NEWS ROUNDUP

Dalidio may set land-use precedent From the time rancher-developer Ernie Dalidio began circulating petitions to place his shopping center initiative on the Nov. 7 ballot, opponents have charged that it will set a precedent by evading land-use controls. "The precedent that would be set by the success of Dalidio's initiative could result in the unraveling of local representative democracy," Atascadero activist David Broadwater wrote in an April 26 letter to the editor to the Sun-Bulletin, a weekly paper published by The Tribune. A citizens initiative, Broadwater and other Dalidio opponents say, is not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act. Further, it lessens local control by creating its own zoning. Besides the agricultural, rural- residential and other zones typically found locally, the Dalidio Ranch project would have its own zone, with its specific rules and regulations that county planners could not change. Opponents of Measure J, the Dalidio Ranch initiative, say that if it succeeds, other developers throughout the state would follow his example. Vicky Shelby of the county clerk's office believes this is the first time locally that an individual property owner has put a measure on the ballot for his particular property....
Two ranchers accused of setting fires Father and son ranchers have been accused of setting fires within the unburned portions of a huge lightning-caused southeastern Oregon wildfire in which more than 115,000 acres have been blackened in the past week. Charges were filed Thursday in Harney County against rancher Dwight Hammond, 63, and his son Steven Hammond, 37, just as a break in the hot weather caused some of the wildfires across the region to begin winding down. Favorable firefighting conditions continued through Friday. Harney County Sheriff Dave Glerup of Burns said allegations against the ranchers include four felony counts of reckless endangering, four counts of reckless burning and a single count each of first-degree criminal mischief. Glerup said fire crews working nearby could have been endangered by the fires the pair is accused of setting abut 50 miles south of Burns. The arrests followed a joint investigation by Glerup's office and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Glerup offered no motive for the alleged arsons. "They won't talk to me," Glerup said of the Hammonds. "I advised them of their rights, and they said they didn't want to talk to me."....
Firefighter in Idaho is accused of arson conspiracy A federal firefighter has been charged with conspiracy to commit arson, accused of convincing a friend to set a brush fire on the outskirts of Salmon. Levy Miller, 21, was being held in the Lemhi County Jail on $30,000 bond, officials said. Miller, a Salmon resident, has worked for the local Bureau of Land Management office as a firefighter for about two years. He was charged in a blaze that charred a half-acre of brush in the Smedley subdivision on Aug. 13. Police say Miller may have been trying to create work for federal fire crews. Arson cases among firefighters are not uncommon. Former U.S. Forest Service firefighter Craig Matthew Underwood was sentenced to four months in prison and four months of home detention in July after pleading guilty to starting three fires in 2004 in the Los Padres National Forest in California. Last year, Leonard Gregg, a firefighter for a tribal fire department in Arizona, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for starting the Rodeo Fire in eastern Arizona.
Former Water Chief To Warn Lawmakers About Las Vegas Water Plan Controversy is heating up over a plan by Las Vegas officials to drill for water near the Utah-Nevada border. Tomorrow and Tuesday, delegations of lawmakers from both states will travel to the area for a first-hand look. Ranchers and farmers are furious about the proposal. They say it could dry up wells and springs, damaging agriculture, wildlife and the environment. Utah officials seem to be moving toward an agreement with Nevada, but they've promised they will not agree to anything that hurt's Utah's interests. One man meeting the lawmakers is coming from California to deliver a warning: "Don't let Las Vegas do to you... what Los Angeles did to us." We visited his valley in California to learn about a big-city water-play that's been making people angry for nearly a century. Ever since Las Vegas set its sights on drilling, residents along the Utah-Nevada border have been saying, "We don't want to become another Owens Valley."....
Endangered falcon takes flight in West Texas Ranchers are working with a national nonprofit to reintroduce the endangered Aplomado falcon to West Texas. With support from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Texas Hawking Association, the fund will release more than 100 captive-bred falcons this summer in hopes that the birds will reestablish a nesting population. The Aplomado falcon was once a regular resident of Texas, but somewhere around 1930, it began to disappear, and no one really knows why. Now the falcon is about to be reintroduced to the wide open spaces of West Texas. Some captive-bred chicks from Idaho will be released on private ranches in Van Horn, near the Mexican border. “Working with private landowners is nothing new for the Peregrine Fund. That's the way we have always worked as with individual people, by building relationships with landowners," Angel Montoya of the Peregrine Fund said. The partnership led to the release of 126 Aplomados over the course of this summer. The falcons are released under a "safe harbor" agreement between landowners, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Peregrine Fund....
