Talk:Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971

Rahall "Amendment"

This did not repeal the Burns amendment. It is only a yearly addition to the appropriations bill, that forbids federal money be used to implement the Burns amendment.Lynn (SLW) (talk) 01:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Same result. Source says "repeal," but I can refine the language. Montanabw^(talk) 03:58, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

GA-Class article

Do not make massive undiscussed changes to a GA class article without discussing why these changes are needed at the talk page, please. Montanabw^(talk) 00:36, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

You have no business demanding that changes in ANY articles must be discussed prior to making them. You must have good reasons to revert, not that you don't want it changed without discussion. The changes improved the article. It no longer deserved GA classification, if it ever did. I have reverted back, If you have specific issues with what I did, we can work from there.Lynn (SLW) (talk) 01:55, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

You have been warned about your OR and SYNTH in the past. This is a GA-class article, which means that new material needs to be subject to WP:BURDEN, which means you need to justify your additions. I suggest you propose the suggested changes you want. I agree we have had issues with the "two million" figure in the past and that bit should be adjusted. Other than that, one step at a time, please. We may agree on some matters, we have in the past. Montanabw^(talk) 03:49, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

You need to go back and read WP:BURDEN, Says nothing of the sort. Oh, and, really nice message here too. Oh, and thanks for the warning on my talk page Classy. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 11:06, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Specifically, the problems with your edits include:

1. Changes to the lead not backed up by material in the article body. See WP:LEDE
2. Statements of opinion phrased as fact, and thus not appropriate for an encyclopedic tone.
3. Information totally irrelevant to the article topic, which is the 1971 act, not vague mentions of Mexican history in 1826. That is WP:UNDUE.
4. Similarly, we also don't need a complete analysis of the Taylor Grazing Act here, that material is better placed in the article on that act.
5. You removed sourced material without explanation.
6. The references to the current problem of horses held off the range needs to focus on the legislative aspects. The question of sustainability is probably worth including in the article, though.
7. The Fischman article might have some useful material, but you cited it improperly for the citation style used in this article.

And so on. I am glad to discuss ways to improve the article, but making massive, undiscussed changes is, as you already know, not appropriate. Montanabw^(talk) 04:17, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

"Changes to the lead not backed up by material in the article body. See WP:LEDE" Need to be more specific

"Statements of opinion phrased as fact, and thus not appropriate for an encyclopedic tone." Need to be more specific

"Information totally irrelevant to the article topic, which is the 1971 act, not vague mentions of Mexican history in 1826. That is WP:UNDUE." Bull. It's the HISTORY section, some history is warranted.

"Similarly, we also don't need a complete analysis of the Taylor Grazing Act here, that material is better placed in the article on that act." I don't believe I changed that section much.

"You removed sourced material without explanation." I explained it. It was either inaccurate, poorly sourced, or non-NPOV

"The references to the current problem of horses held off the range needs to focus on the legislative aspects. The question of sustainability is probably worth including in the article, though." That was already like that.

"The Fischman article might have some useful material, but you cited it improperly for the citation style used in this article." Minor problem, Should just have been fixed rather than a mass revert.

So, I'm reverting it back. We can start dealing with your issues from that point.Lynn (SLW) (talk) 11:06, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Please re-read WP:BRD and WP:BURDEN, you have the burden of proof to make the case for your edits. Until then, the status quo remains. Now please discuss constructive suggestions. Montanabw^(talk) 19:50, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Read them. Just don't buy your interpretation of them. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 20:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

• Focusing on the content, I suggest we use the compromise language we worked out in other articles on the "two million" issue. We compromised on language at Mustang, I propose that language precisely:

