Federal Grazing Program in Bundy Dispute Rips-Off Taxpayers, Wild Horses

[okaawhatever]

Sean Hannity defended Cliven Bundy as a patriot. Harry Reid called Bundy a terrorist. Jon Stewart called him a “welfare rancher trying to pull off the world’s largest dine and dash.”

Before his stand-off last week with the Federal Government—staged, aptly, during tax time—Bundy was a Nevada rancher who illegally grazed his cattle for 20 years on thousands of acres of public land, owing $1 million in unpaid grazing fees.

SNIP

Across the west, the BLM and U.S. Forest Service manage 13.3 million AUMs (Animal Unit Months) on 250 million acres of public land. One month of grazing one cow/calf combination or five sheep (the definition of an AUM) costs $1.35—a fee that’s substantially below the present-day cost of $16-$20 per month to graze livestock on private land (BLM evidence of this disparity is noted here.) The direct loss to taxpayers, according to Wild Earth Guardians’ interpretation of GAO data, is huge: at least $123 million a year. Indirect but related costs push the total to as much as $1 billion, all to produce less than 3% of the nation’s beef supply.

The ultimate losers in this equation are wild horses and the increasingly shrinking western lands they roam that belong to the public. To create space for this taxpayer-funded cattle program, the BLM, according to its website, deploys helicopters, rounding up 8,255 wild equines in 2012 and 4,288 in 2013. The roundups, according to The Cloud Foundation, cost an average of $750 per head. Some equines are adopted out for $125; the others are warehoused at a cost of $1.35 a day. Total cost for last year’s Wild Horses and Burros program: $71.8 million (according to the BLM).

Continued at Link:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/vickeryeckhoff/2014/04/25/federal-grazing-program-in-bundy-dispute-rips-off-taxpayers-wild-horses/

Interesting article. There is more here than just grazing fees. The article (a few more paragraphs) includes an explanation of how the horses are better for restoring the land and the environmental impact of allowing the excessive grazing.

[Historic NY]

1. She conveniently doesn't define wild horse......

Horses such as the Mustang that roam the west and other places are not the same as their early distance cousins. They are untamed feral & semi feral members of the domestic horse subspecies. There is a big difference between these populations.

[okaawhatever]

2. You seem to know much more than I. The author has written a series of articles over the years

following the BLM and wild horse management. Here is another of her articles:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/vickeryeckhoff/2012/02/28/contraceptives-for-wild-horses-are-just-what-the-government-ordered/

If you are inclined to read it and find her reporting erroneous please let me know.