Support Wild Horses

Tell Congress to Keep Wild Horses

The American west has its own mythology and its own rich history in literature, film, and television—one that no other U.S. geographic region can ever hope to match. Can you imagine an entire section at a mall bookstore devoted to novels of, say, the Eastern shore?
And if any one animal symbolizes our own—or even the world’s—fascination with the American west, it is, without doubt, the horse. Many of these wild animals were tamed, and they, in turn, helped Americans tame the dusty frontier that lay west of the Mississippi. The horse, both wild and domestic, has earned its rightful place in American hearts and minds through the writings of Louis L’Amour and Larry McMurtry, the films of John Ford and Sergio Leone, and even through television dramas such as Bonanza and The Lone Ranger.
Take Action Today:» Tell your U.S. Representative to vote YES on the Rahall-Whitfield Amendment.
Is it any wonder then that thousands of Americans and more than a dozen celebrities—people who were likely influenced by the same Western arts and culture that shaped us all—have been willing to step up and support The HSUS’s and other groups' efforts to restore protections for America’s wild horses and burros? According to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), only about 35,000 of these wild animals forage on U.S. lands today. But thanks to an amendment quietly slipped last year into an appropriations bill that gutted a 34-year-old ban on selling wild horses and burros for slaughter, that number was recently decreased by 41 mustangs. (Another 52 horses were in line for slaughter, but were pulled before the captive bolt pistol was fired.)
America's Contradictory Relationship with Wild Horses
Wild horses have a long history with North America. Fossil records show they were living in North America millions of years ago, gradually spreading to Asia likely via the Bering land bridge before losing a battle to the elements and becoming extinct on this continent. In the early 16th century, European explorers reintroduced the horse to Mexico, and the animal eventually found its way north into territories controlled by Native Americans and Europeans. Many of these horses formed wild herds; by some estimates, there were more than a million wild horses roaming North America by the turn of the 20th century, likely because humans had killed many of the horse's natural predators.
The horse's main predator in the 20th century was man. By 1971, when Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Protection Act and President Nixon signed it into law, there were approximately only 60,000 wild horses left on U.S. lands, their numbers drastically reduced by wholesale roundups and massacres. The act, championed by a Nevada resident nicknamed Wild Horse Annie, was designed to halt the killings. Americans roundly supported the act, reportedly flooding Congress with letters, a volume of mail second only to the number of letters Congress received about the Vietnam War.
But the act created to protect wild horses has slowly been eroded by the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that manages U.S. lands, under the theory that there are too many free-roaming horses and that they need to be managed. The BLM first created 303 herd management areas, but over the years, that number has been whittled down to 201. The BLM has also established "appropriate management levels," which allows the agency to round up horses by buzzing them with helicopters and corralling them into pens for eventual sale through the BLM's adoption program.
The underfunded adoption program, however, has been largely a bust, leading to crowded holding pens that don't give the BLM any wiggle room to round up more wild horses, which ranchers desperately want so that their beef cattle can graze without interference. The stealth amendment in last year's appropriations bill was the latest attempt to appease ranchers; the amendment requires the government to sell horses older than ten years or those who have not been adopted after three attempts. Guess who typically buys these older mustangs? Middlemen, or "killer buyers," who then sell the animals to one of the three foreign-owned slaughterhouses in the United States that process meat for overseas markets.
The losers in this game of backroom legislation are, of course, the horses. It has already cost the lives of 41 mustangs. It could cost thousands more.
The sad fact is that all of this is completely unnecessary—the covert legislation, the animal deaths, the hard feelings from horse lovers across the nation. The BLM could easily deal with America's wild horses without a drop of blood being spilled. The agency could reopen the 102 herd management areas that it has zeroed out; it could adopt immunocontraception programs to keep herds from becoming too large; it could funnel the money from its helicopter round-ups into a mass-marketing budget for its adoption programs; it could simply leave the horses alone, with an acknowledgment that Americans value their equine history as much, if not more, than their beef.

