When you start going out there and randomly shooting animals with sterilization, chemicals is what they are. They're not contraception, they're a sterilization chemical going to con a PCP that are listed by the EPA as as pesticides. And they're using them off label. They are not like the contraception that was developed over decades for humans, and subjected to tons of critical clinical trial.
Oh, wow. Does the sterilization make them sick?
Well, it does it and if you happen to treat her with sterilization chemical like PCP are gonna call what you're doing is you're interfering with the lifecycle of this family of horses, and actually interferes with natural selection, which preserves the vigor of the species critical for the survival of these of these animals. I mean, it's very critical. So do wild horses have that much time luck? The answer is no. They do not, you know, wild horses, and we keep doing what we're doing right now. And 20 years, there won't be wild horses. There'll be gone. There'll be a few scattered groups here and there and zoos and a couple sanctuaries here and there. We won't have the beautiful, the elegance of wild horses gracing the natural landscape that will be gone.
Okay, let's talk about horses and fire management. You have a quote that I read from a story you did with NPR and the quote was keeping horses out of the wilderness and in confinement is like putting the fire department in jail during fire season. It is it tell me about that. What did you mean?
Well, it comes right back down to William J. Ripple from Oregon State did a study it was on five continents. And I think there was like 30 universities involved it's called the collapse of the large body herbivores and and he's got a whole section in there on fire. And and what it says is that the the essence the takeaway is on every continent where they looked at the collapse of the herb avoori You know, in Australia that killed 4 million kangaroos. That was their natural Laos, their large body herbivore there on every continent they looked at, where you have a collapse of the larger body herbivore, catastrophic fire evolved every time. So this isn't like some sort of mystery. I mean, this is well known science. It's well published. Subtle science. When you get rid of your native species, herbivores, the deer, the elk, the kangaroos, depending on where you are. All that grass is growing, that was feeding them it just sits there is nothing. Fire will eat it. And if you lose your herbivores will be fuel for the fire is set up for the herbivores, right for them to live. And, you know, we're talking three and a half million tonnes of grass and brush it sits there now, waiting for the first lightning strike or some crazy human behavior train chain dragging power line down. The point is is sources of ignition. We can't control what we can't control as the fuel. Oh, yeah. And we do that by getting these horses Arctic fine, Matt, put him into these private wilderness and public wilderness areas and you release them there. And what do they do? They do what they've done for 4 million years. They reduce the fuel. They make it safer for the trees when you have a fire then it burns low and slow. And that's the natural fire that indigenous talk about. We need.
Yeah, I mean, in Colorado, it's been raining all summer, which is very unusual. But what's the most concerning is, you know, when the marshal fire happened here a couple ye ars ago, one of the biggest factors that we heard about was there was a lot of fuel on the ground, because we had had a really wet spring. And I feel like with this summer being even Rainier than that year, I think people are scared. They're worried.
Yeah, having a lot of rain is great for the aquifer. But then what happens is you get a lot of fuel. And because mankind has been very good at wiping out our large body, herbivores in North America, you know, we went from 10s of millions of bison when Columbus showed up, and then we ended up killing them down to where we had less than 500 then you know, people need to get a pencil and start doing math. I mean, we're spending about $250 million a year in taxpayer money to feed horses in captivity, wild horses that have been rounded up by the BLM and forest. They're held off range, and it's kind of like a FEMA camp. And we're feeding them grass. Hey, you know, the solution is it's really a no brainer. And maybe that's why people are missing it. It's right in front of their nose and they can't see it. nature's perfect. We have to stop fighting nature and start looking at how nature does things because then we win. Nature wins and then we went to because we've forgotten we're part of nature. We're part of This planet, we're above it. We're not We're not exempt from what's happening on this planet. And we always think we can do it better than nature. That's not true. We've shown time and time again, that we bungle it. Every time we try to do something we screw it up royally, because we're affected by ego and money.
William, thank you so much for talking with me. I appreciate it. Thank you. William E. Simpson is a wild horse ufologists and CEO of the Wild Horse fire brigade. For kgN you I'm Alexis Kenyon.
