Western Horse Watchers Association
Exposing the Hypocrisy, Lies and Incompetence of the Wild Horse Advocates
Refer to this blog post by BLM staff for six facts about long-term holding of wild horses.
Item #7, not included in the report: Most of these animals have been displaced from their home range by privately owned livestock, a consequence of the resource management process. It’s intentional, by design.
RELATED: Tour of Long-Term Holding Facility Announced.
The incident started yesterday, according to the daily reports, with 103 horses captured.
No deaths were reported and foals accounted for 8.7% of the total.
Thirty four horses were captured on the first day, according to an undated report by the Forest Service. No other details were given.
There’s not enough seed or fertilizer or technology or time or water to fix the damage they caused, according to an interview posted this morning by The Salt Lake Tribune.
Curiously, the leading beneficiary of the plan to remove them from America’s public lands was not a part of the discussion.
When the interview turned to fertility control, Pendley suggested that GonaCon is actually a chemical sterilant. “We’ve got a new product out there that we think will last [with] a one-time application.”
RELATED: Pendley Won’t Head BLM.
BLM has scheduled an online tour of a private pasture for wild horses, starting at 9 AM on September 21, Mountain Time. The facility is near Davis, OK.
Wild horses are not sent to these places for protection and preservation. They are not backups in case something happens to the original herd. They will never return to their home range.
Rather, they are removed from public lands in favor of privately owned livestock and, if not adopted, shipped to segregated pastures to live out their lives and die. No family, no foals, no legacy.
The announcement did not indicate if the facility holds stallions or mares and if any of them have been sterilized. The event will be carried by socialist media.
Refer to this report, posted today by This Is Reno. Could the hay piles be used for bait in the darting program?
RELATED: NDA OKs Diversionary Feeding of Virginia Range Mustangs?
This was the scene at 8 AM today, due to smoke from wildfires. Very strange.
As two new roundups kick off this week, followed by another next week, keep in mind that they don’t allocate resources, they enforce resource allocations.
If you want to help America’s wild horses and burros, you have to look upstream in the management process.
A heat wave has been in effect out west since September 4. Filling water buckets three times a day, compared to once a day normally. Photos taken September 7.
A story published this morning by the Herald and News of Klamath Falls, OR said that a request to remove the horses from private lands came from the Green Diamond Resource Company, a forest products concern.
A document cited in the article said the horses have become an increasing nuisance by impacting riparian environments and occupying grazing land intended for tenants.
In wild horse and burro roundups, a pre-existing condition that’s usually handled by putting the animal down, even though he survived the chase and survived on his home range for an unknown number of years.
RELATED: Blindness: Death Sentence for BLM Horses?
Catching up on trailcam photos. Three minutes for a drink and they’re gone. Filmed on the Virginia Range.
On the Salt River with Chris Benner.
The Diamond Complex in central Nevada consists of three HMAs which are managed as a group: Diamond Hills North, Diamond Hills South and Diamond.
The HMAs cover 255,463 acres and have a combined AML of 210. A small part of DHS has been reserved for livestock only, per note c of Table 15 in the Final EA for wild horse management actions in the Complex. The acreage was not given.
The 210 horses allowed by plan require 2,520 AUMs per year. The stocking rate alowed by plan is 0.8 horses per thousand acres. A fractional stocking rate, as noted earlier this year, may indicate large amounts of resources diverted to livestock. Let’s see what the numbers reveal.
Projects involving wild horse and burro roundups are often designed to achieve and maintain AMLs, they do not set them or revise them. Refer to the last paragraph on page 4, Section 1.1, in the EA.
A takeaway from those remarks is that when commenting on a draft EA for wild horse or burro management actions in a given HMA, don’t ask for a reduction in permitted livestock AUMs. That’s not what the project is about.
Those requests, completely valid, should be aimed at the Resource Management Plans, where forage is apportioned. A first step would be to force the government to manage the HMAs principally for wild horses and burros, per the statute.
That’s what the big-name ‘advocacy’ groups should be pursuing, not the implementation of fertility control programs. Don’t give them a penny until they see the light!
The HMAs intersect nine grazing allotments, per Map 2 on page 6 of the EA, which overlap all of the land in the Complex. Table 15 provides the forage allocations and grazing seasons but does not provide the allotment sizes. Therefore, the stocking rates allowed by plan in each allotment can’t be determined.
