The incident began November 29. Gather stats through November 30:
Foals accounted for 11% of the total. Of the captured adults, 51% were males and 49% were females. All deaths were attributed to pre-existing conditions.
Body condition scores were not given.
The number of unaccounted-for animals is zero.
At this rate, the operation will be over by the end of the week.
On the Pine Nut Mountains HA, south of the HMA, with Cheryl Broumley.
The incident began today. Gather stats:
Foals accounted for 27% of the total. Of the captured adults, 37% were males and 63% were females.
Body condition scores were mostly threes and fours.
The number of unaccounted-for horses is 56. The contractor is probably holding them on site.
The plan calls for the sterilization of approximately 20 mares before returning them to their home range.
A letter to The Washington Post points to “innovative efforts” involving equine welfare advocates and cattle ranchers that will achieve “a more humane, sustainable future for our nation’s federally protected wild horses and burros.”
It was written by the senior vice president of government relations for ASPCA, one of the signatories to the rancher-friendly plan.
Truth is, wild horse advocates were omitted from its development because they’re on the fringe and might try to undo four years of progress, according to Celeste Carlisle, WHBAB member and science advisor for Return to Freedom, another signatory.
RELATED: ‘Wild Horse Wars’ Refuted.
The roundup, to be coordinated by the Fillmore Field Office, was set to begin today in western Utah, according to the BLM news release.
A map at BLM’s Utah State Office shows the Fillmore office in the West Desert District.
Most of the HMA is in the Thousand Peaks allotment, as noted in the Short End of Stick report.
The grazing arrangement can also be found by searching BLM’s NEPA site for projects involving the Confusion HMA.
Leave the other fields blank. Over-specifying a search is a good way to not find what you’re looking for. Uncheck the Show Only Active Projects box and hit Search.
The Confusion Wild Horse Gather Plan appears on the first page. Right-click the link and go to the Documents section. The Final EA was combined with the DR and FONSI and begins on page 19 in the pdf. Table 4a on page 45 has the allotment information.
Go to the Rangeland Administration System and right-click Authorization Use by Allotment to open the report in new tab.
Click Apply to run it. The system generates the results as a pdf file that you can save for future reference. The allotment is designated for cattle, with the permittee receiving 12,289 AUMs per year over a seven month grazing season. Turnout could have occurred as early as October 28, so livestock may be present during the roundup.
The horses allowed by plan receive 1,380 AUMs per year.
Go back to the RAS main page and right-click Allotment Information to launch the report in a new tab.
Click OK to generate the results. The allotment number, from the first report, is UT25030. Click the Next 100 Rows icon at the bottom of the list (∨) until you reach rows 301 – 324. Scroll up until you see the Thousand Peaks allotment. It contains 337,966 acres and is in the Improve category, which may indicate that it’s not meeting all of the standards for rangeland health.
Go back to the RAS main page and right-click Operator Information to launch the report in a new tab.
Click OK to run the report. The authorization number for the allotment, from the first and second reports, is 4303292. Scroll down until you find it. The operator is Thousand Peaks Ranches Inc, a producer of range-fed beef.
Would you buy it if you knew it?
You can go through the same process to identify the other four operators, who may appear to be minor beneficiaries of the operation, until you realize that some of the horses may have ventured off the HMA in search of food and water.
Roundups and other population controls can’t change the resource allocations and management priorities on public lands—they can only enforce them—but they can alleviate temporary AUM reductions that were put into effect because of the horses.
The goal of the rancher-friendly ‘Path Forward‘ is to not have any AUM reductions, by matching herd sizes to the crumbs available through the RMPs.
RELATED: Confusion at Confusion HMA About Cause and Effect?
An example of pinyon-juniper eradication on western rangelands, for the benefit of—ahem, cough-cough—wildlife, is given at 5:19 in this video about conservation.
RELATED: Sagebrush Restoration Project Inching Ahead.
The Rangeland Administrative System provides information for grazing allotments managed by the BLM. Five reports are available.
Figure 2.8 in Appendix A of the Winnemucca District Resource Management Plan shows the Blue Wing – Seven Troughs allotment as #135.
You don’t have to sift through RMPs to find allotment numbers. If you know the allotment name you can find useful information in RAS.
For example, Figure 4 in the Blue Wing Gather Plan shows the allotment names in and around the gather area. NEPA projects for wild horse management actions are a bit easier to navigate than those for RMPs, which may involve complex environmental impact statements.
If you select Authorization Use by Allotment, you can specify the state, office and allotment name to start the search. Right-click the link to open it in a new tab so the main page stays visible.
Click Apply to run the report. The system provides the results as a pdf file, which you can save to your device. The allotment is grazed by four permittees, one for cattle and three for sheep. The cattle permittee receives 14,062 AUMs per year over a twelve month grazing season. That forage would support over 1,100 wild horses.
Go back to the main page and right-click on Allotment Information.
Click OK to run the report. Scroll down until you see Blue Wing/7 Troughs, fifth column from the left. Click the Next 100 Rows icon (∨) at the bottom of the list to see page 2. The allotment is in the Improve category, which probably means that it’s not meeting one or more standards for rangeland health.
Go back to the main page and try Operator Information. Right-click the link to open it in a new tab.
Click OK to run the report. The authorization number for the cattle permittee, from the first report, is 2702016. Scroll down until you find it. The operator is C-Punch Ranch Inc, a producer of range-fed beef.
