10A
tCm: What is “welfare ranching”?
RT: Welfare ranching is a joke. We have ten western states where the
wild horses reside and the BLM grants private individuals, ranchers,
to graze private cattle on it for $1.35 cow/calf pair per month. We as taxpayers subsidize this grazing at the expense of our wild horses. Recently,
the BLM has commissioned a scientific team to investigate the land use
but are not including grazing as that may harm their ranching interests because cattle grazing destroys the land as they eat everything down to the
roots of the forage leaving nothing behind to re-grow there. That $1.35 is
a substantial income of millions a year paid to the BLM when you
consider the millions of cows grazing on public lands.
11A
tCm: These horses, in both short and long term holding pens, are fed and
housed with taxpayer dollars as well. Doesn’t that seem like a slippery
slope to you.? The constant reiteration by the advocates that the horses
are being sustained at ‘huge tax payers expense’ could come back to haunt
them, no?
RT: Well, yes, and that’s what did happen in 2008. The Government
declared that they couldn’t afford to care for and feed the horses anymore
and the only solution was to slaughter and euthanize them. That created a
huge public outcry. The BLM has gelded the stallions, separated them
from their mares and families to live their lives in a male herd or a female herd, very unnatural…the wild horses have lost both their freedom
and families. Those horses go to, what I call, death camps…
they exist there until they die.
.
12A tCm: Although you are a wild horse advocate out to protect and
save them, what happens to the other wild animals in the same areas like
wolves, elk, deer and all the others? Are they removed as well?
RT: There not removed but most certainly terrorized. We have seen them
scattered and terrorized by the helicopters. Nor are the private cattle
standing and grazing right there. As the horses are moved off, ranchers
with private cattle are moved on. We’ve seen it first hand. Less than
three percent of those domestic range cattle ever go to the American plates
but are sold overseas; all that prime beef goes overseas.
We never see it here in the states.