When I worked at the Department of Interior, one of the perennial issues was that of the wild horses. They reproduced wildly and in their large numbers did extreme damage to rangeland - public, private and leased, But since the public had such a romantic image of wild horses, they were never culled. Instead, the faint hope was they would be adopted one by one. What resulted was lawsuit after lawsuit against the government for the way they were managing the wild horses.
But never in my wildest imagination, could I have dreamed up the legislation that just passed the House - Restore Our American Mustangs Act or ROAM.
Mark Steyn takes it away in a do-not-miss piece A symbol of the Old West meets the gelded age.
On Friday, the House passed the Restore Our American Mustangs Act – or ROAM. Like all acronymically cute legislation, its name bears little relation to what it actually does: It's not about "restoring" mustangs. The federal Bureau of Land Management aims for a manageable population of 27,000 wild mustangs. Currently, there are 36,000, and the population doubles every four or five years. To prevent things getting even more out of hand, the BLM keeps another 30,000 mustangs in holding pens – or, if you prefer, managed-care facilities. That's to say, under federal management, one in every two "wild" horses now lives in government housing.
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To facilitate the release of the tame "wild horse" population, the act adds to their present 33-million acre habitat (that's bigger than New York State) another 20 million acres – or approximately the size of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont combined. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the total tab at around $700 million – ie, chump change. If you look for it in the line-item budget, it comes down at the bottom under "rounding error." It's a mere ten-and-a-half grand per mustang. If you're wondering why it costs more to keep a horse on 52 million acres of wilderness than it does to stable him at an upscale horse farm in New England, that's because, in order to prevent the mustang population doubling again by 2013 and requiring the annexation of another 50 million acres (i.e., an area the size of Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands combined), the bill mandates "enhanced" contraception for horses and burros.
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In 1971, the United States Congress recognized mustangs as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West." And surely nothing captures the essence of the "pioneer spirit" than living on welfare in a federal care facility while being showered with government contraceptives. Welcome to America in the gelded age.