For struggling West Texans, giant turbines bring winds of change The thing about West Texas that you can't ignore, that you can never forget, is the wind. On that big, flat stretch of land dotted with scrubby mesquite trees, the wind sweeps through effortlessly, unimpeded. It rakes across acres of ranchland, over cattle and rocks and red dirt, over nearly dry stock tanks and abandoned oil pump jacks. Always, always it whips at your face or pushes at your back. It fills your ears with a high-pitched, wavering whistle. There's always another gust on the way. And that wind brings a lot of things with it. Tumbleweeds, maybe, that scuttle along highways and prairies. Or dirt, picked up and carried through the air, turning the sky red, choking the atmosphere with dust and sand. These days, though, the wind is blowing something else across West Texas: change. Giant turbines are going up by the hundreds, planted all over the prairie to harness that wind and turn it into clean, renewable energy. Now, Texas leads the Western Hemisphere in wind energy production, generating enough to power nearly 600,000 homes. This summer, the state surpassed California to become the largest producer of wind energy in the nation....
Column - A Colorado River two-step A two-step program is needed to get local anglers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to stop fighting about the controversial removal of smallmouth bass and other non-native fish from the Colorado River. The removal program is part of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program and is reducing competition and predation on native fish by exotic species, in this case smallmouth bass. Anglers aren’t happy about losing a potential fishing opportunity and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and by extension the Colorado Division of Wildlife, doesn’t appear interested in involving anglers in the project. But the project isn’t going to stop, no matter how often a small handful of anglers revert to diatribes, inane disquisitions and personal attacks on Service and DOW employees who merely are doing their assigned jobs. We’re not sure if there is a viable smallmouth sportfishery on the Colorado, but the feds don’t help by acting as if it’s a secret where the smallmouth are. Because the recovery program doesn’t allow smallmouth bass to be re-stocked in the Grand Valley, any smallmouth caught are killed and then tested by a DOW researcher looking for specific isotope in an attempt to trace the fish’s origins, said Pat Nelson, non-native fish removal coordinator from the Fish and Wildlife Service. The theory is that if you know what pond or ponds the fish are coming from, you can put stop the fish from escaping by putting a net across the opening or simply poisoning the fish before they escape....
Spraying to eradicate salt cedars A spraying program to kill salt cedars on land along 160 miles of the Canadian River in New Mexico and Texas is hoped to help the flow of water into Lake Meredith, said officials of the Canadian Municipal Water Authority. Last week, Lake Meredith hit an all-time low, said Chad Pernell, Deputy Manager of the authority. The lake supplies water to some 500,000 people in 11 cities in the Texas panhandle including Amarillo and Lubbock. “They’re trying to get more water into Lake Meredith, but it will also be a great benefit to us,” said Jim Frank Richardson, who has been ranching for 17 years on more than 25,000 acres in Quay County. A section of his ranch is bounded by the Texas border. “We hope to see the springs opening up and the water table rising,” Richardson said....
N.M. developer to offer 'green' burial Tromping across a small grassy meadow ringed by pi¤on and juniper trees and dotted with cactus and clumps of bright yellow flowers, Joe Sehee suddenly comes to a stop. "That's definitely a burial area," he says, peering at the gently sloped, south-facing hillside. "It's somewhat protected, so you have a feeling of being comforted here." Someday soon, he says, visitors to this patch of ranchland will be able to admire the view - uninterrupted for miles - then scout out a spot for burial, in graves marked by rocks or trees or newly sown wildflowers or nothing at all. A proposed 10-acre "green burial" site is a small but singular component of an ambitious conservation and community development project under way about 15 miles southeast of Santa Fe. It's part of a small but growing movement to offer environmentally conscious cemeteries and protect open land in the bargain. Commonweal Conservancy is buying a 13,000-acre ranch, of which nearly 12,000 acres is slated for preservation as open space available for use by the public. "The landscape is gorgeous, just spectacular classic West - buttes and grasslands and mountains," said Ted Harrison, founder and president of the conservancy. Development on a small slice of the ranch - principally 300 acres devoted to a mixed-use, mixed-income village of as many as 965 homes - is providing the money for the project, named the Galisteo Basin Preserve....
