Why Wild Horses Are So Important to Sheryl Crow

Singer Sheryl Crow says America’s wild horses are in peril because private interests are seeking more land and not because mustang populations are booming, as the government has in part argued, posing starvation for the animals. “I think there has to be a better way than taking them away from their native lands,” Crow tells the Associated Press. “I feel so passionate about the issue because wild horses are one of the last remaining ties to the land as it was and our history in America.” The Grammy winner’s position puts her at odds with President Barack Obama’s administration, though she campaigned for Obama in 2008. She has criticized Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for government plans to remove as many as 25,000 mustangs from Western ranges and ship them to pastures in the Midwest and East. She’s also brought DVDs about the issue to the White House and appears in a video produced by wild-horse advocates. It seems efforts like Crow’s are making a difference in some cases. YubaNet writes that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management postponed the roundup of 200 horses roaming in the Confusion Mountains in Utah after activists protested.