An Elko County commissioner and longtime critic of environmental restrictions on federal lands says a proposed eco-sanctuary for hundreds of wild horses in northeast Nevada will damage the range and could put some ranchers out of business. "Is that what we want to do, take viable cattle ranches important to the economy and switch it so now they're horse sanctuaries and the taxpayers support the horses there?" said DeMar Dahl, the commission's chairman of public lands. Madeleine Pickens, wife of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, and her nonprofit group Saving America's Mustangs want to establish the eco-sanctuary across nearly 100 square miles east of Elko and south of U.S. Interstate 80, from the Ruby Mountains to near the Utah line. Pickens bought two ranches last year that cover 14,000 acres south of Wells, but along with the titles come rights to a grazing allotment across another 530,000 acres of federal land that includes three existing Horse Management Areas designated by the Bureau of Land Management. BLM officials announced on Thursday they will begin a two-year study to analyze the potential environmental, social and economic effects of the plan. Dahl said backers of the project "have a big hurdle to cross" to prove that the concentration of as many as 900 horses won't cause harm to public rangeland in violation of U.S. environmental regulations. Ranchers manage cattle and the range by putting cattle in one area for a time and then moving them to another so the range can heal, but with horses, "they just stay there year-round," he told the Elko Daily Free Press. Pickens said the proposed eco-sanctuary won't affect cattle ranchers "one bit," and she hopes "we can all be friends."...more
1 comment:
There are some problems with this proposal. If Madeline is going to run horses, the horses should run under the same rules all the other livestock follow. Madeline et.al. should own the horses and manage them as livestock and pay the government for the previledge
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