FS to remove Salt River wild horses

[cactuscat]

Possibly as early as Friday.
There are petitions on Facebook, and people are contacting the media ... lets keep these beautiful creatures wild and free!

[rwstorm]

OH yeah, good ol' Mercer Airlines. One of the DC6's I flew on finally crashed into a golf course in LA. It had only 3 people on board, so could have been worse.

Yeah, good old 901MA...a prototype (so they say). I flew on that one too over the years. Remember when it crashed after taking off from Hollywood-Burbank, engine blew up and they circled back to try to make an emergency landing, only to find they lost hydraulics and couldn't stop, so gunned it back up to make a run for Van Nuys, but lost power and crashed in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area. http://framework.latimes.com/2014/11/14 ... -crash/#/0

[rwstorm]

I helped with a goat removal project on San Clemente Island in the 70's. Luckily the animal rights types didn't find out about it until most of the goats had been removed. Now the native owl, fox and other creatures can thrive there.

Just for you...( dead link removed )

It was a wild time out on The Rock! Great memories.

[azbackpackr]

@rwstorm
Awesome article! I worked with Tom and Carol Beene. He was a crusty old cowboy. She was a housewifey Jehovah's Witness. I came in around 1974, heard about it via my boyfriend at the time, who was an SDSU biology graduate. He knew all the principal players in the goat removal project. I volunteered. First time I flew out there I was the only one on the plane going to chase goats. Tom told me the biology students had gotten busy and rarely showed up any more. He would talk a few swabbies into helping out once in a while. He pleaded with me to find new volunteers.

So, I became a sort of unofficial volunteer coordinator. I knew a lot of hikers and backpackers. And if you are into adventure and into going places you generally are not allowed to go, what better place than San Clemente Island? You didn't need a security clearance to round up goats. For a couple of years I went out there fairly regularly on weekends, usually with 3 or 4 other hikers. Then there was a break where Tom didn't need us any more--we were not able to catch any more goats because the herds were so thinned out. I was called by the head biologist, Jan Larson (a man, not the same Larson in the article--I don't know why they left him out). He wanted 20 people to do a census. I found about 20 people and we all flew out together. That time we did not stay at the old radio shack on top of the island. We stayed in the barracks and ate at the chow hall. (Good chow!) The biologists divided the island into sections and dropped us off in pairs all over the place. Over a couple of days we counted 1500 goats. The following spring was a wet one, and the goats really started to reproduce. I heard that very quickly the population rose to about 4,000.

It's a very rugged island, lots of deep canyons, cliffs, and lots of cholla on the southern end of it. Hard to accomplish this task. Very glad they finally got it done. The island is beautiful. The tide pools contain thousands of black abalones (yes, we ate them!) The beaches are full of interesting flotsam and jetsam. I wish I had a photo of the whale skeleton we saw one time washed up on the beach. It's a bit of the old California, before the intensive settlement and development.

[chumley]

There was an interesting report on ABC News last night regarding the BLM's management plan moving forward. It should be noted that the horses in the Salt River area are not under the jurisdiction of the BLM. I'm not sure if BLM manages any horse herds on their Arizona lands, or if they're only in other states. But I would expect the FS management plan to not be very different from the BLM.

I would qualify this report as a very one-sided perspective. But there is some useful information, and also some lovely photos/video.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wild-horses-fa ... d=52538898

I'd like to know more about the birth-control dart. I've always thought the most humane way to manage them would be to limit their reproduction rates and otherwise let them be.

[Alston_Neal]

I heard that the Yavapai will round up a bunch and send them to the Havasupai to be used as pack horses.

[azbackpackr]

@Alston_Neal
Oh,ouch.

[azbackpackr]

@chumley
I have had hopes for similar idea for the donkeys (aka burros) around the lower Colorado River Valley.

It's very troubling to me the article didn't mention the horses are not native to North America, and allowed that woman the last word, saying the horses have been here before our ancestors were.

What a bunch of horse

[Alston_Neal]

@azbackpackr
Well of course they are related to the Old World horses, just as sheep, cows, chickens and pigs. But we eat those and they don't have the "spiritual" attraction the horses do. Oh by the way another feral hog culling is coming up. It's sad that the pigs aren't as pretty as the horses, well it sucks to be them.
https://www.apnews.com/086271c3b13644a7ad0a8be701385582

If only the pigs had a Facebook page last year...
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states ... ost-25-000

[chumley]

Even the last known wild horses have been found to actually be feral.
#science
https://www.yahoo.com/news/worlds-last- ... 41701.html

[Alston_Neal]

Shocking!
But do they have their own FB group?

[trekkin_gecko]

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/lo ... 625418002/

[RedRoxx44]

Saw some feral horses in the San Rafael Swell, with little ones, and a dead cow on the Cedar Mesa despite many signs all over up there of cows on the road. I had a calf run out in front of me along the road to Ticaboo and I was able to lock the Toyota up and miss the little bugger. The FJ would have probably barely felt it. Mom, that would have been another story.