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Sunday, September 29, 2013
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
blog round up
A few of my latest blogs for High Country News. Much more professional and better researched than anything I write on here, so please, take the time to check them out.
The wilderness therapy industry tries to go legit: http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/wilderness-therapy-seeks-to-reinvent-itself
Mountain goats are introduced to Utah's La Sal Mountains: http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/add-one-to-the-introduced-species-list-mountain-goats-in-the-la-sal-mountains
The future of the Land and Water Conservation Fund: http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/legislators-sparring-over-land-and-water-conservation-fund-again
Plus, a related infograph I put together for the magazine: http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.15/conservation-fund-turns-50
Another infograph on lightning fatalities in the West: http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.13/en-lightning-statistics
And finally, these lil' nuggets. We call them "Latests", what they really are are excellent practice in condensing highly complex stories into 200 words or less:
http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.15/the-latest-mt-taylor-uranium-mines-still-haunt-navajo-communities
http://www.hcn.org/articles/the-latest-battle-in-the-wests-bitter-wild-horse-wars
http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.13/the-latest-mining-claims-halted-in-some-areas
The wilderness therapy industry tries to go legit: http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/wilderness-therapy-seeks-to-reinvent-itself
Mountain goats are introduced to Utah's La Sal Mountains: http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/add-one-to-the-introduced-species-list-mountain-goats-in-the-la-sal-mountains
The future of the Land and Water Conservation Fund: http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/legislators-sparring-over-land-and-water-conservation-fund-again
Plus, a related infograph I put together for the magazine: http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.15/conservation-fund-turns-50
Another infograph on lightning fatalities in the West: http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.13/en-lightning-statistics
And finally, these lil' nuggets. We call them "Latests", what they really are are excellent practice in condensing highly complex stories into 200 words or less:
http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.15/the-latest-mt-taylor-uranium-mines-still-haunt-navajo-communities
http://www.hcn.org/articles/the-latest-battle-in-the-wests-bitter-wild-horse-wars
http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.13/the-latest-mining-claims-halted-in-some-areas
Monday, September 9, 2013
wolves and wild horses
DeWitt Daggett is not a cowboy. He's a
short man with curly black hair on his arms who was a geologist and
an audio book publisher before he decided to move to Western Colorado
and dedicate his life to horses. He's not quite a veterinarian
either, but he shoes horses and de-worms them and doles out advice
that's easy for horse owners to accept, because DeWitt himself is
easy to accept — the kind of man that never makes you feel dumb or
awkward but teaches you in a such a subtle manner that you feel as if you
knew it all along. He grew up in Texas but didn't encounter horses
until later in life, and yet he's got a way that makes both people
and horses trust him.
The weekend that DeWitt takes me
riding, I'm dog-sitting at a ranch in Crawford, Colorado, a place
with 336 people and about 100,000 sage bushes. I dress for the
occasion in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, then follow DeWitt's
pickup through a cloud of dust to another ranch eight miles
outside town. We saddle up two Palominos and ride out onto an expanse of
BLM land, nothing but rolling sagebrush and hidden canyons as far as
the eye can see. The sun is harsh and the ground cracked, but
thunderclouds are already building up around the Elk Mountains,
suggesting the promise of respite.
After talking about a lot of things --
how to "bridge" Western-style reins, the cost of college
education, the Christchurch, NZ earthquake, New England vs. the West,
the West vs. Alaska -- we ride silently for a while through the sea
of sage. Then I tentatively bring up wild horses. In polite company,
it's said, you don't talk politics or religion at the dinner table.
In religious areas, it's wise not to discuss abortion. Here in
the rural West, the two topics sure to create contention are wild
horses and wolves.
But I'm feeling bold, and I want to
know DeWitt's opinion of a Roswell, New Mexico slaughterhouse that's
been fighting to become the first in the country to
legally butcher horses since 2007. I don't come right out and say that, though.
I ask what he thinks of wild horses.
After
a pause, he clears his throat and says, "Well.
Like many things associated with humans, there's too many of 'em."
After another pause that lasts at least
a few hoofbeats, he adds, "And
their management is political, not practical. Some people would
rather see horses starve or get shipped off to Mexico than admit we
need a slaughterhouse. People don't have the cohones
to do what's right."
I was glad to hear
this smart, respectable, horse-lovin' man defend the need for an
equine slaughterhouse. A few weeks before, I'd talked to Erny Zah, a
spokesman for Navajo Nation, who told me that while horses are sacred
to Navajo culture, wild horses have become so problematic on the Navajo reservation that the tribe has publicly come out
supporting the Roswell slaughterhouse. Since then, both Navajo Nation and
the slaughterhouse have been harassed by animal rights
activists.
The owner of the
proposed slaughterhouse is Rick De Los Santos, shown in photographs
as a lanky man with a serious handlebar mustache. De Los Santos has
not responded to my phone calls, but his
voice on the answering machine matches his appearance: slow and
drawling, borne from the Southwest.
De Los Santos has a
lot of experience running cattle slaughterhouses, and after Congress
re-authorized horse slaughter in 2011, he realized he was in a
position to provide a service for which there was great demand. He
jumped through all the necessary hoops, and his slaughterhouse was
scheduled to open in July. But then his family began receiving
threatening phone calls, the building was set on fire, and a lawsuit
by the Humane Society of the United States and other animal-rights'
groups further delayed the opening. A proposed equine slaughterhouse
in Iowa has faced similar challenges, and recently announced that
they're giving up the fight. But De Los Santos won't back down.
I grew up riding
horses, and I love them. Yet horse culture in the East is
fundamentally different from horse culture in the West, and after researching the state of wild horses here, I can't help but agree
that this country needs an equine slaughterhouse. The BLM spends more
on "managing" feral horses than on saving endangered
species. There are more wild mustangs in captivity than in the wild,
and even so, more wild horses than many ecosystems and human
communities can support. And that's not counting the domestic horses,
the ones neglected in sun-baked backyard corrals. During the
recession and accompanying drought, people tried to get rid of horses
they couldn't afford to keep by releasing them into the wild, where
their fate was hardly better. Navajo Nation freely admits that
they're forced to round up wild horses and sell them to Mexico, where
they're likely slaughtered in facilities far less regulated than
those in the U.S. would be. Meanwhile, many "civilized"
countries in the world eat horsemeat. And by way of comparison, pigs
have a higher IQ than horses.
Unfortunately, the
same groups that vehemently, even violently, oppose horse slaughter
for emotional reasons are lumped in the same category as the people
who fight for wolf protection. And yet wolf protection is something I
can get behind. For centuries, humans have relentlessly and
ruthlessly exterminated wolves, and in the process wrecked the natural
balance. Yet because some of the people advocating for wolf protection
also want to prohibit the slaughter of wild horses, they've sacrificed
their credibility with many rural Westerners, who regard them all as out-of-touch city dwellers. Their rational argument for wolves is
diminished by their irrationality regarding horses.
Hearing DeWitt
cautiously defend the slaughterhouse, I feel relieved. DeWitt
supports slaughterhouses because he loves horses -- it's the
most humane solution to a human-created problem. I tell DeWitt that I
fear wolf crusaders are sacrificing their credibility and influence
by refusing to accept horse slaughter, and from
behind, I see his bone-colored cowboy hat nod once up and down. Then
he rides on, swallowed up by junipers.
Evening in Crawford, Colorado |
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