Wild Horse Roundups

A few days ago I got curious and wanted to know a little more about the wild horse roundups that take place every year. I went to youtube.com and searched for "wild horse roundups" and was amazed at what came up. Almost every video had a sad song playing in the back round and a slew of comments. Wanting to know what others thought about the videos, I read the comments and was absolutely astonished. Every comment and even the description of the video stated that the horse roundups are a problem and many people included "solutions" to the problem in their comment. While reading these "solutions" I wondered if any of these people ever graduated from high school. I then seriously thought about youtube.com's main users and concluded that most of the people who have a youtube account and post comments or videos about horse roundups must not have ever graduated or are very young because I cannot believe that adults could be so clueless.

Many people blamed the ranchers and farmers saying that if there were less cattle, that would solve the problem. I concluded that these people must not even know what the problem is. The problem is that we need to control the horse population to prevent overgrazing. We need to prevent overgrazing not for the rancher's or farmer's benefit, but for the environment's and the horses' benefit. Getting rid of farmers and ranchers or limiting the number of cattle ranchers can graze on horse land will only allow the land to be able to support more horses. That means that more horses will have to run for miles to get to the roundup corral, more horses will be sent to the slaughter house (since there are already not enough people adopting the horses) and the price of food and/or beef will go up.

Some people stated that man is too stupid to be able to deal with problems, so we should just leave the horses alone and let nature take it's course. That, in my opinion, is a valid solution to the problem and many people are willing to carryout this plan. However, I can't help but wonder how many people will like the idea of "letting nature take it's course" when they see fields devoid of grass and thousands of starving horses. I believe that when the fields the horses are currently grazing on become overgrazed, they will begin to migrate to other areas until at last they reach residential areas. I wonder how many people will love wild horses when they begin to graze lawns and perhaps even kill a few children who wandered too close.

There are those who think that as the land begins to be overgrazed, the horse population will curve and balance itself harmoniously. This theory has been proven wrong time and time again. One instance that proved this theory false is the Kaibab National Forest. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt created the "Grand Canyon Federal Game Preserve." The idea for the preserve was to make a haven for deer. They eliminated hunting, grazing of livestock, and natural predators. The deer population grew and grew. There came a point when people began to see a few effects of the large amount of deer. The shrubs and understory plant life began to disappear, and, as time went on, so did the low lying branches and bark on the trees. Eventually, every tree in the forest was stripped from about 6 feet down and the forest floor was barren. There were so many deer that no one could go through the forest without seeing a few hundred. Fawns were in piles dead on the floor because they could not reach the bark that was left.

Without natural predators to limit the population, the number of horses on the range land will be determined by the amount of food available. When their population grows too large for the land to be able to support them, they will begin to starve and possibly migrate and the population will not curve but drop dramatically after a dramatic increase. Then the question becomes "is letting thousands of horses starve because of an uncontrolled population more humane than making hundreds run for miles to be contained in a small space, then set free again, be adopted or simply sent to the slaughter house?"

Yes, overgrazing probably does occur in nature. Even with natural predators, the population of animals is constantly changing. If predators live somewhere with lots of prey, their population will increase until they kill most of the prey, then the predator will start to starve and their population will decrease until the prey comes back and increases again. The problem is that people don't like this constant change. Our society likes consistency because consistency ensures our survival as a species where as change might kill us off. In order to keep the horse population constant, we need to do something to control it. Right now, we've resorted to roundups, but in the future we may be able to come up with another solution. 

I believe that we should introduce natural predators into the areas where the wild horses live, then control the population of the predators by hunting. Many people, however, would be against this since shooting predators is generally frowned upon. I think that another way to deal with the problem is to find the areas where the horses generally graze during a specific time. Then, build multiple roundup corrals close to (but not right next to) the areas the horses graze on. That way, the horses don't have to run as far and there aren't so many in one corral. This solution will cost a lot of money which would raise taxes and increase our country's current deficit. These are just my ideas based on my experience (which isn't extensive). As time goes on, technology and maybe even public opinion will be able to come up with a better solution, but as for right now, the roundups are the best we can do with what we have.

So, do not blame farmers or ranchers because not only does it have nothing to do with them, but they are also the ones producing the food you eat (unless you buy everything you eat from China, Mexico, or some other foreign country). While "leaving it to nature" is one solution, consider ALL of the consequences. There are pros and cons to every solution and we as a society simply need to decided which cons we are willing to deal with.