No more than two million feral horses may have once roamed the [[American west]] according to what historian [[J. Frank Dobie]] called a "guess."<ref name="Dobie108">Dobie, ''The Mustangs'' pp. 108-109</ref> However, no comprehensive census of feral horse numbers had ever been performed until the time of the [[Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971]] and any earlier estimates are speculative.<ref name=Myths>{{cite web|last1=Gorey|first1=Tom|title=Myths and Facts |url=http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/whbprogram/history_and_facts/myths_and_facts.html|website=Bureau of Land Management|accessdate=February 6, 2015|date=August 15, 2014}}</ref> By the 1950s mustang population dropped drastically. Mustangs were rounded up in large numbers and the abuses linked to certain capture methods, including hunting from airplanes and poisoning, led to the first federal wild free-roaming horse protection law in 1959.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://wildhorsepreservation.org/wild-horse-annie-act |title=Wild Horse Annie Act |publisher=Wildhorsepreservation.org |accessdate=2014-07-23}}</ref> This statute, known as the "Wild Horse Annie Act", prohibited the use of motor vehicles for hunting wild horses and burros.<ref name=Mangum77>Mangum, ''The Mustang Dilemma'', p. 77</ref>

• On some of the other history, I see little need to repeat what has already been said at Mustang, Free-roaming horse management in North America, and Horses in the United States, but if we need minor expansion to put the legislative history into context (mostly other legislation, Taylor Grazing Act, Wild Hors Annie Act), again, we should probably work with the existing language in one of those articles; "your" management article has some content that might be a good, if improvable, place to start. Frankly, other than perhaps a bit on the Rahall amendment and the holding facilities problem (and we agree it's a problem), I don't see much more than this. Montanabw^(talk) 21:48, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Don't agree. Mustang has a different context. Let's start with my language:

As early as 1826, there is documentation the Mexicans were using inhumane means to control the numbers of horses brought to the New World by the Spanish 300 years earlier, which had exploded in numbers and were roaming in what was then Mexican territory in the western United States, mainly in California.[8] and the southern Great Plains. After acquiring the territory in the Mexican-American War in 1848, American settlers began rounding up and domesticating or otherwise eliminating most of those early populations of horses,[9] but their own horses began to go feral on the unclaimed lands in the western deserts.

Upon the invention of motorized farm implements, there were so many horses allowed to go feral in the farming regions of Montana[10] and rest of the northwest that in the 1920's slaughterhouses were opened to process them into chicken, pet and even human food.[11] By 1930, there was an estimated population of between 50,000-150,000 free-roaming horses.[12] Many of these were gathered up when the Great Depression lowered grain prices to the point that farmers could not afford fuel, and so returned to "horse power".[11]

When the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act was enacted, the public (General Land Office) lands were divided into individual grazing allotments and ranchers began to be charged fees to graze their animals on the land. The fee to graze a horse was twice that for a cow, and as a result, ranchers, already hit hard by the Depression, ceased branding their horses and allowed them to graze the public lands as "mavericks" adding to the numbers of horses that had started going feral over 50 years earlier. Management of horses running on the range was initially left to Mustangers and local ranchers.[13] It's not clear if there were too many horses, or that the land was incurring damage due to the presence of the horses,[14] but by 1939, the U.S. Grazing Service, which had been formed to administer the Taylor Grazing Act, began to directly hire people to remove horses from public land.[15] The United States Forest Service periodically gave ranchers notice to round up their strays and thereafter shot any remaining horses.[16] After World War II, the BLM was formed by combining the General Land Office and the Grazing Service.[17] It no longer directly removed horses from the lands it administered, but issued permits to hunters. It is unknown how many free-roaming horses were on the public lands at the end of World War II,[6] but the relentlessly hunting to meet the demands of the pet food market probably exceeded their reproductive rate, resulting in a decline. By the 1950s, the free-roaming horse population was down to an estimated 25,000 animals.[18]

Advocates for free-ranging horses were unhappy with the culling procedures. They argued that herding horses from the air or by motorized vehicle (such as motorcycles) terrorized the animals and caused numerous and cruel injuries. Led by Velma Bronn Johnston—better known as "Wild Horse Annie," a secretary at an insurance firm in Reno, Nevada—animal welfare and horse advocates lobbied for passage of a federal law to prevent this kind of hunting.[16] Their efforts were successful. On September 8, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Hunting Wild Horses and Burros on Public Lands Act (Public Law 86- 234, also known as the "Wild Horse Annie Act"), which banned the hunting of feral horses on federal land from aircraft or motorized vehicles.[19] Lynn (SLW) (talk) 22:26, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Please don't split my posts. I fixed that. But, to the point, your proposal is jut the tl;dr stuff I reverted, but there is some useful info in there. We have room to compromise. My thoughts:

