Knappster: BLM dreams up another lame wild horse scheme

By George Knapp

When I first read that the federal Bureau of Land Management in Washington, D.C., was considering a plan to put wild horses under the control of Western ranchers, it seemed like some sort of bad, bureaucratic joke. After all, ranchers and wild horses aren't exactly bosom buddies. Foxes and chicken farmers are like spit-swapping amigos in comparison.

Unfortunately, the plan is not a joke. BLM administrators really are thinking about handing wild horse herds over to interested ranchers for care and feeding. The plan is further proof that the D.C. crowd really and truly wouldn't be able to distinguish between the Grand Canyon and their own portly posteriors. ("This is an ass. This is a hole in the ground.")

See, ranchers don't like wild horses. They don't like them at all. At the turn of the last century, about 1 million wild horses roamed North America. Today there are fewer than 60,000, with more than half of those roaming here in Nevada. Without question, the ranching industry led the charge to wipe out the horses. Ranchers, then and now, see horses as competitors for limited forage on Western rangelands. The cowpokes spot a herd of horses and think of giant, grass-eating cockroaches, ravenous vermin of the range, direct competitors with their beloved cattle for all that free food growing on public lands. Ranchers put wild horses in the same category as Indians and buffalo: as pests that needed to be eliminated.

Oh, and how efficiently they have been eliminated. Herds of horses were driven off cliffs to their deaths. They were shot, poisoned, rounded up to be sent away to glue factories and slaughterhouses where the bulk were ground up for dog food. More recently, horse haters have used helicopters and high-powered rifles to pick off the animals from the air. What a sport. The slaughter has abated in recent times only because federal law now protects wild horses and burros. The opinions of the ranchers hasn't changed, though.

Ranchers aren't evil. They aren't anti-horse per se. Horses and ranching have always gone hand in hand in the West. However, unlike we city folks who love our wild horses and don't want any of them to be harmed or even touched, the ranchers know that horses are ravenous beasts who can wipe out forage and destroy watering holes, which means it's tougher for the ranchers to raise cattle. Horses and cows get along just fine out there on the range. But they can quickly overgraze an area, especially during an extended drought like the one we're in. So, if ranchers have to choose between horses and cattle, you can guess which way they will go.

In light of this, who in their right mind would figure that ranchers would be the best candidates to take control of wild horses? Some dim bulb at the BLM, that's who. I doubt many of the BLM troops on the ground here in Nevada signed off on this idea. They know that few, if any, ranchers are going to give up their cattle for horses, which means that putting wild horses under the control of ranchers might end badly for the horses. The only reason this idea makes sense is it would allow the horses to stay closer to their existing ranges and would cut down on roundup and transportation costs. But that's it.

The feds have failed miserably at managing wild horses, so this new idiocy shouldn't surprise anyone. Maybe this failure has something to do with the fact that the headquarters for the Wild Horse and Burro Program is on the East Coast. Last time I checked, there weren't many herds of wild palominos roaming the vast rangelands of Maryland and Virginia. Not only is HQ back East, but the bulk of the wild horse budget gets sent there as well. Nevada, with more than half the nation's wild horses, gets about 15 percent of the money. And we wonder why the Nevada BLM has a hard time keeping up with the wild horse population?

Lifelong horse lover Jerry Reynoldson, a longtime aide to Sen. Harry Reid, has some novel ideas for taking the wild horse program in new directions. He wants to set up up a pilot program that would bring private marketing expertise into the wild horse adoption program, instead of leaving adoptions in the hands of distinterested feds or well-meaning volunteers. And he wants to build a central holding facility near Ely, where horses could be housed, but could be "gentled" as a precursor to adoptions. The gentling could be accomplished by prison inmates, and the facility could be a boon to Ely's struggling economy. It would seem to be a winning combo on several levels.

Reyoldson will meet at the end of this month with all five members of Nevada's congressional delegation to talk about his plan. It would seem that a little bit of creative thinking is exactly what the wild horse program desperately needs. Of course, we could always turn the horses over to the ranchers. I'm sure the folks at Alpo would appreciate that approach.

CRC/Nevada Power update

The apology offered earlier this week by the executive director of the Colorado River Commission to Nevada Power Co. and the public didn't exactly bowl over utility executives. Nevada Power has finally achieved the public release of audiotaped conversations between CRC's energy traders and other entities, including Enron and the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Nevada Power thinks the tapes show a concerted effort by CRC and others to screw over the power company. In fact, the traders on the tapes use the words "screw" and "fuck" to describe what they were trying to do to Nevada Power.

Contrary to CRC's George Caan's claims, these nasty attempts to mess with Nevada Power did not end in May 2000, nor were they limited to a single CRC trader. The tapes are pretty blistering when taken all together, because they suggest several traders at different entities knew what was going on, knew that it was costing Nevada Power huge amounts of money, and knew they were using tactics that made the discovery of their self-described "scheme" unlikely.

Nevada Power is going to send the tapes on to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is already investigating the CRC for its dealings with Enron, but the company isn't likely to stop there. It may pursue its own legal action, demand the return of millions of dollars, possibily encourage the pursuit of criminal charges and maybe even make the case at the state Legislature that perhaps it's time someone conducted some oversight of the free-wheeling CRC and its liplock buddy, the Southern Nevada Water Authority. As they say, this is a story with legs.

One another note, on the same day that Mr. Cann was telling the CRC board that this was no big deal, no harm was done, don't worry about it, he asked the board to triple--TRIPLE--the legal budget to defend CRC in Washington, jacking it up from the $150,000 already spent to a whopping $450,000. Add to that another $80,000 the CRC will dish out to a local law firm to help with the case, and this seems a mighty expensive undertaking for something that supposedly amounted to naught.

Names and faces

A Las Vegas man was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this week. His name is Mark Chatfield, a talented guitarist who years ago was a key member of Bob Seger's Silver Bullet Band, which cranked out numerous popular rock albums in the '70s and '80s. Chatfield went backto join his bandmates for the Hall of Fame induction festivities in New York but should be back in town by the end of this week. He can be found at Cowtown Guitars. ... Nevada U.S. Sen. John Ensign is praised so much in the new issue of The Animal Advocate magazine that it's almost embarrassing. The mag is a publication of the Humane Society of the United States. HSUS really lays it on thick for Ensign, citing his efforts to outlaw dogfighting and cockfighting and his future plans to help bar the interstate transportation of horses for the purpose of human consumption, which means no more horseburgers for French or Japanese epicures. Ensign seems to have earned himself a very loyal constituency. ... Local TV journalists will likely not be pleased to read an article written by city fire spokesman Tim Szymanski. Szymanski wrote the article for Firehouse.com, a subscription-only website for firefighters. In it, he warns firefighters to beware of "TV Sweeps" periods, when stations battle for ratings supremacy. According to Tim, "This is when most of the rules go out the window, and in past years, it seems to have gotten worse." He gripes that journalists will use hidden cameras and mikes, or even--gasp--ask for records about salaries, budgets, sick leave or big fires. Also, he opines, this is when stories may be sensationalized and not as accurate. And he warns firefighters not to goof off while on the job, or risk being caught on camera. Since when it it sensational to ask for budgets and salaries, let alone to request info about "big fires"? If any of my TV collegues care to see the column, drop me a note. And hey, Tim, May sweeps is just around the corner.