Although cattle and sheep are permitted within the Complex, the calculations are based on cow/calf pairs only, for a direct comparison to wild horses. The resources required by wild horses are said to be equivalent to cow/calf pairs.
The total estimated forage available to livestock inside the Complex was computed as the sum of the forage amounts in each allotment falling within the Complex, assuming the resource is evenly distributed across those parcels.
For example, the amount of forage contributed by the Black Point allotment would be .98 × 4,312 = 4,226 AUMs per year. The sum of the nine contributions is 17,952 AUMs per year, about seven times higher than the forage allocated to horses.
The Black Point ranchers would have to place 650 cow/calf pairs inside the Complex to graze off 4,226 AUMs in 6.5 months (4,226 ÷ 6.5). The total estimated number of cow/calf pairs allowed by plan inside the Complex is 2,741, compared to 210 horses.
The land available for permitted grazing is 255,463 acres, for an aimed-at stocking rate of 10.7 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres (2,741 ÷ 255,463 × 1,000).
The land available to wild horses inside the Complex is slightly less due to the fenced area in Diamond Hills South but was assumed to be identical to that for livestock.
These management indicators are displayed in the following charts.
The Complex is managed principally for livestock. Wild horses receive 12% of the authorized forage, with 88% going to privately owned cattle and sheep.
The forage assigned to livestock inside the Complex would support an additional 1,496 wild horses for a true AML of 1,706. The pre-gather population was thought to be 1,495 wild horses, plus this year’s foal crop, for a total of 1,794 (1.2 × 1,495).
The number of excess horses in the Complex, to be removed starting later this week, is 88 (1,794 – 1706), not 1,584 (1,794 – 210).
With the horses gone, the ranchers won’t have to worry about moving their animals onto rented pastures and paying (OMG) market rates to feed them.
RELATED: Diamond Wild Horse Roundup Starts Next Week.
Looking south in a remote area of the Virginia Range on August 7. Elevation 6,200 feet.
The PZP zealots are right. That forage would be knee high if it wasn’t for the horses.
They must have fled the scene when they heard me coming.
Fire crews are now in patrol-and-monitor mode and no spread is expected outside of containment lines in the next 48 hours. Sporadic activity may occur within the perimeter as previously unburned fuels are encountered.
The area burned by the fire remains at 139,000 acres and containment has increased to 87%. The number of persons assigned to the incident has decreased to 436.
Today’s map shows no hot spots near the Little Bookcliffs WHR.
The fire was started by lightning on July 31 and now ranks as the largest in Colorado history. At one point, it was within a mile of the WHR.
RELATED: Pine Gulch Fire Smoldering.
So says the writer of a letter to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, published this evening.
The AML of 27,000 does not represent the carrying capacity of lands set aside for wild horses and burros. The true AML is likely five times higher and the current population of 95,000 is not close to that.
So why does everybody have their panties in a knot?
Because the horses and burros are robbing forage from the most noble and deserving inhabitants of America’s public lands: Privately owned livestock.
RELATED: New WHB Off-Range Corrals in the News.
The roundup yielded 594 studs and 757 mares. The sex of the foals was not given.
Do these numbers look like they came from a herd that’s 50% males and 50% females?
The total number of adults is 1,351, with 44% studs and 56% mares. The expected range of variation can be found from basic statistical formulas, where n = 1,351 and p = .50.
Lower limit = .50 – 3 × Sqrt[.50 × (1 – .50) ÷ 1,351] = .459 = 45.9%
Upper limit = .50 + 3 × Sqrt[.50 × (1 – .50) ÷ 1,351] = .541 = 54.1%
The percentage of studs (or mares) in the total should fall between 45.9% and 54.1%, assuming they were gathered at random from a herd that’s 50% males and 50% females.
The observed percentages fall outside these limits, so one or more assignable causes should be sought.
Perhaps the pre-gather composition of the herd was not 50% males and 50% females.
Another possibility is that the contractor targeted family bands. Leaving bachelor bands on the range would skew the sex ratio of the herd in favor of males, slowing population growth and reducing the impact on other mandated uses of public lands.
Can you think of other explanations?
The daily reports stopped on August 28 but there has been no announcement at the BLM news site. Final results:
Foals represented 20.6% of the animals gathered.
The number of unaccounted-for animals was zero, computed as follows:
UAF = Animals gathered – Animals returned – Animal deaths – Animals shipped
The result should be zero, meaning the numbers balance.
Western Horse Watchers Association 