BLM honors Herrell with Take Pride' award Tony Herrell's management style and ideas have not gone unnoticed with his superiors in Washington. His management of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management Carlsbad Field Office and the things that he and his staff have accomplished since he took over as field office manager has earned him the 2006 Take Pride in America national award in the federal manager category. Herrell, the only one from New Mexico, will join five other federal land mangers from other federal agencies around the country in a Sept. 14 ceremony honoring them and their achievements. A Carlsbad native and a 1977 Carlsbad High School graduate, Herrell returned to his roots about 18 months ago after serving in Tucson, Ariz., as assistant field manager at Ironwood national monument. When the Carlsbad Field Office manager's position became vacant, Herrell was the successful candidate. Shortly after taking the helm of the BLM's Carlsbad office, Herrell started making some changes within the office, and the biggest change — sometimes hard for federal employees — was establishing better communications with the community....
New fences protecting fragile areas on border Only a few steps north of the barbed-wire fence that separates the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge from Mexico is a chain of steel sawhorses that could help save a park trampled by illicit visitors and littered with trash and rusting vehicles. Made of century-old railroad tracks, the waist-high vehicle barrier won't completely block the thousands of illegal immigrants who cross into the refuge on foot each year. However, it is impassable to the vehicles that wreak the worst environmental damage as smugglers tear across the grassland. "We love it," refuge manager Mitch Ellis said as he surveyed the rusty barricade for the first time last week. "The wall is a whole different story." For now, barriers are the best compromise available for land managers who want to protect their battered parks, Border Patrol agents who want to keep illegal immigrants out and environmentalists who are concerned that solid border walls will destroy protected spaces and impede animal migration. They are proving effective, too, reducing illegal vehicle traffic by more than 90 percent in some areas. More barriers are planned for other federal and natural areas overwhelmed in recent years by migrant traffic. Eventually, officials said, most of Arizona's border with Mexico will be lined with the barriers....
Farmers seek water audit A coalition of northeastern Colorado farmers called on Gov. Bill Owens Thursday to order an audit of the South Platte River to ensure water laws are being enforced and water is not being stored illegally. More than 25 farmers and ranchers gathered at the state Capitol and urged Owens to respond to a letter sent to him July 17. Chuck Sylvester, a prominent Weld County farmer and write-in candidate for governor, said rumors are rampant in Weld, Morgan and Washington counties that water laws are being ignored and water is possibly being hoarded upstream by Front Range cities with senior water rights. "Farmers are hemorrhaging and they're at grave risk of losing their lands and livelihoods," Sylvester said. Dan Hopkins, spokesman for Owens, said the decision to conduct an audit will be made by the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, which has already studied the river's flow numerous times, he said....
New rules for Oregon fire crews This summer, Oregon is enforcing tough new standards on the 158 contract firefighting crews that it oversees. Contract crews are composed of firefighters employed by private companies that contract with the government to fight fires. Oregon crews account for 78 percent of the contract firefighters in the United States and are made up mostly of Latinos. Each crew consists of 20 people. Federal costs for fighting wildfires have been running about $1 billion a year since 2000, the year that 8.4 million acres of rangeland and forests burned around the country. The wildfires show no signs of declining because of drought, a warming climate and forests thick with fuel from a century of putting out fires. With declining budgets, federal agencies such as the Forest Service can no longer fill the need for full-time firefighters. Contract crews have filled the gap, even though they are generally more expensive. But that has led to some problems, such as the close call on the Biscuit fire. Acting on complaints from fire bosses and fire crew contractors, the Oregon Department of Forestry is phasing in standardized tests to ensure crew bosses speak English and the language of their firefighters well enough to be safe on the fire line. Inspectors check to be sure contractors maintain proper dispatch facilities, records, training and equipment. It is up to contractors to ensure that none of their firefighters is an illegal immigrant. Failure can mean suspension or termination of the contract....
