The government shutdown filled the public-lands ranchers with anxiety, according to a report by Tri-State Livestock News, causing undue stress about turnout dates and grazing fees.  One thing they won’t have to worry about is the price escalating into a range that brings it in line with the cost of private-sector ranching.

The current fee, which expires at the end of the month, is 4.7¢ per cow/calf pair per day, or $1.41 per AUM.

Try feeding your horse for that.  Or your parakeet.

Wild horse critics like to point at the expense of animals in long-term holding, for which the government spends around $50 million per year.  The cost of feed is about $2 per day, or $60 per AUM.

Given nine million AUMs allocated to livestock annually, with room for three million more, the government receives about $13 million each year from the ranchers.

Add the costs of roundups, adoptions, transport and the like and you have the government spending around $60 million each year so it can collect $13 million from the ranchers.

If you restrict the revenue to lands subject to the roundups, you’d have the government spending at least ten times as much as it hopes to collect in grazing fees.

Those nine million AUMs would support 750,000 wild horses and burros, enough to empty all the off-range corrals and long-term pastures fifteen times over.

Their position is untenable and they know it.  That’s why they spew all the BS about wild horse overpopulation and damage to western rangelands.

If it was really about the money, the government would leave the horses on the range and tell the ranchers to go pound sand.

RELATED: Dire Condition of Wild Horses and Burros in Western U.S.

Except they rob forage from the public-lands ranchers—so we force them out, because cattle and sheep are more amazing.  Film posted today by the Forest Service.

RELATED: Devil’s Garden Adoption Starts Next Week, Devil’s Garden Horses Get Short End of Stick.

True or false?

___ a. Wild horses and burros are starving to death.

___ b. The land can no longer sustain the basic needs of these animals.

___ c. They are displacing cattle, sheep, elk, mule deer and sage grouse.

___ d. They graze vegetation close to the surface, stunting regrowth.

___ e. If livestock were removed, they would still die.

All are true, according to this opinion piece posted today in HJ News of Logan, UT.

No evidence, no citations, no supporting documentation.  Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Given that roughly nine million AUMs are allocated to livestock each year on public lands in the western U.S., 750,000 wild horses and burros could be returned to the range if the cattle and sheep were removed.

That’s fifteen times the number of animals currently in long-term holding!

RELATED: Infamous Fence Experiment, Vegetation Control on the Virginia Range, Wild Horses on the Edge (of the Road), Population Densities on Western Rangelands.

It’s tough being a government dependent.

You’re convicted of arson in 2012 (to hide the deer you killed, probably because they were robbing forage from your livestock), and when you tried to renew your grazing permit in 2014, the government said no.

In 2016, you returned to prison (because the original sentence was too light), sparking the Malheur Incident that ended with the death of another public-lands rancher.

In 2018, your hero (and wild horse hater) pulled some strings in the Trump Administration to get your sentence commuted.

Then, in early 2019, your grazing permit is restored, at the direction of outgoing DOI Secretary Ryan Zinke, according to a report that appeared Friday in Tri-State Livestock News.

Your cattle can once again enjoy the hills near South Steens HMA.  The next wild horse roundup can’t come soon enough.

“The people that are losing their permits from the wild horses, I feel terrible about that.  We’ve regained our ground.  I don’t see that they are going to get the horse deal understood before those people are totally out of business.  What in the world is America thinking about?”

There is nothing admirable in the story.  It’s not about rugged individualism and self reliance, it’s about victimhood and dependency.  Long-term access to cheap feed and periodic removal of other animals that get in your way.  Courtesy of the federal government and the American taxpayer.

The occupation of Malheur was in protest to the Obama administration, nothing more.

The ringleaders were public-lands ranchers from Bunkerville, NV.

Meanwhile, a few miles to the north in Elko County, NV, Madeleine Pickens waits patiently for the BLM to fulfill its end of the deal reached ten years ago to graze former wild horses on 600,000 acres of public land, access to which she obtained legally and with their blessing.

Moreover, the individual(s) who shot several wild horses there last August still haven’t been brought to justice.