Month: September 2020

Marching Orders

From Section 2.5.3 in the Final Environmental Assessment for wild horse management actions in the Red Desert Complex:

[C]hanges to livestock grazing cannot be made through a wild horse gather decision, and are only possible if the BLM first revises the land-use plans to re-allocate livestock forage to wild horses and to reduce or eliminate livestock grazing.

Will a court order be required to achieve this?

Roundups don’t allocate resources, they enforce resource allocations, and those are determined upstream in the management process.

RELATED: Statutes and Regulations, Red Desert Gather, Part 2, Starts Next Month.

Frisco Wild Horse Roundup Starts Next Week

BLM will remove approximately 200 wild horses from the Frisco HMA beginning on September 21, due to overpopulation.  A secondary objective is to capture 21 mares that have been fitted with radio/GPS collars for research purposes.

The operation will be carried out with helicopters and will be open to public observation according to the news release.

The HMA covers 60,367 acres in western Utah and has an AML of 60, so the stocking rate allowed by plan is one wild horse per thousand acres.  The pre-gather population is thought to be around 250 horses.

The announcement did not provide the NEPA project that authorizes the roundup so the forage allocations and number of excess horses can’t be determined at this time.

Captured animals will be taken to the off-range corrals in Axtell.

A link to the gather stats and daily reports was not included.  Western Horse Watchers was unable to find it on the Utah gather page.

Red Desert Gather, Part 2, Starts Next Month

BLM said today that approximately 2,400 wild horses will be removed from the Red Desert Complex, beginning on or about October 6, due to overpopulation.  The area was gathered about two years ago but the effort was cut short because the off-range corrals reached their capacity.

The operation will be open to public observation.  The announcement did not say if it would be carried out with helicopters.

The Complex includes five HMAs in southwest Wyoming.  The combined AML is 724.

The pre-gather population is thought to be around 3,000.  The total acreage and stocking rate allowed by plan are not known at this time.

Red Desert Complex Map 09-16-20

The NEPA project by which the roundup is authorized was not specified and therefore the forage allocations are not known.

The destination of captured animals was not provided.

Gather stats and daily reports will be posted to this page.  Details not mentioned in the news release can be found there.

WHBAB Call for Nominations

The BLM will be soliciting nominations from the public for three positions on the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board that will become vacant on October 16, according to a pre-publication notice on the Federal Register.

The open positions represent the following interests:

  • Natural resource management
  • Public interest (with knowledge of equine behavior)
  • Wild horse and burro research

Nominations will be due 45 days after the announcement officially appears in the Register, currently scheduled for tomorrow.

The Board will meet online next week.

UPDATE: The official notice has been published.  BLM news release.

South Steens Roundup Starts Next Week

BLM will remove approximately 200 wild horses from private lands on either side of the southern boundary of the South Steens HMA, starting September 21.  Private areas are denoted by white in the following map.

The operation will be carried out with helicopters but will not be open to public observation, according to the news release.

The HMA covers 126,732 acres in southeastern Oregon and has an AML of 304, for an aimed-at stocking rate of 2.4 horses per thousand acres.

The South Steens Herd Area, not shown in the map, is about twice the size of the HMA, meaning the horses have lost half of the land they roamed when the WHB Act was signed into law.  The HA appears on page 4 of the Oregon HMA maps.  The roundup will likely include lands in the HA.

South Steens HMA Map

The HMA intersects three grazing allotments, according to Chapter III, Section C, in the Final EA for wild horse management actions in the HMA.  Public-lands ranchers receive an estimated 10,299 AUMs per year inside the HMA, compared to 3,648 AUMs per year for the horses.

The forage diverted to livestock puts the true AML at 1,162, commensurate with the current population.

Captured animals will be taken to the off-range corrals in Hines, OR.  Gather stats and daily reports will be posted to this page.

The announcement did not indicate if Oregon is a fence-out state.

RELATED: South Steens Roundup Pending?

UPDATE: The size of the HMA is 134,491 acres, for an aimed-at stocking rate of 2.3 wild horses per thousand acres.

Devil’s Garden Roundup Day 7

Gather stats through September 15:

  • Horses captured: 168
  • Goal: 500
  • Deaths: Not reported
  • Shipped: Not reported

The number of foals is unknown.  The number of horses held on site is not known.

Body condition scores were not provided.

The operation started on September 9.

The total estimated forage available to livestock inside the WHT would support an additional 1,309 wild horses for a true AML of 1,711, making the roundup unnecessary.

The daily reports can be found here.

RELATED: Devil’s Garden Roundup Day 4.

Diamond Roundup Day 6

Gather stats through September 15:

  • Horses captured: 499
  • Goal: 1,225
  • Deaths: 7
  • Shipped: 313

Three deaths occurred on Day 5 and one on Day 6, all due to pre-existing conditions.

The incident started on September 10.

Foals represented 18.6% of the total.  Body condition scores were not provided.

The contractor is holding 179 horses on site.  Sixty will be returned to the Complex, including 30 mares treated with contraceptives.

The herd size is now well below the true AML but the operation will continue because the government has decided to manage the area primarily for livestock.

The horses receive an estimated 12% of the authorized forage on the three HMAs affected by the roundup.

RELATED: Diamond Roundup Day 4, Diamond Wild Horses Get Short End of Stick.

Cibola-Trigo Roundup Resumes

Approximately 300 wild burros will be removed from the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge and Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, according to a news release from the Fish and Wildlife Service.  The affected areas are on the west side of the Cibola-Trigo HMA, a narrow zone denoted by blue-green in the following map.

A gather page by the BLM indicates the roundup started last week, with 81 burros gathered through September 15.  The operation employs bait traps and is not open to public observation.  No deaths have been reported.

Captured animals will be shipped to the off-range corrals in Florence, AZ.

A nuisance gather occurred in the HMA earlier this year.

Diamond Roundup Day 4

Gather stats through September 13:

  • Horses captured: 267
  • Goal: 1,225
  • Deaths: 3

Two deaths occurred on Day 3 (related to roundup) and one on Day 4 (pre-existing condition).

The incident started on September 10.

Foals represented 17.2% of the total.  Body condition scores were not provided.

The contractor is holding 138 horses on site.  Sixty will be returned to the Complex, not necessarily these, including 30 mares treated with contraceptives.

The herd size dropped below the true AML on the first day of the roundup.

RELATED: Diamond Roundup Day 2, Diamond Wild Horses Get Short End of Stick.

Devil’s Garden Roundup Day 2

The event started September 9, according to today’s report, with 34 horses gathered and one death.

Day 2 yielded eight more, for a total of 42.

Foals represented 21.4% of the horses captured.

No horses have been returned to the WHT and 41 have shipped or are awaiting shipment, so the numbers check.

42 animal captured = 41 animals shipped + 1 animal death + 0 animals returned

The daily reports can be found here.

RELATED: Devil’s Garden Roundup Begins.