In this role you will work under the supervision and guidance of professional range and natural resource specialists performing a variety of duties related to monitoring rangeland conditions and managing herds of wild horses and burros.
The temporary position is based in Belle Fourche, SD, where public lands are scarce and there are no defined areas for wild horses and burros.
Another possibility if you want to be around wild horses is to work for free as a certified applicator of fertility control pesticides—not for the BLM but for the advocates.
The HMA overlaps the Carico Lake and Austin allotments, with 11% in Austin and 89% in Carico Lake according to Table 8 of the Final EA for the Callaghan Complex.
The 100 wild horses allowed by plan require 1,200 AUMs per year.
Carico Lake offers 24,954 active AUMs per year on 562,465 public acres, equivalent to 3.7 wild horses per thousand public acres.
Austin offers 14,478 active AUMs per year on 235,185 public acres, equivalent to 5.1 wild horses per thousand public acres.
If the resource is evenly distributed across the parcels, it’s present in the HMA but your faithful public servants gave it to the ranchers.
To estimate the carrying capacity, shift it back to the horses. Forage assigned to wildlife stays with wildlife.
The HMA covers 132,401 public acres so the forage granted to the Carico Lake ranchers should support 132,401 × .89 × 3.7 ÷ 1,000 = 436 wild horses.
The forage granted to the Austin permittees inside the HMA should support 132,401 × .11 × 5.1 ÷ 1,000 = 74 wild horses.
The HMA should be able to sustain 100 + 436 + 74 = 610 wild horses (6X AML) if it was managed principally for them, as specified in the original statute.
The new stocking rate would be 610 ÷ 132,401 × 1,000 = 4.6 wild horses per thousand public acres, a bit more than the target stocking rate across all HMAs of one wild horse per thousand acres.
The allotment master report puts Austin and Carico Lake in the Improve category, which could be due to overgrazing or there may be some other environmental concern that needs monitoring.
The allotments would not make a good wild horse preserve because they overlap areas identified for wild horses and there is more than one authorization attached to each, so you’d have to acquire or control several base properties to access all of the AUMs.
The allotment would not make a good wild horse preserve because it overlaps areas already identified for wild horses and there is more than one authorization attached to it, so you’d have to acquire or control several base properties to access all of the AUMs.
The advocates have until the end of the year to take the herd from 274 to 243 according to a story by KPHO News.
That would require a death rate of nearly 12%.
274 × (1 – .12) = 241
Although the death rate is increasing along with the average age of the herd (because few if any new foals are hitting the ground), it’s not enough to achieve the goal.
The first step would be to mend fences with Jackie Hughes and bring her into the fold.
Then develop a plan for capture, removal and placement into private care, just like the roundups they’ve always condemned.
Was this post written by a woman who sees the world not as it is but the way she thinks it should be?
Or maybe she reached her conclusion after watching herds where mares can’t be mares and the natural order has been disrupted by massive human involvement?
The mass sterilization program will continue but the advocates will add motorized removal to their repertoire.
The current population is 274 according to a story by Phoenix New Times and the new target is 120.
To reach that number they will relocate 25 horses a year to sanctuaries.
The article said the group is actively seeking land or leases near the Salt River but did not indicate if they planned to attach them to vacant allotments in the forest—which would give their supporters more value for their investment.
As of today, AZDA has not announced the agreement at its news site.
The Decision Record authorizes Alternative A, the Proposed Action, minus the IUDs and surgical sterilization.
The selected alternative, discussed in section 2.3 of the Final EA, also includes forcible removal to low AML, fertility control treatments and sex ratio skewing.
Sixty to seventy percent of travelers interviewed by the author of a new book point to Oatman as one of their favorite stops according to a story by KPNX News.
The report did not indicate if any visitors had been kicked by the burros.
The article about the Black Mountain WHT included a section about Return to Normal (Before WHB Act), a signatory to the “Path Forward,” and the sanctuaries it operates.
In the space of a few paragraphs, fertility control is mentioned five times.
RTF ringleader Neda DeMayo said the horses live as they’re designed to live—except for one minor detail.
She’s been pummeling the mares with a “non-hormonal, reversible birth control vaccine,” referred to on these pages as an ovary-killing pesticide, since 1999.
The stallion died of natural causes. He was not one of the top producers in 2025.
The mare slipped on ice and broke her neck.
The report by WBOC News did not indicate if any foals had been born in 2026.
Known for its abnormal sex ratio and unprecedented birth rate, the saltwater cowboys have engineered the herd for maximum revenue at the annual pony swim and auction.
Western Horse Watchers Association 