Growing Wild

It's time I update my rant about our wild/feral horses.

According to the BLM there's currently 61,523 wild/feral horses in the United States. From that same source, there was a large removal of horses in 2021, 2022, and 2024, with over 10,000 horses being removed each of those years. Other removals vary from as low as 1,689 horses and as many as 16,971 horses (data going back to 2012). They claim that the herd sizes can double about every 4 years. This is a decrease compared to prior years. (Sorry, newest charts I could find only updated to 2023.)

Here in Nevada we have an estimated 37,426 horses, more than every other state combined (24,097 horses, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming). Let's compare those numbers to other animal populations here in Nevada: -Mule Deer: 73,000 (steady increase since 2014, but back in the mid 1980s the population was closer to 200,000) -Pronghorn: 35,500 (so just under 3,000 less animals than horses) -Elk: 13,500 (less than half of our horse population) -California Bighorn Sheep: 1,900 (WAY less than horses) -Desert Bighorn Sheep: 6,000 (over 30,000 less animals than horses) -Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep: 149 (it's amazing these animals are even still here) -Mountain Goats: 303 (so few!) -Moose: 130 (barely any) Know what's funny about all the animals I just listed? THEY ALL HAVE HUNTING SEASONS AND THEIR POPULATIONS ARE MANAGED. But somehow we can't do that for horses whose populations dwarf all of those species except for mule deer.

So why do these horses get so much hate?

The first thing to understand about the horses that are out on the range now is that they're domesticated horses. Domestication changes animals, and despite what mustang lovers will claim it's indisputable that domesticated horses are changed from their wild ancestors.

Horses went extinct here in the Americas around 10,000 years ago. Equus scotti were our original horses. They completely disappeared from the fossil record. The modern horse, Equus caballus, evolved in the Old World. They were domesticated around 6,000 years ago with some speculation as to where exactly this took place (it's possible and seems likely it happened in multiple places at the same time). From what I've seen it's believed that at least some of these horses originally descended from the horses we had here in North America that had crossed over the land bridge.

Native nations will share that they had horses before settlers arrived in the 1600s and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 where modern "wild" horses are credited as coming from, but this can be explained by Spanish settlers who likely brought horses to the Americas back in the early 1500s. Fossil records back this up with three horse remains dating before the Pueblo Revolt showing evidence of wearing bridles, eating domestic crops, and having human-treated injuries. As far as I'm aware, this is the earliest evidence of horses in the states post-extinction. People will claim that pockets of horses actually survived the extinction but I haven't found solid evidence of that.

So the Americas evolved without horses present for a span of about 10,000 years. What changed in that time?

Well for starters, a whole lot of animals went extinct that probably hunted early horses. Dire wolves, North American sabertoothed cats, American lions, American scimitars, American cheetahs, shortfaced bears, and even humans used to hunt horses. Horses are also missing their competitors: ancient bison, the Hagerman horse (more closely related to zebras than horses), mammoths, camelops, llamas, oxen. No animal exists in a vacuum and having predators and competitors around helps keeps populations in check. In the span from the late Pleistocene to the early 1500s North America continued to evolve without horses present. Ecosystems changed, native wildlife evolved, and then settlers came and messed that up even more.

Not to mention back when horses originally roamed North America my state still had ancient Lake Lahontan covering a significant portion of the land. Now we're the driest state in the country (that's right, even drier than Arizona or New Mexico with much thanks to the rain shadow caused by the Sierra Nevada mountain range). We can't support the same life today as we did back then due to geological changes alone. A lot of our country was vastly different than it is today.

So what about when horses were reintroduced?

Our ecosystem was still a pretty different place even compared to back then thanks to colonization. Settlers brought invasive species, stopped indigenous groups from practicing their land management strategies this nation has evolved with, and killed many native species. Here in Nevada we used to have gray wolves, lynx, and grizzly bears, for example, who all likely would have hunted horses. Even if the predators don't hunt the animals directly their presence alone can lead to lower birth rates and more movement, which helps prevent areas from being over-grazed. We also didn't have livestock, plants like cheatgrass, and we didn't break up vital habitat animals depend on and migrate through. Nevada is mostly government owned open land. Horses are able to thrive thanks to that combined with a lack of predators. It's no mistake that we have more horses roaming our state than any other state by such a large margin.

But what's the big deal? Why does it matter how many horses there are?

No habitat can sustain unlimited growth.

