Reply #80: Not sure how long this needs to be continued,but here goes: [View All]

Your post is a series of statements from an advocacy website. There is no mention of any studies or researchers. These assertions are a mixture of some truth, some error and some outright misinformation.

The dispersal of seeds is true of all livestock (and other herbivores), and has both positive and negative consequences, depending on what they are actually eating and dispersing. The claim of soil building is pretty suspect in an arrid environment, it would be very dependant on certain factors being present and can also be achieved with cattle, probably easier. The opposite of soil building, erosion, also occurs (much more readily and in some cases extreme) and is easier to fix when the animals are controlled such as managed cattle OR horses or even better is a mixture of species, the key is timing, which requires management.

I will grant a small amount of mineral is "lost" when livestock are harvested, however certain numbers are taken by predators and also die naturally as well. Cattle daily deposit 4 lbs of nitrogen manufactured from cellulose, horses dung is much less "rich". Evil cattle ranchers also provide water for wildlife and usually do so without the erosion prone "pawing down to subterranean water" (wild horses dig wells!) What this behavior really is is a sign of drought and lack of water for any species, this is an act of desperation and if rain or rescue doesn't happen fast they are likely to perish in a rather "inhumane" way.

I am sorry but this quote(no author by the way) shows MAYBE that horses (and cattle) themselves have adapted to a new landscape ecologically speaking, it does NOT show in any measurable, scientific manner that horses running unmanaged provides any ecological improvement over any other domestic animal or human conservation type activity.

Virtually any (biological, ecological) argument FOR (or against for that matter) wild horses applies to cattle as well so trying to imply that wild horses are somehow "better" than cattle is simply that - a value judgment that is not really scientific in any way.

For me personally, the argument that these animals are a part of our historical heritage, that they are beautiful and have a non-economic value as a part of the scenery is a more honest and truthful approach than arbitrarily claiming they "benefit the environment". The extreme position of not allowing any culling and contemptuous disreguard for humans trying to make a living off the land is where you shut me down and turn me against you. I have no problem with sharing the landscape with these animals and I imagine it is a very small number of ranchers that want them completly removed. WHY can't some compromise be worked out? I don't know about the paying of ranchers to keep these animals as mentioned above, (I adopted a couple myself), but that actually sounds like a win win idea, or if not paying at least some sort of incentive, what is wrong with that?