Feral horse funding found

CARSON CITY -- Nevada's state government may be suffering through a half billion dollar revenue shortfall, but it still found $59,000 on Tuesday to feed and care for about 100 hungry feral horses.

Members of the state Board of Examiners approved the emergency expenditure to cover costs of rounding up and caring for starving horses roaming on private and state land near Virginia City.

The money will cover the $4.60-per-day cost of buying hay, along with a $1.80-per- day average veterinarian bill. The horses are considered to be "estray," or stray horses, by law.

"A lot of horses have come down from the mountains to subdivisions because there is nothing left for them to eat," said Dr. Anette Rink, laboratory director of the Department of Agriculture. "We have had more horses come down this winter because of the snowstorms. They need something to eat."

Her department will round up horses that have destroyed private yards and landscaping. Some residents have complained about the horses.

The horses also have caused traffic problems on U.S. Highway 50 near Dayton and on Geiger Grade between Virginia City and Reno.

They will be moved to a corral near the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City, where they will be cared for at least until the end of March.

The prison runs a horse training and adoption program.

While the horses can be had "pretty much for free," Rink said there are few people interested in adopting them.

The price of hay tops $300 per ton and Rink said some people may be releasing their horses into the mountains because they cannot afford or do not want to care for them.

By spring, according to Rink, forage should be available for the horses and they will be returned to the Virginia Range. There are about 1,200 horses living in this mountainous area.

While concerned about the expenditure, Gov. Jim Gibbons said there was nothing he or other board members could do since the state is responsible for stray horses on private or state land.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management oversees wild horses on federal lands.

But Gibbons, chairman of the Board of Examiners, said private landowners who want the horses on their land should bear some of the costs.

Rink said that 350 to 400 horses in the Virginia City area are regularly fed by private land owners.

"This is troubling to me," Gibbons said. "If private landowners want the horses, then they should pay some of the costs. Taxpayers can't go on private lands and enjoy these horses."

The Virginia Range Wildlife Protective Association has provided hay for the stray horses in past winters.

Their theory was that feeding these horses reduced the need for them to migrate down into populated valleys to forage for food after heavy snowfall.

But what the association found is generations of horses were not learning natural winter survival skills.

Instead of foraging for grass, horses have wandered into subdivisions for handouts and to eat residential landscaping.

While heavy snow fell this January in mountains in Northern Nevada, the Protective Association decided not to provide hay to the feral horses unless the Department of Agriculture declares a horse forage emergency.

"We have to manage them in ways that preserve their stamina and their natural survival instinct," the organization said in a policy statement on its Web site.

But the Protective Association acknowledged that some horses will die this winter.