8/22/20

Trump Organization targeting feral horses


The modern horse was introduced to North America by the Spanish late in the 15th Century and then by other European colonizers. Acquiring the horse in the 1740s enabled the Lakota to win the Black Hills and today restoring and rewilding American ecosystems are parts of the Green New Deal.

After the Bureau of Land Management held livestock production scoping sessions in February the Trump Organization is ending protection for endangered species and public lands because ranchers insist grazing cattle reduces wildfire risks despite copious evidence and strong arguments to the contrary. Now, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and American Farm Bureau Federation are pushing for the capture and slaughter of some 130,000 feral horses over 10 years at an estimated cost of $1 billion.
Agency officials have said the appropriate number of horses roaming free — called “appropriate management level,” with the acronym AML — is about 27,000. Mustang advocates have said the roundups are aimed at placating ranchers at horses' expense, arguing that cattle do far more damage to ranchland than mustangs. [KUNC]

Democratic Montana Governor Steve Bullock has sued to remove a committed Earth hater from Herr Trump's BLM. 

The Anthropocene is now and time to rewild some of the American West eventually becoming part of a Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge connecting the CM Russell in Montana along the Missouri River through North Dakota to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Pecos River through eastern Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, western Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. 

Clear the second growth conifers and restore aspen habitat, prescribe burns, begin extensive Pleistocene rewilding using bison and cervids, empower tribes, lease private land for wildlife corridors, turn feral horses from BLM pastures onto other public land to control exotic grasses and buy out the welfare ranchers Tony Dean warned us about. 

If the groupthinks in industry-friendly Miles City, Montana; Las Cruces, New Mexico; Elko, Nevada and Casper, Wyoming really ruled domestic livestock grazing reduces fuel loads why is extreme fire danger still a thing in ranch country?

Image: feral horses range freely on a Kewa Nation pasture.

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