I haven't been on a horse in many years, though as a young girl I rode every weekend and collected my share of the plastic versions. As an urban creature now, I rarely come across them -- other than the painfully tolerant variety leading tourists through Central Park. But I think I join a lot of others in being drawn to stories about them. Witness the worldwide success of the puppet-driven War House on stage and the soon-to-be-released film by Steven Spielberg. We all read Seabiscuit and learned how one horse literally captured the spirit of a nation.
So I was somewhat intrigued by an urgent shout-out I received from my friend, the actress Wendie Malick (Lost in Cleveland, Don't Shoot Me) about the upcoming 40th anniversary of the "Wild Roaming Horses and Burros Act." Never heard of it either? It turns out that none other than Richard Nixon signed it into law, but according to Malick and others, it has been gradually eroded by powerful ranching, mining and drilling interests. As a result, today there are more horses languishing in government holding facilities than remaining wild. And now it seems the House of Representatives has voted to revisit discussions of horse slaughterhouses in the U.S.
I confess, my first instinct was to delete, ignore, prioritize elsewhere. Hey, we shoot soldiers, don't we? Then again, I have a Boomers soft spot for celebrities who actually know and care about what is going on in Washington. And I am well aware of how powerful women can be when they are fired up and start getting organized. We have helped end wars, (Another Mother for Peace) created legislation to punish those who drive drunk, (MADD) kept toxic dumps far away from our children. (Love Canal) So my ears perked, my curiosity aroused, maybe even some of the old fighting spirit threatening to come out of hibernation.
Malick obviously knows how to convince with authority and yes, dramatic flair, but this is no performance."To see these magnificent creatures chased by helicopter for hours and finally captured and hauled into a concentration camp, is to witness utter terror, followed by despair," says the actress, who was invited to attend a Bureau of Land Management "roundup" two years ago. This is far from a one night stand for her. She owns horses and is developing a television film based on the popular book Wild Horse Annie and The Last of The Mustangs. She may be best known for her comedic portrayals of, shall we say, the vain and self absorbed, but her love of animals rivals that of her current TV Land co-star, Betty White.
I can't pretend to share that devotion. The last pet I had was a toad named Toby who our father accidentally ran over entering our Santa Monica driveway in the '50s. But I do believe those we elect could better be spending their time getting along and dealing with debt than reopening an old law that allows horses to run free. In her book Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West, author Deanne Stillman reminds us that, "horses have carried our mail, fought our wars, tilled our land and ferried us across that land." Or as Malick says, "around our collective campfire, Americans and horses have been intertwined since our beginning."
Joining a collective campfire with passionate women sounds awfully good at this time of year when we are supposed to be thinking of others; and at this time of life when we may have forgotten our better angels.
From the National Academy of Sciences: "the Phase I Report explored several biases in the census data, cited or calculated rates of increase based on a number of published values for reproduction and survival rates, as well as sex and age ratios, and concluded annual rates of increase of 10 percent or less. Forage use by wild equids remains a small fraction of the total forage use by domestic animals on western public ranges, regardless of whether the actual number of equids is in accord with the censuses or somewhat higher. Hence the ration of forage used by livestock to that of feral equids is about 23:1."
Having the BLM mis-manage the mustangs and burros is like letting the fox guard the henhouse. If a rancher, mining, oil, gas, or energy project wants land that is protected for the horses, BLM decides the land can no longer support any horses. BLM goes to great lengths to hide roundups & holding conditions from the public and the press. This is not homeland security, it's horses & burros!
A telling sign is that the recent forum at NYU School of Law, sponsored by the Environmental Law Journal and Environmental Studies Program called it's discussion "Managed to Extinction?" to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Act. BLM refused to attend because they don't answer to the public. What are they hiding?
By the way, the Wild Roaming Horses and Burros Act explicitly authorizes the Sec of Interior to remove excess horses. So yes, let's celebrate the act. Wild horses are neat, and should a part of our public lands. But not at the expense of native ecosystems. Limits must be set and excess horses must be removed one way or another.
Beat her.
gag.
Let's face it, this 'problem' is a transparent one - it has far more to do with cattle ranchers wanting to make room for their locusts-on-the-hoof! Hunting of Earth's Native elk, deer, and bison in the name of killing them for their own good is still allowed - it too is big business. The animal AG industry has done far more to create eco-assaults on our one shared Earth than these horses. Stop killing the big predators and let them and the hooved creatures work it out on THEIR home on the range!
Alas, we'll soon have horse flesh in every trendy restaurant in town and then we'll see that horses too are a big business - no one will be controlling their numbers any more than they control beef cattle populations. Our Earth is already history!
The European horse is stealing life from our NATIVE, American animals. They devour and steal the habitat/homes, food, shelter, cover and nurseries from Earth's strands in the web of all life. While the horse from Europe was biological diversity in Europe, in the New World he is a killer of the Earth. Only native species of animals and plants of our continent are biological diversity in the New World, while introduced, transported animals and plants are an immense extinction agent in America.
We can have horses, devouring our ecosystems, unnaturally and deadly to our ecosystems or we can have the animals that Earth chose for our side of the Earth, like pronghorn antelope, deer, elk, moose and wolves or we can choose Earth slaughtering alien, introduced, planet killers, like the European horse. Only an idiot would pick the horse above our native biological diversity as our lives depend upon our biological diversity because they are the creators and saviors of this continent's ecosystems.
I'm always glad when people stand up and support for what they believe in, but I trust the experts and not a Hollywood star.