Observers were unable to determine the condition of an injured horse according to an opinion piece in the Reno Gazette Journal.
But should you criticize the agency for lack of transparency when you’re guilty of that yourself?
The column was written by the Nevada State Director for the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses, a leader in mass sterilization and servant of the public lands ranchers, who scrubbed the Virginia Range Darting Resources page from its website, and the monthly reports posted thereto, leaving the public in the dark about the largest attempted eradication of wild horses in the state.
They are trying to develop it into a controlled-release formulation that induces long-lasting infertility with a single injection according to a March 3 news release.
Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society of the United States, provided financial support for the research.
The BLM has funded a three-year project to test it on horses.
What’s the difference between long-term infertility and sterility?
To wit, the new management plan balances the population with available resources while maintaining genetic integrity, which is nonsense, not when the advocates have ruined the mares with PZP.
Breeding, not mass sterilization, assures long-term viability.
Horses removed from their habitat can only go to sanctuaries approved by AZDA.
The HMA overlaps the Austin, Grass Valley and Simpson Park allotments, with 51% in Austin, 42% in Grass Valley and 7% in Simpson Park according to Table 5 of the Final EA for the Callaghan Complex.
The 237 wild horses allowed by plan require 2,844 AUMs per year.
Austin offers 14,478 active AUMs on 235,185 public acres, equivalent to 5.1 wild horses per thousand public acres.
Grass Valley offers 17,701 active AUMs on 267,201 public acres, equivalent to 5.5 wild horses per thousand public acres.
Simpson Park offers 3,406 active AUMs on 96,818 public acres, equivalent to 2.9 wild horses per thousand public acres.
These resources are present in the HMA, assuming they’re evenly distributed across the allotments, but they’ve been assigned to livestock.
To estimate the carrying capacity, shift them back to the horses. Forage assigned to wildlife stays with wildlife.
The HMA covers 152,726 public acres so the forage allocated to the Austin permittees inside the HMA should support 152,726 × .51 × 5.1 ÷ 1,000 = 397 wild horses.
The forage allocated to the Grass Valley ranchers should support 152,726 × .42 × 5.5 ÷ 1,000 = 353 wild horses.
The forage assigned to the Simpson Park ranchers should support 152,726 × .07 × 2.9 ÷ 1,000 = 31 wild horses.
The HMA should be able to sustain 237 + 397 + 353 + 31 = 1,018 wild horses (4X AML) if it was managed principally for them as specified in the original statute.
The new stocking rate would be 1,018 ÷ 152,726 × 1,000 = 6.7 wild horses per thousand public acres.
Your faithful public servants claim that public lands in the western U.S. can only support one wild horse per thousand acres.
Austin has more AUMs in the suspended column than active, while everything is active at Simpson Park.
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.
They’re on the small side and not contiguous but the permits are up for renewal with comments due by March 4.
The allotment master report puts Hayes Canyon, Little Valley, Swedes Canyon and West Side in the Maintain category with equivalent stocking rates ranging from 3.6 to 12.6 wild horses per thousand public acres.
Your faithful public servants claim that rangeland health will suffer if wild horse stocking rates exceed one animal per thousand acres.
If a lying contest was held next week, who would win? The bureaucrats or advocates?
Up to $20 million was available for partnerships with private landowners to provide sanctuaries for wild horses according to a notice from 2011.
The announcement does not explain the BLM’s expectations but a program that helps interested groups (not the advocates) acquire or control private properties attached to public lands would serve a useful purpose today.
The advocates would only be interested in a program that helps them buy pesticides so they can beat the horse populations down in favor of livestock.
If a proposed sanctuary doesn’t include public lands and doesn’t displace livestock therefrom, it’s not worthy of your support.
The news release says it’s now authorized to operate on 8,058 total acres, including 1,601 public acres.
Table 1-3 of the Final EIS says there are no Herd Management Areas within the Plan of Operations boundary, but Figure 1-2, in combination with the ArcGIS Viewer, shows that it extends into Paymaster.
The mine, the only one producing lithium in the United States, is a few miles west of Alkali Hot Springs, a source of water for wild horses and burros.
The EIS can be found in the project folder with other planning documents.
The HMA layer in the Viewer was updated a week ago and gone are the polygons for Salt Wells Creek and Divide Basin.
The outline for Adobe Town was also updated.
With the exception of White Mountain, the Wyoming checkerboard has been cleansed of wild horses, at least from a planning viewpoint, despite a court order opposing it.
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.
Western Horse Watchers Association 