1. Anything prior to 1900 other than the rough population estimates is not really relevant here (and the 1826 stuff is SYNTH anyway; definitely not relevant to the legislative history here) Material not relevant to legislative history is stuff for "your" management article, or the Taylor Grazing Act article.
2. Some of stuff about the reasons for the Taylor Grazing act could be added to the existing section, perhaps, but clarify what is different from what's in there... i.e. what is lacking that is relevant to the need for the 1971 Act??
3. I need to look at the sourcing on the slaughterhouses in the 20s issue, as the feral horse problem was one that was more connected to the Great Depression, according to the history published at the various BLM HMA pages (of which I've now reviewed dozens for that list) If we add the rise of slaughter material, we need to tie it more clearly to why it is relevant to this act. Slaughterhouses for horses made obsolete by mechanized farm equipment sprung up worldwide without being linked to feral horse problems (draught horses by the millions went to slaughter in Europe, particularly post-WWII) and I am not convinced this is linked to the wild horse issue beyond the issues noted by the Wild Horse Annie act.
4. There's an argument to be made that there should be a separate article on the Wild Horse Annie act, or more on the act in her biography. but what you have here is too long and too opinionated... "argued" "terrorized" "cruel" -- we can have quotations with loaded words but they are best avoided in the narrative, and stuff like "secretary of an insurance firm in Reno" sounds snarky and is more appropriate for the Velma Bronn Johnston article anyway. The tone sounds contemptuous about these people, and that is unencyclopedic. Montanabw^(talk) 23:35, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

So, take my language and change it, and I'll tell you what I think is wrong with it. A lot of what you are objecting to "but what you have here is too long and too opinionated... 'argued' 'terrorized' 'cruel'" is what I LEFT in and what was in there when the article went through the GA process. So get off the GA thing, because that's only the tip of the iceberg of what I was trying to fix. I don't know how the article made it through GA, but it shouldn't have. The 1900 number is not a 1900 number, it's an 1850 number remember? You've taken it out of context. So if you want to take out the early stuff, it goes too. You can't just slip that number in without the context of the early history. It's misleading. I'd be happy to start with the 1930 Wynam number though. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 23:49, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

We appeared to have a compromise on the Dobie language that I put in above. But try this. Montanabw^(talk) 23:25, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

No more than two million feral horses may have once roamed the [[American west]] according to what historian [[J. Frank Dobie]] called a "guess."<ref name="Dobie108">Dobie, ''The Mustangs'' pp. 108-109</ref> By 1930, there was an estimated population of between 50,000-150,000 free-roaming horses.[12] <full cite please> However, no comprehensive census of feral horse numbers had ever been performed until after the Act was passed and any earlier estimates are speculative.<ref name=Myths>{{cite web|last1=Gorey|first1=Tom|title=Myths and Facts |url=http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/whbprogram/history_and_facts/myths_and_facts.html|website=Bureau of Land Management|accessdate=February 6, 2015|date=August 15, 2014}}</ref> By the 1950s, Mustangs were rounded up in large numbers and the abuses linked to certain capture methods, including hunting from airplanes and poisoning, led to the first federal wild free-roaming horse protection law in 1959.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://wildhorsepreservation.org/wild-horse-annie-act |title=Wild Horse Annie Act |publisher=Wildhorsepreservation.org |accessdate=2014-07-23}}</ref> This statute, known as the "Wild Horse Annie Act", prohibited the use of motor vehicles for hunting wild horses and burros.<ref name=Mangum77>Mangum, ''The Mustang Dilemma'', p. 77</ref>

No, I never agreed to the two million number unless it was clear that Dobie specified that number to 1850. Could you please explain why you want to use an 1850 estimate, but none of the other information giving it context? That seems to contradict the idea of justifying keeping the GA classification for the article. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 23:38, 13 January 2016 (UTC)