It’s hot out and the water team who trucks in water to wild horses have been hard at work this week. Normally the wild horses of the Fish Springs Range in the Pine Nut Mountains drink much more than they did last week, especially when temperatures soar into the 90’s.
The team reported that consumption of water was down with no logical explanation. I head out and follow the bands.
They always tell me the truth. They will lead me to the place they are getting water. Sure enough, once again, we have residents watering wild horses in residential areas. No matter how many signs you put up, brochures you mail, public meetings you hold, doors you knock on, articles you write, Facebook posts you write… some people think it doesn’t mean them. They have a “special relationship” with that band or that horse. They lure wild horses into residential areas with a water source… maybe a stock tank, a kiddy pool or a five gallon bucket. Horses can smell water a mile
away. If they smell the water they will head to that source and in residential areas that source usually has a lawn with green grass nearby… lush green grass laced with herbicides and pesticides.
The person watering truly loves seeing the wild horses come to their property, grateful to get a cool drink on a hot day. It makes the human feel good.
But I wonder how good they would feel if they truly understood the whole truth. The horses leave and have intestinal pain hours later… the chemicals in the stuff they, or their neighbor, put on their lawn is not normal for a wild horse. The sweet apples, carrots, watermelon, lawn clippings don’t bother them right away… It is hours later and the pain is real. In many cases the horse dies as the young horses simply can’t process the foods foreign to their diet. Young horses choke on apple cores or watermelon rind. Lawn clippings ferment and cause colic hours later. But the humans never know it. Because the horses simply never return and they never notice. After all, they are wild.
This week I follow the horses as they wander through a new residential area. I know there has
to be water. I follow them to a cul-de-sac with a few new homes. I can see excited horses running down a hill between the homes. It is hilly so I can’t see why. Later I discover they stopped to visit a horse in a corral. That horse got excited and broke out of his corral. The running horses included this domestic gelding. It took the owner hours to find him, covered in injuries and the vet was called to attend to his injuries. I continue to drive through the neighborhood until I find the plastic bin in the front yard of a nice home at the end of the cul-de-sac with a hose attached to the hose bib. While the homeowners listened to me as I explained the dangers of luring the wild horses they did not appear to be receptive to the recommendation they remove the water. Wild horses do not belong in residential areas. They belong in the hills away from streets, fences, domestic animals and toxic plants.
The only way to keep them in the hills is not to lure them into areas they don’t
belong or fencing the property to keep them out. Fencing is our project. All efforts to get permission from BLM to fence in the perimeter of BLM for over five years have failed. Regulations, red tape, government shut downand a pandemic have slowed the request down. So we stop door to door asking for permission to put that fence on the homeowners property who share the BLM
border. So far we have so much cooperation and hope to be starting this project soon as many local residents share our concerns over the safety of the wild horses. The biggest effort is the
fundraising to pay for the fencing and the research it takes looking for easements.
The wild horses of Fish Springs have an entire community as well as people all over the world who love these horses and support our efforts to protect them. People protecting wild horses from other people and the very government who are empowered to protect them. In most cases, residents love seeing the wild horses, even the ones who can’t resist the temptation to lure them onto their property into harms way. How do we reason with residents to exercise the discipline needed not to encourage wild horses to come on to their property? Is there a way to convince people to fence in their property or at least their lawns to protect the wild horses the community loves? How do we get to people who put our wild horses in harms way to unite in our cause without turning it into a dispute? This is our challenge. We choose our words carefully, try to let them know we understand how much they love seeing them but we don’t always win in our battle to get their cooperation. It is similar to the mask – no mask dispute… you can’t always win. We hear it all. The water is for “the hawks,” :the dog,” “the grandkids,” “the coyotes,”
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