Terri Farley

Sunday, May 18, 2014

BLM Bloodlines Explain Lack of Horse Sense

A couple weeks ago, I walked into conversational ambush with a new retiree from the Bureau of Land Management, but it turned out okay. Because we met during a social occasion and the spirit of retirement was upon him, this man talked openly and I was reminded why I got along with BLM staffers years ago when we met for coffee and biscuits at Bruno's cafe, in sight of the Calico Mountains where we'd work at cross-purposes.

Dinner was about to be served when he turned away, and then turned back to me, palms up.

“You’ve got to realize, for the last hundred or so years, BLM’s had to measure every decision against the Taylor Grazing Act.”

Of course I’d heard of the Taylor Grazing Act. It had something to do with cows being sovereign over wild horses and wild life on public lands, but I didn’t see it as that influential in BLM actions. Wrong.

Everything that touches the lives of wild horses is part of my work in progress, a non-fiction book about mustangs, so I pursued this tip. I'm passing on what I learned, because just as a horse’s bloodlines can reveal his ancestors’ strengths and weaknesses, so can the bloodlines of government bureaus.

In 1946, two Federal agencies merged and gave birth to the Bureau of Land Management.

Sire: General Land Office, the agency that surveyed and sold off the West’s public lands at such a speedy and profitable rate, it spawned the expression “doing a Land Office business.”

Dam: U.S. Grazing Service, enforcer of the Taylor Grazing Act which “stops injury to the public grazing lands by preventing overgrazing and soil deterioration; to provide for their orderly use, improvement, and development to stabilize the livestock industry dependent upon the public range.”

By GLO, out of USGS, what do you get?

There could be room for hope. But BLM's hidden talents haven't shown themselves, lately.

For those of us watching BLM's mistreatment of wild horses, it's hard to see the agency as anything more than an a coddler of cattlemen and hawker of America's wild lands.

If BLM won’t fess up to it’s real plans for America’s wild horses, the public is left to fall back on an old expression that’s doubly true: blood will tell.

Labels: BLM, Bundy, Government Land Office, Taylor Grazing Act, U.S. Grazing Service, wild horses, wildlife

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 7:46 AM

Comments: Wow! Cool!
Umm, I am pretty sure I am ur BIGGEST FAN! I LOVE THE PHANTOM STALLION SERIES THEY ARE SO AWESOME! Sorry, I may have gone a little crazy there... I love them though. They inspire me so so much! I am even writing a book of my own about horses!

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Anonymous : 11:45 AM