Here in my state some species are threatened by horses and other livestock. Which, quick aside, wild horse advocates are quick to point at the finger at livestock while ignoring the fact that horses are livestock animals and thus part of every criticism they have of livestock. But I digress.

One issue is the spread of species like cheatgrass, which is worsening our fire season. It out-competes native grasses, it grows densely and dries early in the season, its shallow roots don't help our ecosystems compared to native plants that help the soil, and it survives the wildfires it contributes to. It's also a low-quality forage for livestock, and the seeds can cause issues for pets. Advocates for horses will say horses control cheatgrass by eating it. The problem is horses also can help spread cheatgrass (this is not a problem unique to horses).

Trampling native grasses or overgrazing them is another problem. Our native sand rice grass (formerly "Indian rice grass") is vital for sage grouse and other wildlife. It requires undisturbed soil with mycorrihizal fungi (fires can also harm these habitats). Even if the horses don't eat the grass, their presence alone can make the habitat unsuitable for this rice grass. Unlike cheatgrass, rice grass isn't spread in a horse's feces.

There's also just issues with direct competition. Here horses only really have one predator: mountain lions. That's not enough to keep their populations in check, especially since mountain lion populations aren't that high compared to the horses (around 2,200 mountain lions across the 7th largest US state).

So what's the solution? Depends on who you ask.

Some people are fine with the round-ups. We pay somewhere around $141.8 million for round-ups, captive care, and adoptions. Keep in mind that's taxpayer money. A lot of critics say this causes unnecessary stress for the horses, causes injury or even death, and causes hierarchy problems and can even harm biodiversity. If you've ever seen a holding facility they're pretty sad dirt lots, too. Adopting out the horses is a hard process. Many are convinced all the horses go to meat slaughter.

Birth control is another option. As with any option, there's criticism with this method as well. Costs, efficacy, the fact that it's a temporary solution, and some will argue this unfairly affects biodiversity. It also doesn't remove existing horses from the range, just stops them from reproducing, so this doesn't solve any current overpopulation problems. It's hard to dart enough horses especially when you consider that any contraceptive isn't going to be 100% effective. The darts have to be placed right by volunteers who also need to keep record of which horses have been darted. It's a lot of work.

From the article:

French Polynesia has become the world’s largest contributor to the global 30×30 ocean protection target, after President Moetai Brotherson announced on 7 June that a further 520,000 km² of the territory’s waters will be fully protected from extractive industries. The move brings the total share of French Polynesia’s exclusive economic zone under full protection to around 30%, an area covering roughly 1.4 million km², more than twice the size of continental France.

For those who don't know, 30x30 refers to global efforts to commit to preserving 30% of land and ocean habitat by 2030. French Polynesia has now hit that target.

A rain garden is a shallow planted depression designed to hold water until it soaks into the soil. A key feature of eco-friendly landscape design, rain gardens—also known as bio-infiltration basins—are gaining credibility and converts as an important solution to stormwater runoff and pollution. Here we’ll show you how to make a rain garden fit handsomely into a landscape and still fulfill all of its environmental functions.

Refer to the list of links below to guide you through calculating garden depth, garden size, placement, and plant selection.

University of Nebraska NebGuide 1 – Rain Garden Design for Homeowners

University of Nebraska NebGuide 2 – Plant Selection for Rain Gardens in Nebraska

University of Nebraska NebGuide 3 – Installing Rain Gardens in Your Yard

Backyard Farmer Video – Rain Gardens and Rain Barrels

It's choosing to be kind to people when you're in a bad mood, or when they're being annoying.

It's choosing to be kind to people who your friends don't like.

It's choosing to be kind to people who you don't particularly like.

It's choosing to be kind to people who you envy.

I'm not saying that you can't be a kind person and stand up for yourself, or tell someone to fuck off when they're doing something genuinely harmful, but there are a million petty reasons people use to justify treating people badly.

But that's exactly what kindness is. It's making the effort to treat people well when you don't feel like it.

Say you are someone who actually doesn't like people and wants to manipulate them, just to be evil. For the sake of your evil scheme, you consistently treat people well and do the right thing (even though this sometimes takes a lot of self-control and not putting your own feelings first), so that people will be manipulated into liking you. Then you are (silently, inside your own head, mind you) like "haha, sucker! Gotcha!"

Then you carry on with your evil scheme of treating people well and doing the right thing, often at your own inconvenience.

