700 Horses in Crosshairs of Army Training
The following story is by Heidi Rucki of the Examiner.com.
Lately it seems that horses are often in the news, and horses have become the unwary targets of the clash of human land use versus their simple animal existence. Any time horses become magnets of such attention, they frequently do not fare well. Information coming from the U.S. Army on Aug. 12 and 13 has riveted attention on about 700 “feral” horses roaming on thousands of acres in Louisiana on lands used by the army during training exercises. The horses are increasingly considered “nuisance animals” because they may pose a kicking or biting danger or leave random piles of manure.
Fort Polk spokesperson Kim Reischling says that the intense military training of 
troops has to pause until the horses are “shooed away.” They leave behind horse manure in the areas used by soldiers. The training area is about 90 miles northwest of Lafayette, LA, and around 20 miles from the Texas state line. Most of the horses are located on 48,000 acres of the 90,000 acres of forest land that are used for training purposes.