Crooks and Liars

  New Nevada Agriculture Director
Takes Aim at Wild Horses

Part Two

Exposing the Lies, Point by Point

The following statements were taken verbatim from the AP article.

Nevada's new Agriculture Department Director says that the state can't afford to buy hay for stray horses even though many of them may be starving in the mountains near Virginia City.

This first statement is more of a calculated misdirection than a direct lie. Aside from the fact that the Director wants to characterize the herd as "stray" horses although they really aren't, and the state probably can't afford to buy hay for horses had they ever intended to, the salient fact is that the state does not feed horses on the range and it never has. The Emergency Winter Hay Supply is provided by, paid for and stored by the region's wild horse organizations, primarily the Virginia Range Wildlife Protection Association. So why did the Director claim that the state was feeding "stray" horses - which they don't - and why is he proposing to bring in large numbers of horses that the state (and taxpayers) will have to support once captured?

Emergency hay stored in Stagecoach for deployment by air or ground if needed.
(For perspective, the stacks are 14 feet high.)
The claim that "many of them may be starving in the mountains near Virginia City" is a misleading suggestion not supported by any evidence. Volunteers and local wildlife photographers observe the herd year-round and except for a few elderly horses that get thin as part of their natural end-stage life cycle, or an occasional band that has found itself fenced off from its available forage and needs relocating, the Virginia Range horses are in amazingly good shape. In fact the high reproduction rate, the argument to justify the birth control program, is a byproduct of the general good health of this herd.
A classic view of two Virginia Range bands near the overlook on State Route 341.
In actuality there have been thousands of photographs taken of the Virginia Range horses and the condition of the bands are recorded year-round by volunteers, ecologists and nature photographers. Many of these bands are cataloged on the internet and the condition of these horses has been clearly established. An example of such a catalog can be found here.

Tony Lesperance also says that while people refer to about 200 horses in the Virginia Range as wild, they're mainly strays - horses set free by their owners.

This statement is preposterous in a number of ways. First, there are an estimated 1000 to 1200 free-roaming horses in the Virginia Range herd. It is arguably the largest and most significant free-roaming horse herd in the country. Horses evolved in North America and spread into Asia over the prehistoric northern land bridge. Prevailing science suggests that the North American horses died out during the metafaunal extinction several thousand years ago. It is believed that the offspring of those horses were reintroduced into North America by early explorers and settlers. If we are to believe science, all North American wild horses were reintroduced by man and the horses on the range are the offspring of those reintroduced horses.

It is quite likely that the Virginia Range herd includes a handful of privately owned horses that either escaped their owners or were intentionally let loose. However since the volunteers routinely watch the bands and keep photo records of band members, and since "escaped" domestic horses typically exhibit behaviors inconsistent with the survival behaviors of experienced range horses, it can be stated with great certainty that all but perhaps one or two percent of the horses on the Virginia and Flowery Ranges were born into this free-roaming herd.

"Bubba," one of the Virginia Range stallions - hardly an escaped domestic horse.

Continue to Part Three - More Point by Point Rebuttals

Return to Part One

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