That's pretty reprehensible, right? Pretty devious. Just vile, villainous shit. I mean, it might be if you were building up trust to take advantage of people... but are you actually doing that? Or do people just like you because you treat them well?

I think the idea that anything that benefits you is self-serving and therefore bad is pretty wack, tbh. Why shouldn't you also benefit from doing the right thing? Why does it only count if you're martyring yourself for it? Not to mention, there are a lot of times when being kind means putting other people first.

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

Shifting baseline syndrome can occur with things getting better as well. I found myself thinking "huh it seems like there isn't as many pollinators on my coneflowers this year" but then realized it's just because the pollinators attracted to my sumac, mountain mint, gray headed coneflower, blackeyed susan etc. are so numerous that the pollinators on the coneflowers SEEM like relatively few

Had to give myself a reality check remembering how I used to spend ages chasing down one butterfly to get a picture of it and now the butterflies are everywhere.

Credits: photo 1, photo 2

Also known as the rose bedeguar gall wasp, moss gall wasp, or robin's pincushion. Some of these names actually have their roots in folklore. These odd pompoms that can suddenly appear on wild roses were assumed to be the work of woodland faefolk. Knowing that they're actually made by tiny wasps that manipulate the plant into forming a structure that houses and feeds its young honestly still sounds like fairy business though.

It's actually kind of wild how little we know about a lot of pollinator species! Kentucky has 200+ native bee species IIRC but the amount we know about is probably a low estimate because a lot of bugs have not been studied hardly at all.

Many bees are so tiny! The tiny ones I keep seeing have sleek, blue-black exoskeletons and they are just little specks, you have to look close to recognize them!

There are more kinds of wasps and flower flies than I ever imagined! Flower flies are cool because they all depend on nectar and pollen for food, but the maggots of many species are actually predators that hunt and kill insects that can be pests in the garden. Hence why it's so good to have them around.

It's really fun to use iNaturalist to identify species of bugs I have in my meadow because I get to learn about their life cycles. So many wasps and bees and other pollinators are totally dependent upon another species of wasp or bee to complete their life cycle, living in the nest as a parasite or usurping the queen and forcing the workers of the parasitized species to care for the usurper's young... But what if the only, or the best, pollinator for a certain flower, is one of those species that is an obligate parasite on another? Complex webs of interdependence.

It can be so complicated, the needs that these species have. If you've ever watched dirt daubers gather mud for their nests you know they are VERY picky about the mud that they use. And I've also watched paper wasps chew the stems of chicory and the deck chair on the porch to get wood pulp for their nests. They need the proper materials, the proper food for themselves (sometimes a specific flower! or a variety of flowers that provide the right nutrition in their pollen AND nectar at the right times of year!) the proper food for their young (sometimes a specific insect, which probably itself needs particular plants to live!). And they need a sustainable population of all of these things.

There are leaf-cutter bees that cut off pieces of leaves to furnish their nests, but how do they pick what species of leaf to use? Maybe they use leaves from a species with antimicrobial properties, like honeybees collect resin from trees to plaster the inner walls of their nests for sanitary purposes?

Honeybees are INSANELY well studied and the sheer complexity of their lives and behaviors is mind boggling. There is so much we still don't know about them even with thousands and thousands of papers and studies.

Imagine how much more there is still to learn about the pollinators that literally haven't had a single paper published about them in 60 years.

Like I've also seen a certain kind of wasps carrying cut-off leaf pieces into their nests and when I tried to look up information I couldn't find anything about what they might be doing with the leaves other than maybe using them to form compartments in their nests or something?

All the sources I could read said this wasp species was solitary, but there were always multiple of them hovering around the log they were nesting in, and the wasps were there in the exact same spot multiple years in a row, suggesting that they were multi-generational nests!

I've read some thing suggesting that these supposedly solitary insects might not actually be completely solitary, and might have looser social affiliations sometimes building nests near each other like a little village?

Which is crazy when you think about how intelligent wasps and bees are, and how they can communicate with each other in complex ways. If the social ones communicate with each other about food sources and danger, maybe the supposedly "non-social" ones do also?

Did you know? Also known as the elephant clam, the Pacific geoduck (Panopea generosa) can reach lengths of 6 ft (1.8 m) and survive for more than a century! This gigantic mollusk can be found along the shores of western North America. This critter’s long “neck,” called a siphon, has two openings—one for breathing and feeding and one for filtering out excess water. And yes… it’s edible. Photo: kathawk, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist