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7th Annual Nevada Cattlemen’s Association & Fallon Livestock Exchange SILVER STATE CLASSIC Calf and Yearling Sale Saturday, December 19, 2009 at 1:00 p.m. This sale is sponsored jointly by the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association and Fallon Livestock Exchange, Inc. Where Fallon Livestock Exchange, Inc. will give back a portion of the commission for each head consigned by a Nevada Cattlemen’s Association member, to the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association! EXPECTING OVER 2,000 HEAD!! For more information, call Dan Gralian at 775-468-0400 or Monte Bruck at 775-867-2020. Fallon Livestock Exchange, Inc. would like to take this opportunity to say Thank You to all the consignors and buyers alike for their support over the last year. We wish everyone a Happy Holiday Season filled with fun and joy! SHIP'S CYCLE From all of us at Ship’s Cycle Merry Christmas and ThankYou for your business and friendship. May all the joys of the season be yours! See you & your friends at ringside! 2055 Trento Lane 7 Miles West of Fallon, NV on the Reno Highway For more informations, Call Today... Monte Bruck, Manager • 775-867-2020 Yard 1375 Mtn. City Hwy. Elko, NV 89801 (775)738-8236 20 December 2009 The Progressive Rancher www.progressiverancher.com
By Joe Guild Like the dust cloud created by a galloping herd of horses on a hot summer afternoon, the misunderstandings, mistrust and misguidedness surrounding wild horses never seems to settle. When it comes to controversial western issues, nothing comes close to feral horses on the public ranges for longevity and emotionalism. How did we get where we are and why are so many myths perpetuated about these horses? Durable as an unshod range horse’s hoof, the opinion of people on all facets of this controversy are difficult, if impossible to change. I want to try and dispel two of those mythsthat the Bureau of Land Management is doing its best to eliminate the wild horse herds and western ranchers agree with this policy. It seems as though where you come from to this issue is the point of view which is perpetuated and misunderstood. I have known about wild horses most of my life. I have seen them in all states of condition and their habitat in good and bad. I have seen them running free across a valley in a herd raising that dust cloud. I have seen one black horse against an impossibly large landscape in a valley that was a hundred miles long and with only two occupants, me and the horse. Personally, I like these sights and I know other ranchers who like these sights too. I have also seen horses captured from the wild in corrals. This I do not like to see unless it is for theirs and the land’s own good. So long as these horses which were always managed by people continue to be controlled in numbers and locations by wise and proper management, I have no problem with the public ranges being occupied by some horses. But for me, it is not necessarily the horse I am concerned about, I am concerned about the land. For that matter, this is also the concern of the Bureau of Land Management. Note the word “land” in the bureau’s name. Now, I understand a wild horse advocacy group’s concerns about the horses. But, if a horse, or any animal, has no habitat, the animal suffers. I am sure that a horse advocacy group does not want to see horses suffer. However, if horses are allowed to reproduce and the herds grow at a 20% rate per year with no control, eventually they will have no habitat, they will suffer and die. That is why the BLM occasionally must gather horses from the western ranges. It is a paradox to me that a horse advocacy group would oppose a gather of 2500 mustangs from ranges near Gerlach, Nevada as it recently did because the gather is to protect the land and the horses. The particular herd management area (HMA) from which the horses Wild Horses are to be gathered has an appropriate management level, or AML, of @ 400-500 horses and, I am told, there are about 3200 horses over populating this range. And yet John Holland of the Chicago based Equine Welfare Alliance representing 60 organizations said in the Reno Gazette Journal on Monday November 16, 2009: “The BLM continues to say wild horses are overrunning the range but they have no scientific evidence.” In this same article a spokesperson for the BLM said there is science to support the removal of some 11,500 horses from western ranges over the next 3 years. This is necessary because the wild horse population on the public lands is at least over populated by this number according to the most conservative estimates. There have been documented instances in the past of absolute tragedies relative to an over abundance of horses. I have talked to people who have seen these tragedies and yet the horse advocates continue to ignore them, or they simply refuse to believe the evidence. Among the most infamous, in my view, was in 1990’s on the Nellis Bombing Range