Nevada Horse Round Up (Editorial)

Dear Editor,

     I am writing regarding the Horse Round Up article and why I think it is very unrealistic and provides no facts, I believe the horses are being rounded up inhumanly and for no real purpose. Your article mentions that rounding up horses "isn't pretty" but I think its an excuse to make it look like there is no alternate ways to rounding up the horses and no possible solutions. I also find it to be sneaky in the fact there is very limited access to what is going on and hard to is to take pictures or videos of these horses because your  afraid of a public outcry.

     The treatment of removing the horses is completely inhumane because they are using helicopters to round them up. They have a trained horse run in the front of the herd while a helicopter flies low to the ground and forces them into small corals. According to USA Today's article, "This latest wild horse controversy started after a BLM contractor using a helicopter moved 250 horses on July 10, when the Tuscarora gather began. By the next day, seven horses had died from dehydration, according to the agency." They are having increasing deaths occurring to horses during the round ups, this proves we need a new method in rounding horses up. Our efforts to rounding horses up harming and killing them.

   The horses were extremely effected by the heat since the BLM rounded them up this summer in the hottest month of the year. The BLM says that the horses needed to be removed because of a draught but they knew about the drought since march and could of done something before it got so hot. Another article from the USA Today says "Horse activist Laura Leigh, whose lawsuit put a temporary halt to the roundup July 14, blames the deaths on the BLM, which she says allowed the horses to become dehydrated and held the roundup during the hottest season of the year." We could have prevented the horses from being dehydrated and having to suffer from the heat in over one hundred degree weather in Nevada. It was inhumane to the horses to perform round ups in that hot of weather and should have been planned earlier or later in the year for the treatment of the animals.

     A problem that needs to be considered is where will all the horses go when they are removed. They intend to remove 2,500 horses but don't say more than they will be put up for adoption or taken to a ranch. Although according to 8NewsNow "The local office spent almost nothing on adoptions of the horses it rounds up. Only eight were adopted this past year." We are clearly having problems when it comes to adoptions and not being able to put out the money we need for the horses to go to good homes. We need to think about the horses and if we take out another 2,500 horses will we be able to provide safe places for them to go.

   These horses should be able to be humanly removed and be placed up for adoption rather than crowded on a ranch on some other land we can't afford. I think we need to explore our options on more humane ways to removing them and take the weather into account. It was very unnecessary to remove the horses in the hottest month when we saw this drought coming in spring. I just hope we can see that these animals are not just profit and in the way but can look at facts and see the toll this has taken on them then maybe we can look for a better solution.