The Blog Goes On

We had planned to reduce the daily Horse Wars reports to maybe three issues a week - Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but the state keeps giving us so much material to work with that we might not be able to cover it all in just three editions.

If any students of civics want to know why government often seems not to function rationally and the state budget seems to constantly be in crisis, pay attention to this issue. This is a prime example as to why and how dysfunctional bureaucracies and legislatures operate.

To briefly recap, Nevada is experiencing a huge budget shortfall - as in hundreds of millions of dollars. So what does the state do? It allocates money to spend on a crisis that doesn't really exist - one perpetrated on our legislators and citizens by Governor Gibbons' recent appointee, Tony Lesperance.

Lesperance claimed that the Virginia Range horses were starving, that the range was stripped of all vegetation and that he had to bring the horses in (at taxpayer's expense) as rapidly as possible. When it became obvious to anyone who looked at the range and the horses that Lesperance was full of it, the Department of Agriculture tried another bit of deception to try to mask its original stupidity. What they haven't figured out is this. The more they do something stupid, the more folks will realize how stupid they are. (Watch your tax dollars at work, folks.)

Now the Department is trying to misquote a 1999 study produced by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS.) A link to the NRCS report appears at the bottom of this page.

Anyone looking at Page 4 of the report will see that the area studied was only 85,130 acres out of hundreds of thousands of acres of range. On Pages 11 and 14 you will see a stocking rate of 550 head based on available forage present after several years of drought and invaded by about 20% of cheatgrass, an annual non-native grass that the horses will also eat. During those drought conditions the NRCS calculated that the portion of the range that they studied could support 550 horses.

(One table predicts that the study area could support as many as 918 horses but we'll go with the lesser count of 550.)

So if the 85,130 acre study area could support 550 horses during a drought, while eating 20% cheatgrass and without reclamation or reseeding, then the entire range of over 200,000 acres could conservatively support around 1375 horses in a dry year.

We're not in a drought. There aren't 1375 horses out there. There is no crisis. Anyone with eyes can see that the horse herd in general is healthy and the range is green. There is no need to spend our tax dollars on rounding up horses, particularly when essential services are being cut back. (Please note: The wild horse advocates have gone on record encouraging proactive management of these horses in order to keep their populations in balance. There's just no need for an expensive "trap and toss" program.)

So why does this bungling continue?

It continues in part because the Department of Agriculture continues to lie to the legislature and the public. It also continues in part because a number of our state legislators either don't bother to check the facts they are given before taking a position or they have ties to special interests that don't necessarily correlate with either good public policy or the will of the voters.

The following email message was from Senator Mark Amodei, a lawyer for developers and a champion for high density development in the wild horse range. (Please read Cordevista rejected, Conflict of interest alleged, Nevada Appeal, August 23, 2007.)

Here are Amodei's comments to a Silver Springs resident.

Thank you for your recent letter expressing your concerns regarding the necessity of removing wild horses from the Virginia Range.

As you know, management of the estray horses in the Virginia Range is under the jurisdiction of the Nevada Department of Agriculture. The boundaries of the Virginia Range Estray Horse Management Program are primarily located in Storey County, although part of the range extends to Lyon and Washoe Counties.

According to Edward Foster, Public Information Officer, Department of Agriculture, the purpose of the Management Program is to maintain a healthy and sustainable horse population in the Virginia Range, which was estimated in 2000 to be between 500 and 600 horses. The estimate on habitat capacity was calculated after a comprehensive habitat capacity analysis. Mr. Foster estimates the current herd population in the Virginia Range at 1,200 horses. He stated that the 440,000 acres of the range are in far worse shape than when the 2000 study was made. It is estimated that an appropriate number of horses on the range, in its current condition, is 350 to 400 animals.

The Department of Agriculture is working on a plan, which could take up to six months to complete, that will be beneficial to both the ecology and the horses of the Virginia Range. The agency welcomes positive input and suggestions, as well as an open dialogue with any concerned group. If you would like to participate, the Department of Agriculture can be reached at (775) 688-1180.

I appreciate your taking the time to write to me with your concerns. Please do not hesitate to contact me again if I can be of assistance.

We agree that this was a comprehensive study and we can also do simple arithmetic.

This guy is a lawyer. We hope he reads his contracts better than he read the NRCS study!