Rancher, ex-legislator Carpenter rides wild horse issue

After a couple minutes of conversation with John Carpenter, I got the feeling he suspects I don’t know which end of the horse eats and which end kicks.
  Carpenter read a recent column about the plight and politics of Nevada’s wild horse population and wanted to offer his considered opinion. The rancher and former state legislator knows a thing or two about the horses, having watched them gallop across the state all his life.
  Born in 1930 in Fallon, Carpenter graduated from Ely’s White Pine High. He represented Elko and Humboldt counties as a state senator in the Legislature from 1987 to 2007, a 12-term stretch that included 10 special sessions. He’s a member of the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association, the Nevada Woolgrowers, and the Nevada Farm Bureau.
  By many measures, that’s about as native a Nevadan as it gets.
  His family had ranches outside Ely, then moved up to Elko in the late 1950s. He started the first horse roundup using a helicopter and calls it a useful tool that, used properly, isn’t too hard on the animals. Over the years, he’s dealt with the Bureau of Land Management and the horse huggers, and I get the feeling he wouldn’t mind rounding up both groups.
  “I’ve been around horses all my life, and they just have to be managed,” Carpenter says. “You just can’t leave them out there unmanaged. The rancher, he’s going to have to take his cattle or sheep off the range. And the wildlife really suffers because of the damage the horses do to the range.
  “They’ll take over. They’re going to ruin the range and ruin the waterholes, and there won’t be anything for the wildlife and other animals that have the right to be out there.”