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Romance meets reality
By ELECTA
DRAPER
The Denver Post Saturday, December 31, 2005
DOVE
CREEK, Colo. - The notion of wild horses roaming the American
West might be more a national delusion than a reality.
Almost 35 years ago Congress proclaimed that the West's wild
horses were an American treasure. It passed a law in 1971 to
protect them from slaughter.
But the realities of the Bureau of Land Management wild horse
and burro program are different from the romantic images painted
then by Congress and still held by many Americans.
Because for the roughly 32,000 wild horses and burros roaming
the range in 10 Western states, there were, by October of this
year, 24,500 wild horses and burros in holding facilities.
Of last
year's BLM wild horse and burro budget of $39.6 million, more
than half, $20.1 million, was spent to keep the animals off the
range and in these holding facilities.
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