http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/us/20mustangs.html
On Mustang Range, a Battle on Thinning the Herd
By Felicity Barringer -- July 20, 2008
Gerlach, Nev. =97 Five mustangs pounded across
the high desert recently, their dark manes and tails
giving shape to the wind. Pursued by a helicopter,
they ran into a corral =97 and into the center of the
emotional debate over whether euthanasia should
be used to thin a captive herd that already numbers
30,000.
The champions of wild mustangs have long ****trayed
them as the victims of ranchers who preferred cattle
on the range, middlemen who wanted to make a
buck selling them for horsemeat and misfits who
shot them for s****t. But the wild horse today is no
longer automatically considered deserving of
extensive protections.
Some environmentalists and scientists have come
to see the mustangs, which run wild from Montana
to California, as top-of-the-food-chain bullies,
invaders whose hooves and teeth disturb the
habitats of endangered tortoises and desert birds.
Even the language has ****fted. In a 2006 article
in Audubon magazine, wild horses lost their poetry
and were reduced to =93feral equids.=94
=93There=92s not just horses out there, there=92s other
critters, from the desert turtle in the south to the
bighorn sheep in the north,=94 said Paula Morin,
the author of the book =93Honest Horses.=94
=93We=92ve come a long way in our awareness of the
web of life and maintaining the whole ecology,=94
Ms. Morin said, adding, =93We do the horses a
disservice when we set them apart.=94
Environmentalists=92 attitudes toward the horses
have evolved so far that some are willing to say
what was heresy a few years ago: that euthanasia
is acceptable if the alternatives are boarding the
mustangs for life at taxpayers=92 expense or leaving
them to overpopulate, damage the range and die
of hunger or thirst.
The federal Bureau of Land Management, the
legal custodian of the wild horses and burros,
recently proposed euthanization. For years, the
bureau has been running the Adopt-A-Horse
program, selling mustangs from the range to
those who would care for them. But 30,000
once-wild horses were never adopted and are
being boarded by the agency at facilities in Kansas
and Oklahoma (another 33,000 run wild). As feed
and gas grow more expensive, the rate of adoptions
plummets.
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