Letter: Cattle a greater ecological threat than wild horses

Wednesday, March 9, 2005 | 9:11 a.m.

The article about wild mustangs in your Feb. 27 edition was interesting and timely. The real issue, though, is the welfare ranching system. The water-intensive domestic livestock business in the arid West makes no sense either economically or ecologically. It only survives because of government programs. Those include heavy subsidies in the form of bargain-basement grazing allotments, emergency feed programs and a wildlife "service" program that kills thousands of natural predators a year to protect agricultural interests.

As a result of the grazing benefits on some 300 million acres of public land, the majority of Western public lands are severely damaged, with more than half of the desirable plant species gone. In their place are erosion, weed infestation and nonfunctioning riparian areas. In contrast the Bureau of Land Management allows wild horses on only about 30 million acres.

Only someone who benefits from the government's largesse to ranchers would view the wild horses as a "nuisance." Wild horses subsist on forage of much lower quality and greater variety. Because of their mobility, they graze further from water and over a far wider area than domestic cattle do. Studies show that it's cattle, not wild horses and burros, that are responsible for overgrazing public lands.

The amendment by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., is a disgrace. It would swing the doors to the slaughterhouses wide open once again. His office refers to the "sheer magnitude" of wild horses. He should do the math. Cattle outnumber wild horses on public lands 1,000 to one.

DEBBIE NETARDUS