Dear HCN,
Lynne Bama’s story does a
good job of explaining some of the controversy surrounding
management of feral horses (HCN, 3/2/98). In regard to the Pryor
Mountains, however, she did not capture the most important issue:
how the horses and their management might impact wilderness
designation for the range.
The Pryors are a
fabulous and wild range, the botanical hot spot of Montana, home of
rare, recently discovered, and probably undiscovered plants. The
Pryors offer a cascade of unique ecosystems as they drop 5,000 feet
and 10 inches in rainfall in 20 miles. The Pryors are sacred to the
Crow Indians, and precious as de facto wilderness to many
Montanans. It is their wildness, their wilderness, that is the
Pryors’ most outstanding characteristic, and one that reduces to
irrelevance the romantic pictures of horses in some folks’ minds
and prominently featured in this story.
It is
unclear to me how this story ran without mentioning a single time
that most of the Pryor Mountain Horse Range overlies roadless areas
recommended for wilderness designation by the National Park
Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service
respectively. Wilderness is the abiding value of the Pryors, and
horse management should be driven first by that consideration. For
more information on the proposed Pryor Mountain Wilderness, please
visit the Montana Wilderness Association’s Web page at
www.wildmontana.org
John
Adams
Missoula,
Montana
The writer works for the Montana Wilderness Association.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Wilderness, not horses, is the issue.
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