Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
7 Questions About Wild Horses for Interior Secretary Nominee Sally Jewell
On Thursday on Capitol Hill, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a confirmation hearing to consider the nomination of Sally Jewell for the position of Secretary of the Interior. She comes to the room offering some measure of comfort
to two of the primary constituencies that care most about the post. Big
oil? Check -- she worked for years for Mobil Oil, out in the oil and
gas fields of Oklahoma. Environmentalists? Check -- she comes to
Washington, D.C., from R.E.I., the "outdoor recreation" company, where
she was a longtime advocate for conservation. But Jewell is mostly a blank slate when it comes to two key areas of
the Interior Department's portfolio which are in famous and direct
conflict with one another. The first relates to the federal government's
complicated relationship with the ranching and livestock industries.
Jewell does not appear to have much of a public record when it comes to
her views on the concept of welfare ranching -- the age-old, under-reported pork-barrel policy
by which the federal government practically gives away the use of our
public land to private ranching and farming interests by means of
well-below-market lease rates. The second unknown area of Jewell's resume involves the fate of
nation's wild horses, which roam public lands and which have suffered
greatly over the past few years as a result of the ruinous policies of
Jewell's would-be predecessor, Ken Salazar. For wild horse advocates,
the good news is that Jewell doesn't come from a longtime ranching
family, as Salazar did, or have a long record of hostility to the
nation's herds, as he does...more
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3 comments:
Acoording to the Atlantic where this article was published, the author was a recipient of the Humane Society’s 2012 Genesis Award, which indicates his biased viewpoint. The management of wild horses has been a thorny issue for decades. If managed properly, wild horses certainly have their place in our landscapes, but their numbers must be controlled. I chastised the Wilderness Society back in 1976 for their blanket assault on the BLM Wild Horse Adoption program and their purely protectionist attitude towards the species. The WS characterized the BLM program as "inhumane". In reality, it is/was one of the sanest and most humane programs our government every came up with. Sure, it's far from perfect, but I'd really like to hear some better ideas for managing the wild horse population, if there are any. I write more about this issue on my blog page, and how the environmentalists turned the notion of "native" species into a weapon.
http://oldmanoftheski.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/wild-horses-symbol-of-the-american-west-or-an-invasive-species/
Thanks for the link and you have a very interesting blog.
Sally call me 307 705 8115
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