in Southern Nevada, a place which had not allowed cattle grazing for many years. The year in question, people saw, photographed and reported in official documents, the death and injury of many hundreds of horses. Colts were seen up to their knees in mud in what used to be a water hole surrounded by the carcasses of dead horses. An official count put the population in this area at about 6,200 horses in the autumn of the year. Six months later only about 4,300 horses were counted. Where did approximately 2,000 horses go? An emergency gather was undertaken with an appropriation of $1 million from Congress. Over 500 orphan colts and fillies were captured and transported to the BLM holding facilities near Reno, Nevada. Some of these young horses were too sick or weak and they died too. The horses had increased in population to such a number that their habitat could no longer support them and so they suffered and died. As noted range scientist and Range Professor Emeritus Wayne Burkhardt of the University of Nevada, Reno recently said at a Wild Horse and Burro conference: “All populations of large grazers expand beyond habitat capacity absent controls.” A myth the advocacy groups and the media perpetuate is livestock ranchers want to eliminate the wild horses from the public ranges. This is extremist emotion-based propaganda at its worst, kept alive so the advocacy groups can have an enemy to fight and the media can have a controversy to exploit. The BLM has the obligation to protect the public land for a variety of legally protected uses. The public has a right to use its lands for recreation, hunting and fishing, for mining, livestock grazing, oil and gas exploration and pumping and for just enjoying the wide vast spaces of the west. The land has not been set aside for the exclusive use of wild horses and burros, but for their use at appropriate numbers along with all of the other uses the law allows, and the BLM is mandated to perpetuate. It should be acknowledged there are extremists on both sides. With all due respect to a recent letter writer to a popular livestock industry publication who advocated repeal of the 1971 Wild Horse and Burro Act, I don’t think that is a feasible or reasonable position. Free-roaming horses have been a part of the North American Western Landscape since Spanish explorers turned loose, or had horses escape from their expeditions in the 15th century, 500 years ago. But almost immediately after those first horses became part of this landscape, humans have managed them. Thus, the notion these horses have been free-roaming all these centuries is not entirely accurate. They were free-roaming until they were caught and used by mankind. Some horses were abused and that is wrong. Horses have been abused since they were first domesticated. Think of the horses slaughtered by humans in all the wars in which they were used up into the 20th century. Even now, horses are used in Afghanistan by U.S. troops, their allies and their adversaries. We humans have also harnessed horsepower through the eons. There were about 6.9 million horses in the United States in the 1880s. But for railroads, steamships and canal boats, horses provided the bulk of our transportation, goods hauling, agriculture power and interestingly, a great deal of our cheap meat for human consumption. At the time of the Great Depression there were about 6.9 million horses still performing many of the same functions. Today, the U.S. has a domestic horse population of about 9 million horses, almost none of whom provide the above services. We do love our horses! And this is rightly so. Horses are great and noble and wonderful creatures. We should care about them and care for them. Just as domestic livestock are cared about and for, wild horses should be too. Cattle and sheep do use the public ranges according to the terms and conditions of a permit. Almost all of those permits limit the use to some Continued on Page 22 www.progressiverancher.com The Progressive Rancher December 2009 21
Page 2 and 3: In this Issue... Nevada Cattlemen
Page 4 and 5: UPDATE Ro n Ce r r i Nevada Cattlem
Page 6 and 7: Back to Basics Cooperative Extensio
Page 8 and 9: Back to Basics Cooperative Extensio
Page 10 and 11: By Julie Kay Smithson, property rig
Page 12 and 13: SPONSORS Profitable strategies to h
Page 14 and 15: BEEF CHECKOFF NEWS News From the Ne
Page 16 and 17: Interior, Agriculture Secretaries t
Page 18 and 19: John Carpenter Dan Gralian, John Ca
Page 22 and 23: People are often unreasonable, illo
Page 24 and 25: A continuation of the SCIENTIST CON
Page 26 and 27: ➤ ➤ Winnemucca ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤
Page 28 and 29: SOCIETY FOR RANGE MANAGEMENT Wild H
Page 30 and 31: Photo Laurie Errington-10/09 Cory S
Page 32 and 33: DR. Margaret, Ph.D. How to Conditio
Page 34 and 35: The Progressive Rancher Coloring Co
Page 36: PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID Permit

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