On Mustang Range, a Battle on Thinning the Herd

[XemaSab]

Five mustangs pounded across the high desert recently, their dark manes and tails giving shape to the wind. Pursued by a helicopter, they ran into a corral — and into the center of the emotional debate over whether euthanasia should be used to thin a captive herd that already numbers 30,000.

The Bureau of Land Management, charged with protecting the horses, has about 30,000 of them in captivity.
The champions of wild mustangs have long portrayed them as the victims of ranchers who preferred cattle on the range, middlemen who wanted to make a buck selling them for horsemeat and misfits who shot them for sport. But the wild horse today is no longer automatically considered deserving of extensive protections.

Some environmentalists and scientists have come to see the mustangs, which run wild from Montana to California, as top-of-the-food-chain bullies, invaders whose hooves and teeth disturb the habitats of endangered tortoises and desert birds.

Even the language has shifted. In a 2006 article in Audubon magazine, wild horses lost their poetry and were reduced to “feral equids.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/us/20mustangs.html?em&ex=1216872000&en=1a8fabec7143a63e&ei=5087%0A

[malakai2]

1. Hell, why not leave them out there?

While we're at it, we could release some lions, camels, and elephants. Wouldn't make them any less feral than those horses.