Letter: Columnist Misrepresents Horse Study Findings

Editor: Larry Hyslop is at it again.

His recent column, “Nature Notes: 200,000 wild and feral horses,” (October 7, 2017) blatantly misstates the facts about our wild horse herds as part of his long-running pursuit of horse slaughter as a herd management strategy.

Mr. Hyslop has long been in favor of exterminating our wild horse herds, but his recent mischaracterization of the facts was particularly galling. In this piece, Mr. Hyslop claims the federal Government Accountability Office has concluded that birth control methods for controlling wild horse populations “are not currently affordable or practical to implement on a large scale.” This is false: even a cursory look at the report Mr. Hyslop uses as the basis of his entire column makes clear that while the federal Bureau of Land Management, long opposed to humane wild horse management, may conclude this, the GAO most certainly does not. Mr. Hyslop has a history of choosing slaughter as his preferred method of managing our country's wild horse population.

In September 2016, Mr. Hyslop opined that wild horses should either be slaughtered by the federal government or sold to others to kill for food. This is a fringe position to put it mildly; indeed, some 80 percent of the American public opposes slaughtering wild horses. No, Mr. Hyslop: lifting 50-year-old protections on our nation's wild horse herds isn't the "glimmer of hope'' we need to ensure ecological balance on the range. It's lunacy, and wildly out of step with public opinion.

Mr. Hyslop is not entitled to his own facts. By pretending that the GAO agrees with him to support his position in opposition to 80 percent of Americans who oppose horse slaughter, Mr. Hyslop is spreading propaganda, not practicing journalism.

The Elko Daily Free Press should correct this error immediately, and keep a closer editorial eye on Mr. Hyslop in the future.

Suzane Roy, Executive Director

American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign)

Originally posted by the Elko Daily Free Press