7 Questions About Wild Horses for Interior Secretary Nominee Sally Jewell

[The Straight Story]

On Thursday on Capitol Hill, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a confirmation hearing to consider the nomination of Sally Jewell for the position of Secretary of the Interior. She comes to the room offering some measure of comfort to two of the primary constituencies that care most about the post. Big oil? Check -- she worked for years for Mobil Oil, out in the oil and gas fields of Oklahoma. Environmentalists? Check -- she comes to Washington, D.C., from R.E.I., the "outdoor recreation" company, where she was a longtime advocate for conservation.

But Jewell is mostly a blank slate when it comes to two key areas of the Interior Department's portfolio which are in famous and direct conflict with one another. The first relates to the federal government's complicated relationship with the ranching and livestock industries. Jewell does not appear to have much of a public record when it comes to her views on the concept of welfare ranching -- the age-old, under-reported pork-barrel policy by which the federal government practically gives away the use of our public land to private ranching and farming interests by means of well-below-market lease rates.

The second unknown area of Jewell's resume involves the fate of nation's wild horses, which roam public lands and which have suffered greatly over the past few years as a result of the ruinous policies of Jewell's would-be predecessor, Ken Salazar. For wild horse advocates, the good news is that Jewell doesn't come from a longtime ranching family, as Salazar did, or have a long record of hostility to the nation's herds, as he does.

The bad news is that Jewell may today know so little about the legal status of the horses, and so little about the political and economic background of their current predicament. that she may not be able to quickly focus on their situation. And that, these advocates fear, could be catastrophic to the herds.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/7-questions-about-wild-horses-for-interior-secretary-nominee-sally-jewell/273706/

[TwilightGardener]

1. Question number one: COULD they drag you away?

[msongs]

2. "wild" horses are an invasive species. how do they affect the native species? who makes $$ off them

[magical thyme]

3. they are feral, not wild. Invasive, I guess, but they aren't hugely damaging

the way some invasive species can be. They pretty much just graze and travel, and provide some additional food since they do have predators in the area. They haven't taken over any habitat or crowded anybody out. They nibble close to the ground, but generally don't destroy grasses by pulling them up by the roots the way some livestock do.

They are part of our heritage and history. We crossed the country on horseback.

The cattle that ranchers are *permitted* to graze on public land are invasive as well, and given their numbers, probably far more damaging.