Dances with Horses: Lessons from the Environmental Fringe

• Published in: Conservation biology 1996-06, Vol.10 (3), p.708-712
• Main Author: Symanski, Richard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal rights; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Applied ecology; Biological and medical sciences; Censuses; Conservation biology; Conservation, protection and management of environment and wildlife; Environmental conservation; Environmentalism; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Horses; Land management; Law schools; Parks, reserves, wildlife conservation. Endangered species: population survey and restocking; Public land; Sustainable land management
• ISSN: 0888-8892; 1523-1739
• DOI: 10.1046/j.1523-1739.1996.10030708.x

When environmental activists disregard or show contempt for facts and the rules of evidence, their intrusion into environmental issues may be perversely counterproductive. Using field and telephone interview data and unpublished and published documents, including court briefs, I show that certain activists misrepresented the Nevada Bureau of Land Management in its custodial role for the nation's wild horses. The core of the misrepresentation was an independent census of Nevada's wild horses conducted by the Public Lands Resource Council, an ad hoc association. These census data differ dramatically from those produced by the Bureau of Land Management. The latter data were confirmed, in part, by Bureau of Land Management roundups in northcentral Nevada. The Animal Rights Law Clinic at the Rutger's School of Law joined forces with the Public Lands Resource Council and used the council's questionable census results in an attack on the Bureau of Land Management's horse program. A careful probing of environmentalist agendas and data is at least as important as careful scientific design, execution, and display of results. Saving species and ecosystems is, then, as much an exercise in human psychology and the politics and sociology of advocacy groups as it is in conservation biology.