle in order to make a living.

I'll take his word for it.

Ranchers have sought to stymie the reintroduction of the grizzly bear, the gray wolf, the Mexican wolf, and any other predator of the cow that helped balance the West's ecosystem before cowpies littered the entirety of the West. These efforts alone (see Idaho's current plan to eliminate as many gray wolves as possible in response to the ranchers' demands) undermine any argument that cattle ranchers are interested in improving and protecting the lands and ecosystems of the West.

Cattle ranching in the arid west (Archaea's "wastelands," my Edens) has

(1) degraded water quality as any Scout worth his weight in water-purifying tablets knows

(2) eroded the soil horribly

(3) introduced invasive plants

(4) endangered countelss native plants and animals (and blocked or stymied, as noted above, all efforts to reintroduce the endangered animals).

It is an incredibly ineffecient use of our public lands, and one that amounts to no more than welfare ranching. It should be grouped, and is, with our welfare corn farming in Iowa. But there's something worse: the Iowa farmers own their lands; the ranchers are doing it on yours and mine.

Here's a great collection of essays from authors with various backgrounds (economists, scientists, conservationists). It's called: "Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West." And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

http://www.amazon.com/Welfare-Ranchi.../dp/1559639431

They should sell the slaughtered mustangs to Polynesians and Mongolians. They would make good use out of them.

Wahhhhh....my pussie hurts...they introduced invasive plants and Butch Otter wants to shoot the gray wolf.....

I like a few things in life...big knockers and big steaks are amongst the top two..er um three!

Opposition to wolves = contempt for the land? Interesting. Grampa was a cattle rancher in central Idaho and he'd beg to differ. Actually, he'd probably just kick your ass.

Don't touch the wolves. Wolves > cows.

What a bunch of f...ing pussies, full of shit and hate.

Of course there are counter-arguments by those who wish to diminish our food supplies and to destroy the frontier traditions, but to hell with them. The subsidization argument is pure horseshit. I challenge these persons to actually investigate the lands which they describe. I've lived in these lands most of life, have friends and family in the business, and traveled the lands a hundred times more than these pussy-ass conservationists. It's pure agenda speaking, they've targeted ranchers from a long time, and aim to destroy the tradition and the food source. Sure ship it all off to Argentina or Australia.

The argument the conservationists try to raise is that government by allowing what appears to be inexpensive leases for arid, desolate land is somehow charging less than market rates. But they compare apples to oranges. The lands for which they endeavor to draw comparisons are not equal, and the support which the government landlord provides is minimal. It is truly not a fair or accurate comparison. Yes the conservationists compile their allies, who make arguments without really evaluating the data, but there is no welfare ranching. The is a royal misnomer and a lie.

I still haven't found a source that says welfare ranching prevents forest fires.

I know in Idaho environmentalists are fighting the welfare ranchers by bidding or applying for the leases, and winning. I applaud the effort.

It's more than just about the economic subsidies cattle ranchers receive. If Iowa corn farmers get them, then I don't see why cattle ranchers shouldn't. It's that the balance of power has been so out of whack in terms of who dictates land use policy, where the ranchers have been dominant, and it has destroyed the lands of the arid west.

With more sensible management, the cows could stay, the cattle ranchers maintain their way of life, and the land could begin to recover. But the ranchers never want to give an inch.

Mike wants to jump into bed with SuperMarvel......

With respect to Brother John Marvel and the miracle that his useless ass stays alive when he chooses to venture out of the People's Republic of Blaine County, at least his method replaces the lost revenue to the government coffers.

For the record, I don't applaud the effort and I hope that SuperMarvel and Mike Waters both contract a case of syphilus. Watch out for my curses as the last person I threw down on was Ben Olsen! I do hope Farrah comes out unscathed, however...it is the chivalry imbued upon me at our Nation's Holiest of Holies Military Schools!

Mike this is not complicated. Cows eat grass. In the late summer tall grass gets dry. Lightning strikes. Tall, in almost all cases uneaten grass, catches fire. Fire spreads to forest fire. Make an argument that the cows eat too much and go poop all over the place which does more damage than forest fires, or that forest fires are part of the natural rejuvenation of intermountain forests/grasslands but you are savy enough to figure out how keeping grass down prevents fires in August and Septemeber.

John Marvel pussifying of you is clouding your occasional good judgement. ;)

God bless the Bovine and the ranching US famalies that protect our public lands!

So cows are the only animals that eat grass?

What kind of education did they give you in Idaho and West Point?

Many animals eat grass, each one that does decreases the chance of forest fire, including cows. Further, cows tend to be one of the most inneffecient animals in existence in that they tend to eat more grass per pound than other animals. Hence, cows eat more grass than other animals thus having the highest per pound impact on fire fuel source depletion. Some biolgists recommend that the western cattle industry should move to more sheep as sheep are far more effecient. Other like yourself want to live in an ivory tower imagining the land teaming with elk, quail and thumper beating on his log.

For the record I have had no education in Idaho, my public school education was in the progressive state of California. Tell SuperMarvel I said hello!

Sheep pull the grass up from the root. So denude the entire west?

Why is it that people in the West are the ones who care least about the West? I think it is because of their hardscrabble lives. Money is the end-all be-all for these poor people. Even when they aren't poor they still feel the same way. The land is there to be raped.

I'll bet my great-aunt who is in her 70s and every year digs out leftover potatoes in Idaho (for free) so she can survive the winter, I'll bet she doesn't give a damn about horses, wolfs, denuding federal land, etc. I'll bet she does care about money and food.