Bat Blitz studies furry fliers while educating To catch a bat, you've got to think like one. With that in mind, a dozen or so bat specialists headed down miles of gravel road and dirt paths, over rocky crags and shallow streams, to find a remote wilderness where bats thrive. At the edge of the Chattooga River, near the South Carolina border, they rigged up barely visible black nets where they figured bats would most likely swoop by. As night fell, they crowded around a fold-out table, quietly cracking soda cans and jokes as they waited for the soft thud of bats flying into taut nets. Like the few other teams fanned out across the area, the squad was part of the latest Bat Blitz, a gathering of scientists and students who devoted three nights this month to capturing, tracking and measuring as many of the night creatures as they could....
High-elevation studies try to predict the impact of climate change Some of the world's best evidence of global warming was buried under 18 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada last winter, and Connie Millar was determined to dig it out. Millar, a veteran field scientist for the U.S. Forest Service, sweated uphill with three colleagues on a July morning, headed deep into Lundy Canyon, just north of Mono Lake, one of the few access points to the Sierra crest along its rugged eastern flank. She was hunting for rock glaciers -- a cache of ice under a pile of boulders -- which she suspects may be more common than realized in the Sierra. Insulated by its rocky cover, the ice is slow to melt and could become a significant source of summer water for mountain animals and plants if one of the main predictions of global warming is realized: a radical reduction in the Sierra's snowpack. Millar is finding and monitoring as many of these hidden ice caches as she can, to better predict how ecosystems might change as temperatures rise....
Rockies' Forests Fall to a Tiny Foe For 35 years, Peter Runyon has been photographing the stunning landscapes of this Rocky Mountain resort. His postcards capture winter's showy white and summer's serene green, flecked with wildflowers in yellow, purple and red. This summer, two new colors streaked the familiar peaks: the orange of dying trees and the ghostly gray of dead ones. An unprecedented infestation of tiny flying beetles has put the great forests of the Mountain West under siege. Tens of millions of Colorado's mature pine trees will die within the next few years. Millions more are falling in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, and into Canada. Federal and state forest managers have conceded defeat: There is no way to stop the hungry swarm. Slope after slope will turn the rusty-orange hue of a cheap hair dye. Then the needles will fall from the towering lodgepole pines in Idaho and Colorado and from the ancient white-bark pines in Montana and Wyoming. The trees may stand, skeletal, for a year or two, but eventually they will topple. Millions of acres in treasured national lands, including vast swaths of wilderness in and around Yellowstone National Park, will be affected. "You're going to see a lot of gray sticks out there," said Cary Green, a timber manager with the U.S. Forest Service....
4WD club to protect alpine wetlands A four-wheel-drive club continues work today to repair damage caused by reckless off-roaders in alpine wetlands in southwest Boulder County. Volunteers with the Rising Sun 4 Wheel Drive Club plan to build barricades near the intersection of Rollins Pass Road and the Jenny Creek Trail in hopes of keeping future off-roaders on designated forest routes. “When we became aware of the project and the opportunity to adopt the trail came up, we were very excited,” said Bill Morgan, land-use coordinator for the club, which recently adopted wetlands at the project site. Morgan spearheaded the club’s effort to help protect and restore wetlands at the Jenny Creek Trail. “That wetland area has been driven through and turned into a mudhole,” he said. Volunteers from Rising Sun and Wildlands Restoration will install a 700-foot post-and-cable barrier to keep off-roaders out of the wetlands when snowdrifts block the designated road in the winter and spring....
'Adrenaline rush' drives more off-roaders to sport Environmentalists call it destructive, whether done legally or illegally. Government officials are concerned too, restricting off-roaders to a smaller slice of state and federal parks while cracking down on illegal riders on public land. Obscenely high gas prices are hitting off-roaders in the pocketbook. Safety advocates and law enforcement officials warn that the sport can be dangerous, particularly when youngsters ignore common-sense precautions. But all that hasn't stopped off-roaders from buying motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles and four-wheel-drive trucks at a national rate of 1,500 a day. Despite its rough-and-rowdy reputation, off-roading continues to be a recreational juggernaut, growing in the number of enthusiasts by 42 percent in the last four years. With nearly half a million enthusiasts in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, Southern California is the hub of off-roading in the West. Yet there are only a handful of local areas where it is legal. In fact, environmental restrictions and the high cost of land have made it nearly impossible for state and federal officials to keep up with the demand for off-road parks. As a result, government agencies have located most of them in dried lakebeds, muddy reservoirs or hot desert scrubland, miles from urban centers....
