Of Horses - and Art
There is a very large number of artists who specifically concentrate on horses as their subjects.
I don't have any statistics to back this belief, but I only know that most artists contacting me fit that mold.
What is probably needed in the genre of "ars equus", is some concentration on capturing the
American wild horse, in all of its glory and problems.
from Nevada web site
The contention bewteen these horses and cattle ranchers is the old one of use of grazing land. Although I believe that there's some validity to both side's arguments, thee's no question, at least in my mind, that the ecomic arguments favor cattle. But the question of overgrazing by horses is one about which I haven't seen a really strong supporting argument.
Let's face it - the horse, as great an animal as it may be, like the mule, and ox, just isn't the working partner it once was. But we have to keep the wild horses in good condition. Now that the West "ain't what it used to be", selection and care of the horses is extremely important. One thing is for sure, however, the Mustangs everyone loves helps keep up the myth of the West - the one unique watermark of this country.
Greg Miller has an excellent story in the June 1-8 issue of the Las Vegas Weekly, in which he writes: "There are 27,369 free-roaming wild horses in the United States. 13,251 of them are in Nevada. In 2004, more than 65,000 domestic horses were slaughtered in the United States for human consumption abroad.
From 1971-2004, most American wild horses were protected from slaughter. In 2005, forty-one wild horses were legally slaughtered in DeKalb, Illinois..." continue the abridged story here.
The obverse side of the horse-cattle story can be found at
If you have a comment about these stories, send them to me and your thoughts will be presented in this publication.
And last, but not least, "Public land does not belong to the government, nor to ranchers,
nor to any other special interest group. More than a century has passed since that first wave
of grazing exploitation left the Western environment in shambles. Looking back on those
reckless times, most of us believe things are much different now. The great trail drives and
bloody range wars ended long ago. We rarely hear of cattle rustlers being shot, much less
hanged. The clearest picture most of us have of living livestock these days is the sight of them grazing along rural roadsides.
Many things are indeed much different now." (more on this at
Waste of the West")
Joe Chernicoff, CAPA Exec. Director
Wild burro herd photographed near Empire, Nevada
