Searching Out New Ranges for America’s Wild Mustangs

Wild mustangs. Photo courtesy of National Geographic.

While having descended from domesticated horses brought here by early Spanish explorers, the American wild mustangs have always embodied virtues that we also pride in ourselves, such as strength, endurance, determination, and freedom.

Still exemplifying these virtues, the horses have experienced a powerful resurgence over the last four decades since the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act was passed in 1971.

The law made it illegal to slaughter these animals as a method of population control or providing meat for dog food. The horses and burros were seen as competitors with domestic livestock for grazing lands.

Today, these federally protected animals are being threatened by their own successful comeback. They are eating themselves right out of their own protected ranges.

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$750 Million to the National Parks Creating Jobs in a Variety of Fields

At the Dinosaur National Monument and Quarry, visitors can watch paleontologists remove fossils in a three-story glass building attached to a mountain, according to Dinosaurland KAO, Vernal, UT. Photo courtesy of Dinosaurland KAO.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congress has directed $750 million toward national park infrastructures projects through the Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C..

“Investments in national park infrastructure will help to improve safety and public access; restore our national heritage; and bring immediate economic benefits—including thousands of new jobs in rural and urban communities nationwide,” said Karen Hevel-Mingo, Southwest regional program manager of the National Parks Conservation Association, Washington, D.C.

Nearly 800 projects are planned, which the National Parks Service, Washington, D.C., plans to use to create jobs in areas including: construction, deferred maintenance, energy efficiency equipment replacement, trails maintenance, abandoned mine lands safety projects, and road maintenance.

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Eco-Trips Aide the Revitalization of Sri Lanka’s Elephant Population

Pinnawela elephant orphanage. Photo courtesy of Flickr.com

PINNAWELA, Sri Lanka - Eco-tourism in Sri Lanka is thriving, according to the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, which in turn is also providing a much needed boost to the country’s elephant conservation and breeding projects.

“The elephant population in Sri Lanka was being decimated to near extinction by the natural loss of their habitat, the hunting due to the lucrative ivory trade, and lack of proper management,” said Dileep Mudadeniya., SLTPB Managing Director, adding “but all that is history now.

“From merely seven elephants in 1975, the Pinnawela elephant orphanage now houses 65 elephants, including several bred in captivity, under the intelligent management of the National Zoological Gardens.” The elephants roam free in the 25-acre coconut plantation where they eat grass in addition to a daily diet of coconut palm, jackfruit, and other leaves, says the bureau, adding that the baby elephants at the orphanage are bottle fed on milk by their handlers.

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