Horse advocates protest in Carson City

More than 60 wild-horse advocates, a couple of dogs and one horse braved biting winds in Carson City at a demonstration Wednesday against any plans to remove horses from the Virginia Range.

Ginny Rosa, a bay foal rescued from the range more than a year ago, was indifferent to the protesters with their signs, and the many honks from drivers, as she concentrated on feasting a bag of hay. But she was one of the reasons for the protests, said her new owner, Cindy Phelps of Minden.

"I think it's criminal what they're trying to do," she said. "None of the horses on any of these ranges are starving."

Ginny Rosa was nursed back to health at the Lucky Horse Rescue Corral in Dayton, operated by Shirley Allen and sponsored by Least Resistance Training Concepts.

Allen, Phelps and other advocates demonstrated in front of the Legislative Assembly on Carson Street.

The group, Alliance of Wild Horse Advocates, has accused the Nevada Department of Agriculture director Tony Lesperance of wanting to remove horses from the range and selling them at auction. Should the horses be sold, advocates believe most will go to slaughter.

Lesperance told an Interim Finance Committee meeting earlier this month that horses had to be removed from the range because there wasn't sufficient forage to support them. The department estimates there are 1,200 horses on the range.

Carol Valles, who lives off the grid on 40 acres northwest of Stagecoach, said there are few horses in her area, which is dominated by 3-foot-high grass and four natural springs.

"I went back there Saturday and saw one stallion with four mares and a couple of single stallions, and a whole bunch of cattle," she said, adding that before last December she saw a particular band of horses often enough to know the animals and their offspring on sight.

"There's a herd that used to come behind my house," she said. "Now it's so empty it's sad."

Valles said the state had a roundup in December, and though she was told the state didn't take those horses, she hasn't seen them since. She said it was possible rustlers got them.

Ed Foster, spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture, said the state was working on a range assessment plan that would take three to six months, followed by a decision on what to do with the horses.

The department considers the horses estray, or feral, and has said they are not native to the area and threaten the range environment when they overgraze.

But that argument wasn't convincing Will Strickland, a Virginia City entertainer who came to the protest to support his friend, singer-songwriter Lacy J. Dalton, who also is in attendance.

"If Lesperance's problem is that the horses aren't native to Nevada, well, neither are white people," Strickland said.

Some demonstrators held brooms, mops or plungers that indicated their desire to "clean up the Department of Agriculture," said Willis Lamm of Least Resistance Training Concepts.

Wildlife ecologist Craig Downer, who will lecture on wild horses at the Gold Hill Hotel on Tuesday, said assertions the horses are starving are false, because they can subsist on very dry vegetation, and added that they greatly reduce fire danger.