Pollution in the Water, Lawsuits in the Air Every time the rain comes down, muddy water laden with phosphorus, arsenic and other contaminants flows into the Illinois River from chicken farms nearby and just across the border in Arkansas. The inflow of nutrients has begun to change the river and the reservoir it feeds, Tenkiller Ferry Lake. At times the water is clogged with fish-killing algae, occasionally emitting a foul odor that affects the drinking water and undercuts the area's attraction as a tourist destination. Frustrated that nearly four years of talks failed to produce a solution, Oklahoma is now suing eight firms -- including Arkansas giant Tyson Foods Inc. -- on the grounds that the chicken waste applied to crops near the river contains hazardous chemicals that are damaging the ecosystem and jeopardizing the region's tourist industry. "They're not fertilizing, they're dumping," said Drew Edmondson, an Oklahoma lawyer who filed the suit last year. Across the country, states and localities are suing polluters outside their jurisdiction, and sometimes each other, in efforts to curb air and water contamination that respects no borders. They say they are forced to act because Congress and the Bush administration have failed to crack down on everything from storm water runoff to dumping of invasive aquatic species.
Some Oregon campers use gunfire to discourage neighbors When hunting season arrives, many hikers, mountain bikers and other non-hunters think twice before heading into the woods. It's all about that rifle fire echoing over the hills and canyons. But now it seems hunters and target-shooters aren't the source of it. Some have discovered that random shooting helps solve the problem of overcrowding in the woods. One Willamette National Forest official says some folks apparently feel nothing guarantees solitude in the forest more than a fusillade of gunfire. "Frequent use of firearms ... for the purpose of intimidating other recreating public around heavily used recreation sites has become a problem," states a news release by the Detroit Ranger District of the Willamette National Forest. It announced a new regulation prohibiting the blasting off a few rounds in specific areas. It says the rules are intended to address safety issues and to assure the peace and tranquility people seek in the forests....
Damage to environment threatens the poor: pope Pope Benedict XVI warned that damage to the environment had dire consequences for the poor and called for all Christians to work to save the earth. The world "is exposed to a series of risks created by choices and lifestyles that can degrade it," the leader of the Roman Catholic Church said in his Sunday sermon given at his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome. "Damage to the environment makes the life of the poor on Earth particularly unbearable," the pope said, calling on all Christians to take care of the earth and not deplete its resources, sharing them in solidarity. The pontiff's call came a few days before Christian associations celebrate in Italy on September 1 a "day for the safeguarding of Creation"....
California Seeks to Clear Hemp of a Bad Name Charles Meyer’s politics are as steady and unswerving as the rows of pima cotton on his Central Valley farm. With his work-shirt blue eyes and flinty Clint Eastwood demeanor, he is staunchly in favor of the war in Iraq, against gun control and believes people unwilling to recite the Pledge of Allegiance should be kicked out of America, and fast. But what gets him excited is the crop he sees as a potential windfall for California farmers: industrial hemp, or Cannabis sativa. The rapidly growing plant with a seemingly infinite variety of uses is against federal law to grow because of its association with its evil twin, marijuana. “Industrial hemp is a wholesome product,” said Mr. Meyer, 65, who says he has never worn tie-dye and professes a deep disdain for “dope.” “The fact we’re not growing it is asinine,” Mr. Meyer said. Things could change if a measure passed by legislators in Sacramento and now on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk becomes law. [The bill reached Mr. Schwarzenegger last week; he has 30 days to sign or veto it.] Seven states have passed bills supporting the farming of industrial hemp; their strategy has been to try to get permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration to proceed. But California is the first state that would directly challenge the federal ban, arguing that it does not need a D.E.A. permit, echoing the state’s longstanding fight with the federal authorities over its legalization of medicinal marijuana....
