Wild horse debate gallops on

The Obama administration's first try at resolving the debate over the wild horses of the West has not gone over well with some. Animal rights groups say that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's proposal to relocate thousands of mustangs to preserves in the East and Midwest would compound years of federal mismanagement of the horses. They want the 37,000 horses now roaming federal lands in the West to remain despite the risk of starvation and conflicts with cattle. In response to Salazar's proposal, they reiterated their stand during the Bush administration: let the mustangs run loose on millions of acres of federal land where beef cattle are raised. "Why are we, a cowboy nation, destroying the horse we rode in on?" asks Deanne Stillman, author of Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West. "We may be heading toward the point where we only have wild horses in zoos."...read more