What Gibbons has in mind for the Mustangs (NV)
The following was posted by Corey Farley:
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If you caught any part of the presumptuously titled Cory Farley Show on KBZZ Tuesday, you probably heard Lacy J. Dalton and Willis Lamm talking about Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons’ plans for the state’s wild horses.
Lacy was a pretty hot country singer in the ’80s (CMA Newcomer of the Year in 1983, I think it was) and has performed with most of the big names in the business. She took a break for awhile to deal with some personal issues, but is back performing again and has a new CD, “What Don’t Kill You Makes You Stronger,” coming soon. My wife and I saw her at Piper’s Opera House on the Comstock a few months ago, and she still has the stage presence and powerful voice that led one critic to call her a combination of Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez.
Most journalists who’ve been around long enough to get over their jock-sniffer awe dislike doing celebrity interviews. You’re generally talking to people who’ve been interviewed hundreds of times and who have a carefully cultivated image. They give canned answers to the usual questions, dodge or draw a blank on unusual ones and escape as soon as they can, their duty to the fans done for another day.
Sometimes you find an exception, especially if you can get them talking about something other than their careers. Lacy is passionate about Nevada’s mustangs, and she and Lamm gave us an entertaining, informative hour and a half.
A little background, then I’ll give two Web sites for more information on the mustangs, plus the one I promised on the air that features (warning! And I mean it!) extremely graphic video of wild horses being slaughtered.
Nevada’s Director of Agriculture, a Gibbons appointee named Tony Lesperance, has promised to remove all 1200 or so mustangs from the Virginia Range, in and around Storey County. Gibbons, when he was in Congress, had a career rating of zero, as in zip, none, nada, from the League of Conservation Voters, and Lesperance is a nutjob anti-government rancher, a member of the “shovel brigade” that battled the feds near Elko a few years ago over a road in the Jarbidge wilderness. For the bulk of Nevadans, concerned about the future of the state and its wild lands, he’s about the worst choice imaginable for the position he holds. Which of course made him a natural pick for Gibbons …
Anyway: Lesperance, who’s been called “one of the most radical members” of the anti-government movement, has vowed to get the mustangs off the range, claiming that they’re not native to the area, that they’re starving, and that each one contains a tiny little Al Qaeda terrorist armed with weapons of mass destruction. I made that last part up.
Dalton and Lamm represent a number of environmental and wildlife groups that have allied for the emergency, bent on protecting the horses initially, and with a dream of creating a sanctuary for them, where visitors could come from around the world to see them in their native environment.
Dalton has founded an organization called Let ‘em Run.
You can check that out at www.letemrun.com. Lamm has an intimidatingly detailed, documented and damning site of his own, www.kbrhorse.net, indispensable to the formation of an opinion on this issue.
And if you feel yourself beginning to be swayed by Lesperance’s arguments–which, I will say as plainly as I can, are mostly crap–look here for undercover footage of horses sent to Mexico for slaughter: https://community.hsus.org/campaign/FED_2007_horseslaughter_notcosponsor.
A final warning: It is not for the faint of heart, stomach or will. Or for children.