Gamebytes: Ghost Reacon Advanced Warfighter 2 for the Playstation3

By Jeremy HohmanFriday, October 26, 2007 10:25 AM CDT
The year is 2014, you and your team, strapped with the most advanced technology available, are heading into Mexico to stop a civil war. Not very complicated, huh? There is a very nice plot, but do you honestly care? I don’t. Let’s blow stuff up!The equipment itself in this game is very revolutionary to the tactical-shooter niche.The UAV3 is a special camera drone that acts as your eye in the sky. By pressing the ‘select’ button and pulling up your map, you will be able to send your camera-drone by placing the cursor over a designated area and pressing up on the direction pad. Once overhead a target you can lower the camera to spot enemies. A new ability that has been added to GRAW 2 is CFV mode. By pressing the R2 button you will be in first person view of your teammate’s positions. By pressing up on the direction pad you can send them to a specific area or regroup by pressing down on the D-pad. Another piece of equipment is the M.U.L.E—simply put a mobile weapons shop. A shop that you will drive and run down your enemies; on the outside, there is a first person gun camera that allows you to attack enemies without compromising your position. Not to forget and leave out the basics: assault rifles, sniper rifles, smoke grenades, satchel charges, turrets, night vision, and everything you could possibly need to take out a nation of bad guys.On the other side of the spectrum, GRAW 2 can infect players with game burn-out. Gameplay can get a little slow at times by fighting opponents that don’t offer you any challenge, running for periods of time without any action, and dealing with teammates that you can’t put into position without them being seen. Learning the controls of the game will take some practice. What makes them a challenge is in this game they utilize every button; therefore, memorizing what each button does and applying that in the heat of battle can be a little tricky. Using the first person view to control your teammates is cool, but useless. For one you are limited to what you see by not being able to control the camera. Although you can switch between teammates, this still does not help because they will still stand wherever, usually in the open. Using the UAV3 camera is helpful when pin-pointing your target, but be careful. If your UAV is spotted it can be shot out of the sky; once you locate your target, regroup it by pressing down on the d-pad.Six Axis Controls stink! To use them, one must move the base of the controller up or down to move forwards or backwards, tilt the controller right or left to turn in these respected directions. Don’t attempt to use this feature; turn it off in the options screen. Trying to maneuver the M.U.L.E with this is a pain and not very accurate. You’ll wind up getting frustrated and lose the excitement of what you’re supposed to be doing.There is some staggering in frame rate in certain scenes, but nothing too crazy.The audio for the game is not bad, but not the best: speaker distortion was common throughout the game.The graphics for the PS3 are similar if not better than those on the 360.Multiplayer mode offers 32 maps spanning from night to day scenes and lots of options that aren’t available in single player mode. If an online battle is what you’re looking for than this should satisfy your appetite for destruction.Despite some issues, GRAW 2 succeeds in giving you a real feeling of being part of an elite US team. All in all, if you were a fan of the Socom series for the PS2 and looking for a decent multiplayer mode for the PS3, you have found it.Ghost Reacon Advanced Warfighter 2 gets a B-Jeremy Hohman is the writer, producer and host of GameBytes a 30 minute weekly game news and review show. To see Jeremy’s latest pod cast or to rent & play the game reviewed simply go to; http://www.gnfgames.com/

Halo 3 Tips

Tips for easy kills in Halo 3 . . .
For anyone just starting out or for the experienced player what I’ve found are useful are the assault riffle and melee combo. Spray your opponent for 1 to 1.5 seconds and then press the B button to kill your opponent.
Another thing that I’ve found is running with a long to medium range weapon like the assault riffle, battle riffle, or the sniper riffle and a short range weapon like the shot gun or the plasma sword.
The new and improved niddler is another effective way to dispose of your opponent’s. If your lucky enough to pick up the Spartan laser . . . this is the best way to take out any opposing vehicles, as long as you can stay alive long enough to use it . . . because it take about 2 seconds for the thing to charge up.
Picking up some of the new equipment now assigned to the X button is an easy way to stay alive or to take a life. The new bubble shield is great for fending off opponents, but it also can’t be shot though . . . so don’t throw a grenade while inside. If you do this you’ll find yourself dead from your on hand, because the grenade will bounce back in your face.
The power drain is great for throwing in a crowd of people for multiple kills. Then just stick with the basics, head shots and grenade’s and you should fare pretty well at finishing the fight.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 1:38 pm and is filed under

