Month: July 2020

Swasey Progress Report Day 6

The daily reports show 506 wild horses captured through July 20, with none returned to their home range.  The contractor has been removing an average of 84 horses per day.

Most body condition scores over the last two days ranged from three to five, although a few of the horses were rated two.

Foals accounted for 14% of the animals gathered since July 15.

RELATED: Swasey Progress Report Day 4.

Swasey Wild Horse Fatality Justifies Contraceptives?

A press release issued today by AWA and AWHC, in the wake of a death yesterday during the Swasey wild horse roundup, calls for an $11 million expenditure in 2021 to dart wild horses with PZP.

They need better protection, according to the writers.

Contraceptives mean they won’t even be born—never to be harmed by roundups—a strategy that dovetails perfectly with approved plans to divert most of their food to privately owned livestock.

The announcement suggests that AWHC was the client behind the opinion piece that appeared in several publications on Friday.  Whose side are they on?

RELATED: Swasey Progress Report Day 4.

BLM Opinion Piece Acclaims ‘Path Forward,’ Ignores Livestock

“Now is the time to chart a bold new course for the management and protection of the horses and burros and prevent unnecessary degradation to their habitat,” according to the writer of a guest column appearing this evening in the Las Vegas Review Journal.

The current population of 95,000 wild horses and burros on BLM-managed public lands is more than three and a half times what the land can support [given the amount of resources we’ve diverted to privately owned livestock].

He forgot that part.

AWA Urges Lawmakers to Accept PZP for Wild Horses

Animal Wellness Action, a lobbying group in Washington D.C., said yesterday in an opinion piece published by the Pagosa Daily Post that “lawmakers have the opportunity to land on the right side of history – and the American taxpayer – by requiring BLM to implement PZP contraceptive in 2021.”

Never mind that the EPA was ordered to reconsider the registration of the pesticide earlier this year.

And you should ignore the Assateague census results that show its long-term effects on wild horse herds.

Lobbyists do as their clients require.  In this case, a photo of a wild horse roundup, provided by AWHC, was included.  Might they be the client?

That group has thrown in with the public-lands ranchers.  They’re using your hard earned donations to do the rancher’s dirty work, which is to ensure that seventy, eighty, ninety percent or more of authorized forage on lands set aside for wild horses goes to privately owned livestock.

Don’t pay attention to their words, pay attention to their deeds.

Thriving Ecological Balance-3

Swasey Progress Report Day 2

The daily reports indicate 253 wild horses captured as of July 16, with none returned to their home range and no deaths.

Body condition scores ranged from three to five(!) with a few twos.

Not exactly what you’d expect for an area that’s grossly overpopulated.

The fives tell the story: The horses are robbing too much forage from the poor ranchers.

The management plan for the HMA assigns six times more forage to privately owned livestock than horses.

RELATED: Swasey Wild Horse Roundup Starts This Week.

Sand Springs Wild Horses Get Short End of Stick

Sand Springs is the third and final HMA in the Barren Valley Complex, an area subject to wild horse management actions per the Decision Record dated June 9.

The number of wild horses and privately owned livestock on the HMA vary with time and rangeland conditions but resource allocations don’t change that much.  What do they reveal about the attitudes and beliefs of those who wrote them?

The management plan allows 200 wild horses on 192,524 acres per Section 1.2 of the Final EA.  The current wild horse population is 422.

The forage requirement for horses is 200 × 12 = 2,400 AUMs per year.  The stocking rate allowed by plan is 200 ÷ 192,524 × 1,000 = 1.0 wild horses per thousand acres and the number of excess horses on the HMA is 422 – 200 = 222.

Like Sheepshead, Sand Springs does not have a fractional stocking rate, so the proportion of forage diverted to livestock may not be as large as Coyote Lake.

The HMA intersects one grazing allotment.  Table 6 in the EA provides the allotment size, permitted forage and grazing season.  Few calculations are required.  The forage budget was converted to cow/calf pairs, as their resource requirements are said to be equivalent to those of wild horses.

The HMA is not 100% subject to permitted grazing but close.  The forage available to livestock inside the HMA is 6,314 AUMs per year.

Sand Springs Calcs-1

The Saddle Butte ranchers would have to place 1,263 cow/calf pairs inside the HMA to graze off 6,314 AUMs in five months (6,314 ÷ 5).  The stocking rate allowed by plan is 6.8 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres (1,263 ÷ 185,636 × 1,000).

These management indicators are compared in the following charts.

Sand Springs Charts-1

The management plan allocates 2.6 times as much forage to domestic livestock as it does for wild horses, on land set aside for the horses.  The plan allows over six times as many cow/calf pairs per thousand acres as it does for horses.

Wild horses were not a priority when the plan was written.  The “principally but not exclusively” clause of the WHB Act was ignored.

The forage assigned to livestock would support an additional 526 horses (6,314 ÷ 12), for a new AML of 726 (200 + 526).

There are no excess horses on the HMA (222 < 526).  Carrying capacity has not been exceeded.  So what is the rationale for roundups and contraceptives?

RELATED: Barren Valley Gather EA Comes and Goes, No News Release.

Jackson Mountains Roundup Ends Early

BLM announced this morning that the roundup was complete, with 85 wild horses removed from their home range on an emergency basis.  No deaths were reported.

The operation began July 4.  The original plan was to remove 300 wild horses over a period of 45 to 60 days.

Captured animals were taken to the Indian Lakes off-range corrals in Fallon, NV.

RELATED: Studs Outnumber Mares 2:1 in Jackson Mountains Roundup.

Currituck Horses at Great Risk?

Only 100 remain on the barrier island and “every single one lost is devastating to the genetic health and diversity,” said the herd manager in a report following last week’s choking incident.

She continued, “It’s hard enough to lose one to natural causes … but to lose one to something caused by humans and so easily avoided is just … I don’t even have a word for how bad that is.”

The greatest threat to these animals is not the tourists but the so-called advocates who stalk them with clipboards and darting rifles.

It’s bad when one dies but it’s okay if they’re never born.

You only need to look at Assateague Island (Maryland side) to see where this is going.

The PZP zealots have run that herd into the ground and they know it.

RELATED: Assateague Wild Horse Census Temporarily Halted?