Ranchers, activists at odds over mustang roundup

Bob Depauli, whose family has been ranching in Nevada for four generations, remembers a wild horse he saw in the Nevada desert one drought-parched year in the late 1970s. "The herds were really poor that year, starved," he said. "I saw (a dead mustang) whose two hind legs had quit working and it had use of only its forelegs. It had walked in circles and dug a hole in the ground with its hindquarters." It dug its own grave. Depauli runs cattle on federal allotments, including one about 30 miles north of Gerlach in the area where the federal government plans Monday to start rounding up 2,500 wild horses of the more than 3,000 in the area. The government said the roundup is necessary to check overpopulation. Opponents said the land mangers exaggerate the number of mustangs and the damage they do to the range, and that gathering horses using helicopters traumatizes, injures or kills the animals. About 32,000 wild horses are in government holding pens waiting for adoptions that, for most, will never come. Range managers plan to remove another 10,000 from ranges in Nevada and elsewhere in the West next year. The government, Depauli and others see the wild horse gathers as necessary to ensure the health of the rangeland, water supplies and native species. Opponents say the horses are a symbol of America and are being swept aside for the benefit of cattlemen like Depauli...read more