Wild horse lovers across the West are outraged by a National Forest Service scheme to liquidate a much-loved wild horse herd to make room for cattle grazing under a pretext of public safety with minimal public notice.
On July 31, Tonto National Forest published a 7-day “livestock removal notice” announcing the “impoundment” of “unauthorized livestock” under a federal regulation aimed at owners of stray farm animals. But the target of this notice is the Salt River Wild Horse herd, which has occupied the Arizona forest land in question since at least the 1930s, and have become famous through the work nature photographers. Anyway, they are not stray farm animals, more like wild animals. If this had caused such a concern, they could have installed cattle guards so the herd were staying in one place and not causing a threat to anyone, as was suggested. This way, at least they could stay in their natural home environment while be monitored.
Forest Service officials merely speak of “removing” the horses. They won’t openly talk about killing them. In reality, they’re probably destined for dog food factories. The roundup itself is to be conducted with helicopters and mounted cowboys.
Every aspect of this operation is being conducted in a sneaky manner. The Forest Service knows perfectly well these horses are wildly popular with the public. There’s even a private group, the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group, dedicated to their preservation. That’s why there was no press conference, just an obscure legal notice published in a local paper, announcing a roundup to begin within a few days. The Forest Service managers behind the operation knew there would be strong public opposition, and didn’t want to give the wild horses’ defenders an opportunity to mobilize public opinion against it.
But when the word got out, activists swung into action, and that’s when Tonto National Forest officials issued their crowning piece of bullshit. Their PR flack told the ABC affiliate in Phoenix,
“‘It just boils down to a safety concern for the Forest Service. We have horses out there on Forest Service land and we have no authority to manage horses and this is how they’re proceeding to remedy the safety issue,’ explained Mundy.
“Mundy said the horses have never been designated for protection in Arizona, so they are considered stray animals. And even though no one has ever been injured, forest rangers don’t want to wait until it happens. ‘I was in Butcher Jones today there were little kids playing, the horses were right there. It’s just a matter of time before something bad happens and we don’t want to see that,’ said Mundy.”
That’s a crock. The horses have been there for 80 years and they’ve never hurt anyone. Conversely, if there’s a genuine safety concern, then the Forest Service sat on their hands a very long time before doing something to protect the little kids they claim to be worried about. And if Tonto National Forest actually has a policy against dangerous wildlife, then why aren’t they also rounding up bears, coyotes, and rattlesnakes?
(Photo: Neil Bosworth, Tonto National Forest Supervisor)
If you believe this has anything to do with public safety, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. The Forest Service officials behind this scheme want to clear the wild horses off the land so they can lease it to cattlemen and collecting the grazing fees. Cattlemen are a political force to be reckoned with in Arizona, and that’s where the impetus for this atrocity is coming from. The Salt River Wild Horses are being sacrificed to provide cheap subsidized grazing for private profit to make more hamburgers for McDonalds to sell.
It’s damned tempting to conjure lebensraum analogies, but I’ll try to restrain myself. References to the Holocaust should be limited to that unique horror in human history, not loosely bandied about as GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has done recently, and Forest Service officials aren’t Nazis shooting Jewish children; they’re merely spineless career bureaucrats who are sucking up to local business interests who in turn are sucking on the federal tit of subsidized grazing land while decrying “socialism” and voting for Republicans. What’s going on here is banal hypocrisy, not mass murder, it’s what I’d call a Level 3 Outrage (on a 1 to 5 scale).
Summary
The Bad Guys: Forest Service officials, their bullshitting PR people, and the cattlemen they’re sucking up to.
The Good Guys: The horses, the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group and other activists trying to save them, the celebrities joining the effort, the news media covering this story … and YOU, if you decide to lend a hand by signing petitions, writing letters, contacting your congressman, and adding your voice to the protests.
The Law
The federal regulation invoked by Tonto National Forest managers as an excuse to liquidate the Salt River Wild Horse Herd is 36 CFR 262.10. (CFR stands for “Code of Federal Regulations.”) Here’s what it says:
Does that read like something that was meant to apply to wild horses? It doesn’t to me, either, and I’m a lawyer. Hopefully a conservation group with legal resources will sue the Forest Service in a federal district court over its attempt to use its authority to remove stray livestock from public lands to exterminate a publicly-owned legacy wild horse herd.