State turns away from animal abuse

The Nevada Wildlife Commission maintained its unbroken record of destructive decisions toward wildlife at its March 8 meeting.

Rather than signing onto a letter drafted by multiple hunting and ranching organizations encouraging more helicopter roundups and imprisonment of wild horses and burros, the commission decided to send its own letter with the same message, stating it would carry more weight with the Bureau of Land Management.

At the same time, the commission failed to address the larger environmental damage caused by 500,000 livestock grazing mostly on public lands at bargain-basement prices. While the BLM guesstimates Nevada has roughly 50,000 wild horses and burros, these animals continue to be demonized and abused by hunter and rancher groups, the BLM and the commission.

During a fourth attempt at passing a ban on wildlife-killing contests featuring unregulated gambling, several commissioners acknowledged the petition contained extensive science-based evidence. Yet they proceeded to declare they would not support the petition for the rulemaking process, effectively killing it. The petitioner then withdrew the petition, otherwise the issue could not be brought before the commission by petition for another five years if it was defeated in a formal vote.

Supposedly impartial Nevada Department of Wildlife biologists were mute on the biological folly of these contests that wantonly waste wildlife when dead animals are photographed in heaps, then dumped.

When is Gov. Joe Lombardo going to overhaul this failing commission and its enablers at NDOW, both of which represent archaic 1930 Nevada values?

Fred Voltz, Boulder City