Let’s See What Gets Done And Then Judge From There
By: Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President
The federal government has another new plan to manage horses that roam western lands under the “management” of the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. It isn’t much different than plans that have come along in the past – all it takes is money (lots of money). Whether the agencies involved will actually have the resolve (once they get whatever money they get) to move forward with carrying out the plan (beyond spending lots of money) will have to be seen. Whether the folks who do the carrying out of the plan get to go forward and do what their plan tells them they will be doing will also need to be seen – there wasn’t any announcement that the advocate groups who get lots of donor money being champions of our wild and free heritage are going to go along with letting the agencies do their job.
Then again the agencies and the advocacy groups both need each other to get all the money that they each get. If BLM is successful in managing the horse numbers to the point where they are in balance with the resources that the land provides – the wild horse advocates won’t be able to collect on the donations they pull in “protecting” the wild horses from being driven to extinction (even though there will still be lots of horses). If the wild horse advocates are successful in getting their way of not doing any management, erasing the Wild Horse territorial lines from the maps, and letting nature take its course – BLM won’t be able to get their money to be the effective resource managers that they are while horse populations soar and in doing so trash the landscape.
The fundamental details of the newest plan are basically the same as we’ve been seeing in operation for some time…collect excess horses from public lands, move them to places where grass grows without irrigation, keep them at these new sites until they eventually die from old age, attempt to keep horse numbers on the federally-managed lands from growing too much faster by birth-control measures (which seem to be getting a little better). Just scratch the checks and away we’ll go.
I’m sure the fundamental details of the newest plan are going to basically operate the same way as we’ve seen as well. Federal agencies attempt to move forward and advocates for Wild Horses gear up their publicity machine, ranchers get blamed for their greed (even though right now any of the other users of public lands are so far out of the loop that they don’t have anything to say to influence anything), the public is told how noble and magnificent animals are being slaughtered and abused…donors scratch the checks and away things go.
If making plans had as much to do with getting things done as carrying out actions – resource management wouldn’t be nearly as exciting or have as much money being spent.
The federal government has another new plan to manage horses that roam western lands under the “management” of the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. It isn’t much different than plans that have come along in the past – all it takes is money (lots of money). Whether the agencies involved will actually have the resolve (once they get whatever money they get) to move forward with carrying out the plan (beyond spending lots of money) will have to be seen. Whether the folks who do the carrying out of the plan get to go forward and do what their plan tells them they will be doing will also need to be seen – there wasn’t any announcement that the advocate groups who get lots of donor money being champions of our wild and free heritage are going to go along with letting the agencies do their job.
Then again the agencies and the advocacy groups both need each other to get all the money that they each get. If BLM is successful in managing the horse numbers to the point where they are in balance with the resources that the land provides – the wild horse advocates won’t be able to collect on the donations they pull in “protecting” the wild horses from being driven to extinction (even though there will still be lots of horses). If the wild horse advocates are successful in getting their way of not doing any management, erasing the Wild Horse territorial lines from the maps, and letting nature take its course – BLM won’t be able to get their money to be the effective resource managers that they are while horse populations soar and in doing so trash the landscape.
The fundamental details of the newest plan are basically the same as we’ve been seeing in operation for some time…collect excess horses from public lands, move them to places where grass grows without irrigation, keep them at these new sites until they eventually die from old age, attempt to keep horse numbers on the federally-managed lands from growing too much faster by birth-control measures (which seem to be getting a little better). Just scratch the checks and away we’ll go.
I’m sure the fundamental details of the newest plan are going to basically operate the same way as we’ve seen as well. Federal agencies attempt to move forward and advocates for Wild Horses gear up their publicity machine, ranchers get blamed for their greed (even though right now any of the other users of public lands are so far out of the loop that they don’t have anything to say to influence anything), the public is told how noble and magnificent animals are being slaughtered and abused…donors scratch the checks and away things go.
If making plans had as much to do with getting things done as carrying out actions – resource management wouldn’t be nearly as exciting or have as much money being spent.
Posted by Doug Busselman at 10/8/2009 3:51 AM 
Categories: Public Lands
Tags: Wiild Horses BLM Wild Horse Adoptions
Categories: Public Lands
Tags: Wiild Horses BLM Wild Horse Adoptions
There was a novel idea proposed by some people that are quite clever - if we let NDOW manage the Wild Horses and the BLM manage the wildlife we might get where we want to go RE: the right animal numbers???
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