IBM Builds Cattle-Monitoring Network IBM Corp. is teaming up with a Utah company that offers a remote system to transmit the body temperature of cattle to ranchers, dairy farmers, feedlot owners and government regulators. IBM said Thursday it will provide network services to monitor millions of cattle at a time for TekVet of North Salt Lake, a company that developed a battery-powered transmitter with a flexible thermometer that can fit inside a cow's ear. A microprocessor can identify an animal and its life history, show its approximate location and log body temperature once an hour, giving livestock owners an early warning of health problems that could lead to an outbreak of disease. "The cattle industry is basically the last frontier for technology to conquer. This is an industry that's been untouched for the most part by technology," Tali Haleua, chairman and president of TekVet, a company he started in 2003, said Thursday. "It could ultimately help protect our food supply."....
Dust bowl days stay in memories Traces of their frontier life are hidden. They share two rooms, Nos. 19 and 21, at the end of a sterile hallway in a home for the old. When she digs the photo album from its resting place, the bottom of a drawer, those times drift into the room. “There was nothing to keep the wind and dirt out,” remembered Foy Bailey, 92, his khaki pants and plaid shirt loose on his weathered frame. Dirt invaded everything. It burrowed under fingernails, snuggled into the pores of skin, blackened the sky so dark buses and cars halted in their path and people dared not leave their homes, he said. During the Great American Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the Baileys were newlyweds. Their first home, captured in a black-and-white photograph, was lined with cardboard, a 10-by-16-foot shack in Grady that Foy Bailey built himself....
A cowboy with a western view Looking west, from the cozy front porch of the Starbuck ranch, you can see everything that Frank Starbuck stood for and believed in. The hills, to the west of the ranch, are the heart of West Divide Creek. Embedded in those hills, is Frank. The Starbuck ranch, resting upon a hilltop southwest of Silt on county road 342, illustrates a simple life. When Frank, and LaVerne (Bubbles) - his wife of 55 years - purchased the 40-acre plot to build their home on, he knew exactly what direction he wanted it to face. Toward the west. Because, from that point, he could literally see - down the valley - to every place he'd ever lived, and everywhere he'd ridden as part of the cattle pools for the West Divide Creek Ranchers Association. It's an amazing picture that captures the beauty of his life. According to Bubbles, Frank was one of the lucky ones. He never had to think about what he was going to be when he grew up, because he'd always been exactly what he wanted to be; a cowboy. "That's why I married him, because he was a cowboy," Bubbles said. "And he was a good one."....
Georgetown tips its hat to cowboy days Georgetown took a step back in history Friday for “Up the Chisholm Trail,” a historical reenactment sponsored by the Williamson County Historical Museum. Cowboys drove longhorn cattle down Main Street to remind 21st century Texans of Georgetown’s role in the historic Chisholm Trail, as well as Williamson County’s rich cattle-driving and cattle-raising heritage. For most of the late 1800s the Chisholm Trail stretched from South Texas to Kansas. It was a way for ranchers in cattle-poor Texas to sell their steers for a much higher price up north. Today the Chisholm Trail still exist but it's changed over time. "It's not by the hoof anymore, it's by the tire. It's a little different but they are still driving to markets north," Chris Dyer of the Williamson County Historical Museum said. The father of the Longhorn Chisholm Trail, Peter Preston Ackley, coined the phrase “Up the Chisholm Trail.” Ackley was a famous trail driver who made his first trip up the trail to Kansas as a teenager in 1878. He spearheaded the trail marking movement in the 1930s in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, with the goal of placing an “Up the Chisholm Trail” marker in every county that the trail passed through. One of these historically significant trail markers still stands at the southwest corner of the Williamson County courthouse as a tribute to the trail drivers of Williamson County. More than 5 million cattle and a million mustangs were driven up the Chisholm Trail from 1867 to 1885, making it the largest migration of livestock in world history....
On the Edge of Common Sense: If it's not a bond, then what do we call it? Anthropomorphism is a word that has often been used in a negative context by people in the livestock business. By definition, it is the ascription of human characteristics to things not human - particularly animals. In our continuing effort to raise animals for meat purposes humanely, we confront huge moral, biological, spiritual and logical differences that distinguish man from beast. Yet, we who spend our lives caring for animals know better than most that there are incidents that occur that cannot be explained or denied. Horse people know that bonds exist between horses. Gary's 31-year-old mare died of old age. Her 20-year-old gelded offspring and two other horses were in the pasture with her. On the advice of his veterinarian, Gary left the dead body unburied for three days. To allow the other horses to grieve, the vet had said. Gary said the offspring stood vigil over the mare's corpse....