The reports don’t say which permittee grazes what part of the 1,192,778 acre allotment, or where those pastures lie with respect to the HMAs and HAs in the Blue Wing Complex, so you don’t know exactly how the horses and burros have been impacted by cattle and sheep.
Given that the cattle permittee receives 69% of the authorized forage, based on data in the first report, most of them have likely been displaced from their home range by cattle.
The news release was backdated to November 23.
Today BLM released the final Environmental Impact Statement for the fuels reduction and rangeland restoration project in the Great Basin.
The plan will address changes to sagebrush communities attributed to wildfires, the spread of invasive annual grasses and the encroachment of pinyon-juniper, according to the news release, using chemical and mechanical treatments, prescribed fires, seeding and targeted grazing.
BLM Deputy Director for Policy and Programs William Perry Pendley said the project will benefit those who depend on public lands in the Great Basin for their livelihoods and recreation.
RELATED: BLM Targets Invasive Species, Grazing Program Ancillaries.
The new rake works pretty darn well. When you’re spending two or more hours a day cleaning corrals, seven days a week, rain or shine, you look for labor-saving ideas.
RELATED: Gathers and Removals: Horse Poop Edition.
A rebuttal on CounterPunch pushes back against the public-lands ranchers and the November 18 article by The Washington Post.
The viewpoints expressed in the column are those of its writer and are not necessarily those of Western Horse Watchers.
The rancher mentioned in the original piece appears in the following video by Protect the Harvest, which was filmed on “the cattlemen’s land,” according to the narrator.
RELATED: Wild Horse Wars on Drudge, Fish Creek Gather Delayed.
A story by the Elko Daily Free Press published on November 24 probably has details but Western Horse Watchers did not read it because of the stupid GoogleQuestion. The title said it would occur near the Black Rock Desert, site of the Burning Man festival, so the Nevada gather page might be a better place to look.
The operation will begin on or around November 29, according to the Selenite gather page, and will be carried out with helicopters. It will be open to public observation.
The incident has not been announced on the BLM news page as of today. The NEPA project—on which the action is authorized—was not cited at the gather page but it is likely covered by the Blue Wing Gather Plan approved in 2017.
The Selenite Range HA is in the northwest corner of the massive Blue Wing – Seven Troughs allotment and is part of the Blue Wing Complex. It contains 125,300 acres and has no AML, according to Table 1 of the Final EA.
The gather target is 200, which is most, if not all, of the burros now living in the HA.
Captured animals will be taken to the off-range corrals at Palomino Valley.
Fifty six burros were removed from the HA in 2019, according to the gather page, but Western Horse Watchers was unable to find an announcement for that event.
A few members of Congress are still clinging to the idea, according to a news release issued today by Animal Wellness Action, a lobbying group in Washington, DC.
The measure does nothing to change the resource allocations and management priorities that leave America’s wild horses and burros with crumbs, forcing their removal from public lands in favor of privately owned livestock.
RELATED: Op-Ed Pushes Contraceptives.
Of current interest is the rabicano gene, signified by white hair at the base of the tail, according to a report published this morning by The Charlotte Observer.
How many cowboys were needed for a cattle drive with 3,000 head? What did they do at night to keep the herd content while they stopped to sleep?
Find out in the current edition of Horse Tales, a monthly newspaper produced in Gardnerville, NV. Questions on page 8, answers on page 19 [pdf].
There is hope, according to the writers of a guest column published yesterday in Horse Nation, not because the BLM has decided to change the resource allocations and management priorities on lands set aside for wild horses, but because Congress may force it to implement an $11 million darting campaign.
Do they not see that they’ve thrown in with the groups they criticize? Do they really want HMAs managed primarily for livestock? How many wild horse herds are truly overpopulated?
The Confusion HMA, subject of next week’s roundup, certainly isn’t. Would they start the darting program there? Before or after the roundup?
Next to the government and public-lands ranchers, the greatest threat to America’s wild horses is not the oil companies, not the mining companies, but many of the so-called advocacy groups.
BLM announced today that 500 wild horses will be gathered from the HMA starting on November 29, due to overpopulation. Approximately 480 horses will be removed, with a small group of mares returned to their home range after receiving “population growth suppression.”
The roundup—an enforcement action—will be carried out with helicopters, according to the news release, and will be open to public observation.
The HMA covers approximately 235,000 acres in western Utah and has an AML of 115.
The HMA intersects five allotments and is managed primarily for livestock. The current population of 661 is well within the true AML of 932.
Captured animals will be taken to the off-range corrals in Axtell.
Gather stats and daily reports will be posted to this page.
RELATED: Confusion Management Plan In the News.
The link pointed to a copy of the story in the Houston Chronicle.
The government spends $57 million per year to warehouse 52,000 wild horses and burros, according to a recent news release, so it can collect an estimated $850,000 in grazing fees from the ranchers to whom their food is sold.
Revenue = 52,000 horses × 12 AUMs per horse per year × $1.35 per AUM
With taxpayers making up the difference, the grazing program is a fine example of redistribution of wealth. That’s what Protect the Harvest is trying to protect.
RELATED: Wild Horse Wars?, Grazing Program Ancillaries.
Somewhere in Nevada with Donald Cool.
Western Horse Watchers Association 