I once was friends with the game manager on White Sands Missle Range, in New Mexico. That area is fairly delicate, desert habitat. During a real dry period, I was on the range hunting Oryx. The horses that we saw were in terrible shape and everything that they could not eat, they shit on-literally. Some were so weak that they could not get up. The terrain was destroyed in many areas. My friend told me that he and an mp were going to do some incognito horse control with some rifles one day. By the time that they got back to base, the loony leftist dummies from Kalifornia were already calling and whining about the horses. Obviously, someone in the office ratted them out.
Ultimately, the government allocated TEN MILLION DOLLARS to take care of the problem and round up the horses. A couple riflemen could have done it with a few hundred rounds of ammo.
There also was/is a bunch of wild horses on Yuma Proving Ground north of Yuma, Arizona. There again, it is fragile habitat and the horses have absolutely destroyed it. There, they also have the feral burrows, which adds to the problem. They pressure the big horn sheep and foul all of the small water holes.
These things are a scourge. I was in a bar (highly unusual occurrence
) in Meeteetse, Wyoming. A guy that I was chatting with runs wild horse tours for idiot tourists, east of Cody on BLM land. We discussed the horses and I told him what my opinion was, which, living in that country, he understood. The beautiful girl that was tending bar spoke up and said that she grew up in Idaho and they shot every one of those damn things that they saw. She took the wind right out of his love for wild horses.
