More Weird Science

We finally received the official "supporting documents" for next week's Board of Agriculture meeting. The best description we can give to these documents is "pathetic."

First, here's some news for all of you up in the Virginia Range who monitor the horses and who know anything about horse counts. This is Dr. Larussa's VRE horse map.

In contradiction to hard data, observations and common sense, Dr. Larussa is trying to suggest that 70% of the Virginia Range horses live in the Virginia Highlands, TRW and a small slice of TRI. I'm sure that these figures come as a shock to anyone living or working up in the Highlands. Furthermore, the map itself isn't correct as the actual herd boundaries are not what are illustrated on Larussa's map.

Boundary issues aside, recently fewer than 200 horses were counted in the Highlands. If that number actually represented 70% of the horses, the entire herd would be about 150 head. But that can't be right because Ed Foster recently calculated that there could soon be 2, 3, 4,000 horses up there.

Maybe the horses were holding a convention up in the Highlands when they were counted. That would put about 840 horses up in the Highlands. But that also can't be right because folks up there would be tripping over all the horses and all those horses spotted in the lower valleys would have to be illusions.

How about this possibility? These guys don't know what they're doing and they apparently won't listen to the people on their staff who do.

The next bit of deception on the part of Dr. Larussa is the proposition that the wild horse groups had an opportunity to work with the Department and refused for no valid reason. Dr. Larussa presents a document generally referred to as "Betty's Notes" and a somewhat metaphoric email message where he was informed that the department was booking passage on a train wreck and that the groups weren't joining him for that ride. Dr. Larussa conveniently omitted the other correspondence where he and other Department officials lied, tried to double cross the groups, tried to play one group against the other and even labeled a Silver Springs retiree a threat to the Department.

Dr. Larussa also failed to mention that the groups were still taking in horses for adoption to save the state money, doing their field work, getting the summer water program into operation, mitigating range hazards, and participating in the other activities that the groups customarily undertake. The groups' simple position is that they aren't coming to a pointless meeting to be lied to or be used as window dressing.

Not to worry. All these other elements relating to the Virginia Range wild horse crisis will be presented to the Board of Agriculture in an orderly fashion, with supporting documents, so that the Board will have an opportunity to see the complete picture. The Board should have the opportunity to see through this smoke screen and judge for themselves what's really going on.

If the Board of Agriculture's intent is to create a "reality based platform" to work out issues involving the Virginia Range Horses, we may have a real basis to get back to the table, get the necessary work done and save the taxpayers a lot of money.