María Elvira Salazar: “I know that in some of my farming country and my own farm in Costilla County, every now and then, almost every year, we…”

“I know that in some of my farming country and my own farm in Costilla County, every now and then, almost every year, we have a beautiful potato field that is run over by a herd of wild horses just because BLM does not have the proper funding and the authority to be able to manage these horses properly. I firmly believe that this bill will take those tools away that BLM currently has to manage wildlife. Divisional Wildlife manages elk and deer herds so that they can thrive within the habitat that they currently have. One of the biggest problems that I see is that BLM uses the tools that they have and the funding that they have to be able to manage wildlife and horses on public land; but the biggest problem that I see is that if this bill passes, they will not be able to weed out the bad apples in the wild herds. For example, they round up these horses. They put back into the wildlife the horses that are good, many of them that are good, but the ones that are lame or the ones that we saw like the one here in this picture, the ones that have broken legs, they can weed out of the population so that they can have better wild horse populations out there. There is nothing more beautiful than to see a herd of wild horses out on the public lands running forever.”