This is a terrific article by Manda Kalimian for the Los Angeles Times. In case you missed it, we provide some introductory paragraphs with a link to the full article, or go directly to it here.

America’s wild horses are in crisis. Throughout the West, they are being rounded up and kept by the government in what amount to prisons before being sterilized or auctioned off — some to owners who will treasure them, but others to middlemen who will ship these beautiful animals to the slaughterhouses of Canada and Mexico.

It is a horrific crime against a noble species, and few Americans even know it is happening.

At the same time, we are watching as our world dries out and burns up. Californians know better than anyone the cost we are paying for climate change. Furnace-like temperatures. Deeper floods. Longer droughts. No one can doubt that we are at a moment of profound and scary change.

But what if we could take action on both these challenges at the same time? Because horses can once again come to the rescue of the human race, at least a little bit, and work as our allies in the war against global warming. It sounds crazy, but there’s good reason to think that wounds to our fragile ecosystem will heal more quickly if we allow modern wild horses to roam the West as equines once did thousands of years ago, returning to the role of a “keystone” species keeping nature in balance.

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Read full article here »