Voices for Horses

Ms. Penny Woods, Project Manager

BLM Nevada State Office (NV-910-2)

P.O. Box 12,000

Reno, NV 89520-0006

Email: nvprojects@blm.gov

Re: Clark, Lincoln & White Pine Counties Groundwater Development Project Draft EIS

Dear Ms. Woods:

I have reviewed the above draft EIS and am very alarmed at the enormity of what is being proposed. The Southern Nevada Water Authority plans to drain vast areas of the southeastern and eastern Nevada desert as well as parts of Utah in order to import 57.6 billion gallons of water per year (176,656 acre feet/year). This is in order to fuel the rampant growth of the Las Vegas megalopolis, and the audacity of SNWA is proportional to its thoughtlessness! The proposed drainage of water would have a devastating effect on a vast and unique desert ecosystem and would cause water tables to recede by many feet. This would negatively affect all forms of plant and animal life, including many rare or threatened species such as endemic pupfish.

As well as affecting important traditional game animals such as black-tailed mule deer, pronghorn, bighorn, and elk, this water drainage project would have a very damaging effect upon the awe-inspiring wild horses and burros. As a wildlife ecologist and fourth generation Nevadan, I have observed, photographed, written about, and defended these wonderful presences throughout my life. They should be regarded as returned natives to North America, since the fossil record as well as genetic examination proves that they originated upon this continent and that when Europeans reintroduced them here they were in fact restoring the missing equid component to the life community.

North America is the true cradle of evolution for the entire horse family, Equidae, as all three extant branches (in addition to others now extinct) both originated and experienced their long-standing evolution right here, including Nevada. The horses and burros are a different type of herbivore; they are not ruminant, but rather post-gastric digesters. This makes them natural gardeners who fertilize the soils and spread intact seeds of a great variety of plants wherever they roam. This they do to a much greater degree than is the case with ruminant digesters, precisely because their post-gastric digestive system does not as thoroughly degrade their food as does the ruminant digestive system of cattle, deer, elk, bighorn and domestic sheep, etc. Also, wild horses and burros spread their grazing pressure over vaster areas, and these animals are capable of accessing remoter, steeper and rockier land than many ruminants, particularly domestic cattle and sheep. Also they do not camp on riparian, or stream/lake-side including meadow, habitats as do cattle, unless forced to do so by man’s fences, barricaded water sources, etc. These wonderful presences are restorers and healers of Nevada, yet they are being used as scapegoats for what is basically humans’ destructive doings, especially the overgrazing of livestock or the over promotion of big game species and the elimination of natural predators such as puma that goes along with our society’s overemphasis upon livestock and big game production. As builders of the humus content of soils through their feces, wild horses and burros make soils both more nutrient-rich and more water-retentive – and this has a major positive effect in enhancing the ecosystem and building up the “living sponge” watershed at all levels, low or high, in any given hydrographic basin. But we people must allow these animals to fill their respective niches. We must learn to value wild-horse-or-burro-containing ecosystems and let them realize their own internal harmony.

Such an ecosystem is a unique and special community of living beings and kinds that restores so much that is truly valuable here in Nevada as in our nation and world. As members of Homo sapiens, our challenge is to learn to live in harmony with this enhanced natural home. And we can start by finding within ourselves sufficient humility to objectively observe, read up about, and thus come to better understand the wild-horse-containing ecosystem. It is truly a God-send for our state as for the West in general, and I believe will prove key to restoring a wholesome way of life, leading us out of the destructive pitfalls of too much material indulgence and into a leaner but more spiritually awakened lifestyle and value system. The latter will heal and restore Nevada’s life community, mend its broken links, and avert it from its present blind and arrogant, “same-old, same-old” path to destruction.

As one who personally familiar with the potential for ecotours, believe me when I say that thoughtfully conceived, promoted, and realized ecotours to respectfully observe the returned native wild horses and burros together with all the other fascinating plants and animals of Nevada’s basins and ranges would prove itself to be an absolute powerhouse for positively transforming our society. I know there are literally thousands of people both here in the Silver State and in other states and nations who are dying to come see, listen to, and experience the wild horses and burros living as God intended in their natural freedom. These animals have done so much for mankind over not just centuries but thousands of years, but their truer place is realized when living free in the biodiverse world of Nature as they have for many millions of years past. Their ongoing life and unfoldment into the future is something awesome, indeed, of which to partake; and I highly recommend that you get yourselves in touch with Las Vegas’ vital organization America’s Wild Horse Advocates, which has members who could get wild horse and burro photo safaris, nature hikes, etc., going right away.