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REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS
How a Billionaire's Wife is Becoming the Mustangs' Messiah
Sunday, August 7, 2011 7:29 AM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Quote:As the wife of a billionaire and a wealthy woman in her own right, Madeleine Pickens is accustomed to traveling in limos and private jets. But this afternoon, she is bumping along in a rusty pickup truck. The truck halts in the middle of a sagebrush valley. Nearby, a broad mountain shifts in color from ochre to indigo in the fading afternoon light. Pickens, 64, a petite blonde in a fringed buckskin jacket and matching boots, jumps from the truck and points to a low thundercloud of dust moving across the valley. It's a galloping herd of mustangs, tan and black and pinto, their manes streaming like water. Soon, the earth is drumming with their hoofbeats. "These horses were going to the slaughterhouse," she says, admiring the racing herd, "and so I brought them to my ranch, where they can run wild." Her giant ranch, in northeastern Nevada, is spread across three valleys and two mountain ranges, and Pickens intends to turn it all into a wild-horse sanctuary, or as she calls it, Mustang Monument. The first arrivals are 500 horses she bought from a Paiute Indian reservation. The horses, she says, would otherwise have been slaughtered across the border. The trouble is, many of Nevada's ranchers look upon wild horses as vermin, chomping grass that is meant for their cattle. These ranchers say they are afraid that Pickens, who is married to energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, will lead a stampede of "touchy-feely" millionaire horse lovers who will start buying up pastures to save the pretty horses. And this, they insist, may run the cattlemen out of business. Pickens may have money and high connections, but she is confronting powerful forces. The cattle ranchers, according to Chris Heyde, deputy director of the Animal Welfare Institute, an animal-rights group in Washington, have an "absolute choke hold on the state legislature in Nevada." The ranchers are trying, so far unsuccessfully, to push through a bill that would bar wild horses from having access to water — condemning them to die of thirst. In the U.S. Congress, the cattlemen have allies among legislators from 21 farm states and the influential agricultural lobby. Her giant ranch, in northeastern Nevada, is spread across three valleys and two mountain ranges, and Pickens intends to turn it all into a wild-horse sanctuary, or as she calls it, Mustang Monument. The first arrivals are 500 horses she bought from a Paiute Indian reservation. The horses, she says, would otherwise have been slaughtered across the border. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2084328,00.html
Sunday, August 7, 2011 8:04 AM
FREMDFIRMA
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: The trouble is, many of Nevada's ranchers look upon wild horses as vermin, chomping grass that is meant for their cattle.
Sunday, August 7, 2011 12:22 PM
GEEZER
Keep the Shiny side up
Quote:Originally posted by Fremdfirma: You DO realize that by these actions they've all but admitted tresspass-grazing, which amounts in some respects to downright theft, right ? -Frem
Quote:But in Nevada's high deserts and extreme weather, most ranches are granted access to vast tracts of federal land for grazing. Pickens' original spread of 28 sq. mi. (72.5 sq km) gives her access to another 875 sq. mi. (2,266 sq km) of federal grazing land. And it is this public land — controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) — that has become the battleground for Pickens and the cattlemen. Pickens envisions Mustang Monument with a museum and lodging for visitors in futuristic teepee villages beside a creek from where they can view the roaming mustangs. Because her horse sanctuary will partly be on federal land, and because she is angling for federal help to keep the refuge running long after she is gone, Pickens needs approval from the BLM.
Sunday, August 7, 2011 12:55 PM
KWICKO
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)
Sunday, August 7, 2011 6:14 PM
Monday, August 8, 2011 12:00 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Fremdfirma: So throw em both off - or charge a per-head user fee that goes into the budget for maintainence of parks and preserves, simple, really.
Monday, August 8, 2011 5:22 PM
Monday, August 8, 2011 5:54 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Fremdfirma: It is not THEIR grazing
Quote:it is not THEIR land
Quote:and it does not BELONG to them.
Monday, August 8, 2011 7:13 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Geezer: And as to that, I'm sort'a wondering why an anarchist would support government ownership of the land, instead of letting the folks who would work it claim it, anyway.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 3:10 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Fremdfirma: Now, if there are INSUFFICIENT RESOURCES to support both populations, that's a different thing...
