Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Ford Motor starts
`Save the Mustangs'
Company joins BLM in bid to help horses
By RICHARD LAKE
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Jan Byer on Tuesday hugs Double Diamond at Oliver Ranch. The horse is a 1-year-old and was gathered near Yerington.
Photo by Jeff Scheid.
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The Ford Motor Co. has announced a program to "Save the Mustangs," and the company isn't talking about its newly revamped sports cars.
"It just seemed the natural thing to do," said Ziad Ojakli, a Ford corporate vice president.
In a joint news conference Tuesday with Bureau of Land Management officials, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and U.S. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., Ford detailed the program, which would help get 2,000 wild horses placed in safe locations, primarily on sanctuaries.
"This is a big deal," said Shari Warren, president of the National Wild Horse Association. "Any horse that doesn't go to sale is a good thing."
The BLM estimates there are nearly 32,000 wild horses and burros roaming 10 western states. Almost half -- about 15,000 -- are in Nevada, said Jeff Rawson, the BLM's wild horse and burro manager.
That's a problem because, particularly in drought years, the land simply cannot support that many animals, officials say.
Rawson said a sustainable population would be about 14,000 in Nevada and 28,000 overall.
The Ford-sponsored program will partner the company with the BLM in its ongoing efforts to capture and place the horses in safe locations, including on Indian reservations and the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary outside Hot Springs, S.D.
"If anybody's wondering what the connection is between mustangs and Ford, we're probably not doing our job," said Ojakli, the Ford representative.
Reid praised the effort, but said there is a long way to go in trying to save the horses.
"This is a difficult program and it's going to continue to be difficult," he said.
Other BLM efforts to control the wild horse population have included a birth control program and an adoption program.
The BLM in March began selling 8,400 horses that are more than 10 years old or those that have been passed over for adoption at least three times. The Ford program will pay the transportation costs of 2,000 of those horses.
In addition, an Internet site, www.savethemustangs.org, sponsored by Ford raises awareness of the plight of wild horses and money to expand the program.
