Columnist Susan Snyder: Animals need protection from us

Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2000 | 10:11 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@ vegas.com or 259-4082.

There is something to be said for the sicko or sickos who shot four wild horses and two burros in the Lee Canyon area.

Most of it is not fit for print.

But Dave Tattam, of the National Wild Horse Association, says it's not hard to infer a couple of details about whoever shot the animals, some of which were maimed in a manner that made them die slowly.

"They're either (lousy) marksmen or they did it that way on purpose. That's what's really twisted about it," he said.

Tattam, who also is a hunter, says the shooters are not only vicious, they're lazy. He suspects they fired the fatal shots without leaving the confines of the truck that toted them up there. Law enforcement officers investigating the incident wouldn't confirm Tattam's hunch about the truck, but they agree the shooter didn't have to use much effort.

Shooting a wild horse or burro is about as challenging as shooting a sofa.

Stan Rolf, assistant director of renewable resources for the Bureau of Land Management, says the feral horses and burros of the Las Vegas Valley are different than many of their counterparts in other parts of the state.

In regions that are open and remote, herds will trot off when humans pass within half a mile. Not here, Rolf said.

Our roads, fences and trails have crisscrossed so much of the animals' domain that they are used to seeing us.

And they're used to something else as well.

"I remember when I was a kid my parents used to take me up to Red Rock to see the burros and feed them," one Las Vegas native said when she heard of the killings.

Good intentions. Bad idea.

Wild animals that are fed by humans -- even if it's only a carrot here and there -- gradually lose the fear that protects them from us, said Julie Gleason of the Nevada Commission on Wild Horses.

They should be treated as wild animals, not as inmates in some open-range petting zoo.

"That's one of our biggest problems," she said. "It's a very bad thing to feed the animals. You're only encouraging them to come down to the road to be fed."

Down to the road where they can be hit by cars or, as we learned last week, fall prey to something far worse. The 30 wild horses massacred in Northern Nevada last year were members of a herd the locals feed on a regular basis, Gleason said.

"One of the goals of the commission is trying to make people more aware that they shouldn't be feeding these horses and burros. In doing so, we're really hurting them," she said.

The horses and burros up in the Spring Mountains are more leery of people than those near Red Rock Canyon, experts said. It's unlikely they could be fed by hand.

It also seems unlikely the ones killed in Lee Canyon bolted in fear when their assailants' truck pulled up.

Southern Nevada's wild beasts and growing human population have to share some pretty tight spaces. And experts say residents need to make sure they keep their distance.

We don't want to love our wildlife to death.

"We love the outdoors here," Tattam said. "We're probably loving the whole damned place to death."