he very concept of establishing and maintaining a thriving natural ecological balance between wild horses and cattle on public lands shows the folly of this approach. Cattle ranchers wish to extract all possible use from the areas that they lease on the public lands, and wish their cattle to get to the heaviest slaughter weight as quickly as possible. This approach and process contradict and manipulate the natural processes by which a biotic community sustains itself in any environment. The presence of commercially exploited cattle on public lands prevents, by definition, the establishment or maintenance of a thriving natural ecological balance. It is clear that when an agency chooses to "manage" land according to a grazing model, its determinations will be very different from those of an agency following a wildlife model.
Robert Payne on 18 Nov 08Madeleine Pickens, wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, made known her intentions to adopt not just the doomed wild horses but most or all of the 30,000 horses and burros kept in federal holding pens. Lifelong animal lovers, the Pickenses just a few years ago led the fight to close the last horse slaughterhouse in the United States.
