‘The Wild Horse Is Us’

The way the price of oil is going, you may need "old Dobbin" to pull your car to work and back again.

I MEANT the prehistoric ancestor of Equus.

The prehistoric descendant of equus DID!

I am happy to see so many intelligent, heartfelt posts about these animals, but am disgusted at those who made judgments based solely on their fourth grade educations on the history of mammals. Their ignorance is further reflected by the fact that they latch onto arguing over the ice age and Spanish settlers, when the main point of the article is that the mustangs are not the ones causing the grazing problems. They are undoubtedly a proud symbol of American progress, and should be treated as such by ALL proud citizens!

There were ancient horses on the Central Plains:
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0200/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0200/stories/0201_0105.html

Actually, the horse evolved in the Americas, and crossed the Bering land bridge, to spread throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe. Thousands of years after the horse died out here, its descendents returned with European and English settlers, and those horses and burros are now the wild herds. The IRS tax form box check-off solution for raising funds to better manage our wild horses is a very good idea. I also agree that the problem isn't the 27,000 free-roaming horses, but the millions of cattle and sheep that eat the grasses down to the roots, and contribute to the desertification in parts of the West. While many ranchers understand their role in land conservation, replant parts of their acreage with native grasses, and try not to let their herds overgraze the land, their cattle and sheep, unlike the bison and horses that evolved on the plains and prairies, need to be herded regularly, from summer to winter pastures, need constant monitoring, extra hay in the winter (as do domestic horses that winter outside), and access to water troughs and routine care. The livestock lobby is loathe to consider reducing the size of domestic cattle and sheep operations, to give the wild mustangs and burros more room to roam, or to pay higher grazing fees than the cheap grazing fees they've been paying since 1872. Either one of those proposals would cut into the beef industry's profits, unless the beef and sheep industries passed the hike in public lands grazing fees on to consumers.

If the writer can't get an ice age fact correct, what else is incorrect?

What does this writer mean about the wild horses surviving the last ice age? Weren't Mustangs brought over by Cortez in the 1500's???

Two words - Bill Gates

Two words - Bill Gates

Politics. That's all it is. The Cattle ranchers want the land to increase their profits and have people in Washington lobbying for them. They're in bed with President Bush. The Mustangs were here first. End of story. Get rid of the cattle who are being grazed on public lands for pennies and making the ranchers richer while the horses suffer. The BLM Adoption program is a good one, with a one year care agreement, not 30 years! The older horses and the "unadoptable" horses are mainly the "plain janes" that no one wants because they don't have flashy colour.
Adopt a Mustang, it's a worthy investment in YOUR heritage!

We all need to share a little so that all may live in dignity and decency. This is just the latest symptom of the hubris that destroyed the Buffaloes for fun. Our nation can return to our former greatness and exceed it if we wake up to the greed and rampant afflluenza and social darwinism that sparks decisions like this horrfic effort to appease ranchers. I am a small farmer, and i believe that ranch animals have their palce in grazing lands of the federal governement. Let's expand their ranges and not kill horses.

there were no wild horses in America during the last ice age. Horses first arrived in America when they came over with the conquistadors. Therefore no American wild horse survived the last ice age.

According to the LAW that directs the management of wild horses and burros, the herd areas established in 1971 where wild horses and burros were found on federal lands - of which more than half of those herd areas have been systematically "zero'ed out" since 1971, the law says these herd areas are to be managed primarily for the wild horses and burros. Did you all hear that? MANAGED PRIMARILY FOR WILD HORSES AND BURROS. In doing so, the BLM may remove cattle from these areas. There are millions and millions of acres of public lands, only so many wild horse and burro herd areas within them - leaving millions and millions of other acres of public lands for the rancher's cows. Yet we constantly hear the BLM propaganda machine repeating "over-population of wild horses" - over and over again as if they repeat this enough times it becomes fact. Lies never become fact. There are actually 6 million domestic livestock on public lands, ranchers barely pay anything for this "privilege". And yet only 3% of US Beef comes from the use of our public lands. Most cattle are raised on private lands. We don't even need to graze cattle on public lands, public lands ranching is considered a "tradition" and nothing more - most of these cattle are owned by big corporations using what some call "welfare ranching" for tax write offs. All this to keep some outdated "tradition" going (and corporate tax write-offs) LONG after it was a necessity to expand the west. Does everyone realize what the cost of public lands ranching is to tax payers every year?? It's over $500 million dollars - that's the loss the BLM takes each year managing the domestic livestock grazing program on our public lands. And yet they're crying about the cost of managing the wild horses - which are being managed to extinction due to public lands ranching. In other areas, big game "trophy" hunting clubs also lobby for wild horse removals so they can put in more big game to shoot so they can hang more "trophies" (bighorn sheep heads) on their walls. One of those association's founders, past president, and current politically active members, Larry Johnson, is on the BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board.

There is no need to GELD stallions, what really needs to be gelded is the BLM, the welfare ranchers, and the big game "trophy" hunters.

The wild horses and burros have been persecuted from day one and even the law that was put into place in 1971 to "protect and preserve" them has been violated time and time again by the federal agency given the job of implementing the law. How about in the late 90's when BLM employees were getting wild horses for free and selling them to slaughter? How about when that was exposed in several AP articles, what happened when they were to go to federal court for trial? Nothing - the feds blocked the trial, period, end of story.

This has gotten