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 6:51 AM
Quote:Dr. Jude Capper, an assistant professor of dairy sciences at Washington State University, has studied the data. Capper said: "There's a perception out there that grass-fed animals are frolicking in the sunshine, kicking their heels up full of joy and pleasure. What we actually found was from the land-use basis, from the energy, from water and, particularly, based on the carbon footprints, grass-fed is far worse than corn-fed." How can that be? "Simply because they have a far lower efficiency, far lower productivity. The animals take 23 months to grow. [Corn-fed cattle need only 15.] That's eight extra months of feed, of water, land use, obviously, and also an awful lot of waste. If we have a grass-fed animal, compared to a corn-fed animal, that's like adding almost one car to the road for every single animal. That's a huge increase in carbon footprints." More at http://www.newsmax.com/Stossel/cattle-grass-fed/2010/11/17/id/377301
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 7:14 AM
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 3:16 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: Geezer, you actually believe the Pickens' are so stupid as to let the horses increase freely? Do you really think they're that stupid, given both's background in animal welfare? You think they are such ignorant softies that they haven't taken that into account?
Quote:First off, the horses are ALREADY there, so adding them to the equation is a fallacy
Quote:Coming at it from another direction, these animals, as well as buffalo, etc., had the use of the land long before we came along.
Quote:Cattle are one of the worst foods, environmentally, financially and other ways, we all know that.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 3:24 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Fremdfirma: As for the rest, when those ranchers made the decision to bet their livelyhood on what amounts to a government subsidy, they kinda lost any hope of my support in any realistic fashion, is that clear enough for you ?
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 6:23 AM
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 4:48 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: As to the horses being there, I didn't say they were native.
Quote:If you want to be specific, man isn't truly "native", nor were any of the critters who migrated down from Canada or up from Mexico, etc., if you go back far enough.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 7:58 PM
Quote:The fact that you apparently don't care if super-rich folks can put working people out of business on a whim is kind'a disturbing.
Thursday, August 11, 2011 8:33 AM
Quote:You said they were here (one assumes North America) long before we(humans) were.
Thursday, August 11, 2011 11:59 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: No, I meant they were here before we EUROPEANS were.
Thursday, August 11, 2011 12:03 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Fremdfirma: Admit it, this is all over having to share the nipple on a government tit.
Thursday, August 11, 2011 3:25 PM
Friday, August 12, 2011 3:00 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: Gawd you're nitpicking...I should have said "we BRITISH", I just couldn't come up with the right term...we weren't yet Americans, we weren't British in my view, so I figured "European" was close enough, indicating we came from "over there". So you chose to take that as "we Spanish"...go right ahead, have fun. You and I both know what I was saying.
Quote:Grazing cattle on BLM land is a subsidy in that it would cost a LOT more to graze them on private land. Ergo, they are getting the use of the land at cut rate, ergo the Government is "giving" them something. See?
Friday, August 12, 2011 5:22 AM
Saturday, August 13, 2011 1:58 AM
DREAMTROVE
Saturday, August 13, 2011 2:56 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: If BLM land is no bargain, why are the ranchers (and you) so head up about the horses, especially if she is intending to BUY it to put the horses on?
Quote:Wild Horses: BLM Backs Down from Plans to Sterilize Two Wyoming Wild Horse Herds This is tremendous news. When the BLM released its original decision record for the Little Colorado and White Mountain Herd Areas in June, the alternative chosen by the BLM for managing these two herds was alternative D, rounding up all the horses in both areas and spaying all the mares and gelding all the stallions that were to be returned to the range, creating a sterile, non-producing herd that would eventually die out entirely. After a tremendous public outcry, the Rock Springs Field Office of the BLM backed down and said spaying the mares was off the table for these two herds. But they still planned to geld all the stallions released. In a tremendous reversal, in the face of a lawsuit, the BLM backs down again and says that they will not be gelding the stallions released in both the Little Colorado and White Mountain Herd Areas. The roundup will begin approximately September 1 and a new decision record has been released
Saturday, August 13, 2011 6:03 PM
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