Gamebytes: Halo3

By Jeremy Hohman with Brandon Poole, Friday, October 19, 2007 2:09 PM CDT

The old adage “good things come to those who wait” is most definitely true. After months of patiently waiting Halo 3 continues to exceed expectations.

Our prized protagonist Master Chief is back in a wonderful game that combines all the great aspects of the first two installments into Halo 3, the most anticipated game of the year.When the game begins, we find Master Chief crash-landing on Earth. In this installment, the Arbiter is working with Master Chief and the humans to stop the Covenant (bad guys) from activating the arc., in effect, setting off all the Halos which would result in the destruction of all life in the universe. Whew, that’s quite a load for Master Chief to handle alone with old weapons and vehicles. With all this new drama it is very fortunate that we are given a vast array of new features: new allies, new weapons, and a sub-plot involving Master Chief’s quest to retrieve his resident A.I., Cortana.

As far as the gameplay, in campaign mode, Arbiter assists you in battle, but you must get used to little or no help and the sight of him re-spawning. In the same light, I cannot say much more for your Marines, who possess the strategic driving skills of a four-year-old. They end up getting killed before you even get a chance to do your business. I guess that’s why the fate of the Universe is up to you, because without you those guys are hopeless.Weapons--are they awesome? Answer: Yes. You have the flame thrower which basically sets others on fire—who doesn’t like that? There is a laser gun which will rip a warthog in half, and spikers which can be deadly at close range when using two of them simultaneously. Also, Master Chief and company are given a war hammer that will send a vehicle half-way across the screen. That means when equipped with this hefty hammer, becoming your opponent’s road-kill is not an option.Other notable additions include an advanced campaign mode, allowing four separate consoles to work together on one mission on-line. In the multiplayer mode, the weapon's power settings are tweakable and the game has the option to save videos of gameplay, along with the ability to share videos through the internet (for bragging rights, of course). Something that every avid Halo fan will appreciate is the ability to alter maps and save them (while in multi-player mode).

Custom settings and difficulty level, you say? Well, the user may choose from additional icons that were not present in the second game. There are a few options to customize your very own Master Chief. Customizable maps and weapon energy levels have already been covered. How about those settings? FOR HALO PLAYERS ONLY: the normal setting feel like easy street and the legendary mode feels closer to normal. The controls are slightly different, but easy to get used to.

Last but not least, the graphics - the maps look amazing and the game is HD compatible which allows the 360 in unison with the game to reach their full potential.

Bar-setting A+Jeremy Hohman is the writer, producer and host of GameBytes, a weekly game news and review show. To see Jeremy’s latest pod cast or to rent & play the game reviewed simply go to http://www.gnfgames.com/

Wild Horses in the Wild

MINDEN, Nevada, July 7, 2006 (ENS) - I am disturbed by the distortions of truth put out by enemies of wild horses in the American West. Extreme prejudice distorts their view of the life of horses in the wild. Instead, with closed minds, they disregard the many positive aspects of the natural, free life of horses.

Wild horses naturally disperse their own grazing pressure over large areas within their individual band home ranges, if U.S. government authorities would allow them to do so in their legal herd areas.

Officials in the Bureau of Land Management�s (BLM) Elko District plan to remove 1,700 horses this year from the Buck-and-Bald Complex of legal herd areas, in addition to the 795 horses removed from this complex last year.

We must root out the corruption of favoritism and restore integrity and true caring among our public servants. People who really love the West also love and make sacrifices to preserve its beautiful, free-living horses.

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