Feral horses

[HARPERC]

A pretty good read.

Wildlife rebounds from ecological ‘crisis’ following wild horse roundups on Wind River Reservation - WyoFile

Federal and tribal biologists are amassing data on the recovery of the Wind River Indian Reservation’s rangeland, and early results suggest there were immediate, dramatic effects from large-scale roundups.

wyofile.com

 

[crazymonkey]

Just wish people would see the damage feral animals have done. We to have horses and a problem with the horse lovers not willing to see how destructive they can be . It's not just horses but donkeys also . It's truly a big problem here in Arizona.

 

[BigDon]

I saw this with my own eyes the week of Sept 20 at the Lander One Shot. Our 29th year there. I would rarely see more than 15 or 20 mule deer during the whole hunt week. This year we saw hundreds of mulie does in very large herds. Hundreds? I'm talking 450-600 head.

 

[Doghunter23]

Just wish people would see the damage feral animals have done. We to have horses and a problem with the horse lovers not willing to see how destructive they can be . It's not just horses but donkeys also . It's truly a big problem here in Arizona.

Very true, we used to have a mini Donkey in our pasture- it seemed she would eat as much pasture as our 1200 pound Angus Cows. They don't have the same level of Rumen efficiency. Had a bad drought and had to take her to the sale barn.

 

[Bob Wright]

Arizona is getting bad in feral horses and burros. I never hear much about round ups. At one time ~10 years ago, we were 5x over the limit of burros. Now the horse activists are trying to stop any horse actions taken by agencies around the state.
I'm encouraged by the immediate improvements on WY tribal land where ferals have been cleared.

 

[LRNut]

You guys need to hit the link and support the removal of feral horses - there are plenty of horse lovers protesting this.

 

[HSmithTX]

This has been obvious to common sense people for at least a century, my great great and great grandpa's made a good part of their living rounding up the wild horses in CA, OR and NV. It had to be done so that they had game to hunt and grazing for cattle. Old/bad genetics/lame whatever horses were sold for animal feed, hides, glue etc. The old timers were smart enough to round up all the stud horses they could and put good genetic stud horses out there to breed the mares that were left after all the bad genetics were mostly gone, they got generally good quality cow horses out of the young horses in the wild roundups after 15-20 years of managing the herd. My dad had a mustang from that desert until I was a teenager. Cranky bastard but a superb riding horse.

 

[wvbearhunter]

I am horse crazy and even I believe they need heavily reduced

 

[dmj]

I love a good horse, have had horses all my life. But wild horses etc need to be controlled. They are very destructive. But some people are crazy, they want save every thing no matter the cost and or destruction to others.

 

[HARPERC]

I've had horses, and treated them as well as they can be treated. Feral horses no use for whatsoever. Old enough to remember the Game department managing them. 1 a day at one point, never ran out of them.

The newest song when confronted with horses as a non-native species is "rewilding" they were here 10,000 years ago so we're just bringing them back like wooly mammoths.

Given they are just abandoned pets, or livestock, if we got rid of all of them starting over won't be an issue.

Another article.

Overpopulated wild horses are hurting sage grouse survival rates, Wyoming study finds - WyoFile

Research, nearly 15 years in the making, suggests that non-native equines add another stressor to the struggles of sagebrush-dependent birds.

wyofile.com

 

[Bob Wright]

One of the other destructive things burros do is kick up waterline between series of guzzlers. Ranchers constantly have to mend those lines between guzzlers which also water wildlife of all kinds. It's really a problem in the Arizona desert ranches on BLM lands. I'm not sure if horses are that destructive except they eat a lot of food in competition with wildlife.