There will be much to see for horse enthusiasts but not no much for wild horse enthusiasts. Nevertheless it’s an opportunity to see what’s going on in the horse world.
The schedule is filling out and ticket prices have gone up since 2019.
Last year’s event was cancelled.
RELATED: Dates Set for 2021 WSHE.
A story submitted yesterday by a reader of Carson Now describes the migration down Main Street and across the Carson River Bridge. The article does not give their destination or what other animals they might encounter at the end of the journey.
Perhaps they were coming off an allotment on the north side of Highway 50, heading for another on the south side. Just a guess. The highway generally runs east-west despite the north-south jog in the following image.
The Operator Information report in RAS shows four authorizations associated with Borda Land and Sheep, 2700069, 2700348, 2702960 and 2703505.
The Allotment Information report ties those authorizations to the Bagley Valley, Buckeye, Carson Plains and Pine Nut allotments.
The Authorization Use report for Carson Plains shows the last grazing season ending today, May 31 and another, on the Pine Nut allotment, starting tomorrow, June 1.
Borda holds all of the active AUMs in Pine Nut. So maybe they were migrating from Carson Plains to Pine Nut.
The Pine Nut Mountains HMA is also on the south side of the highway. Although grazing allotments and wild horse areas sometimes have similar names, Western Horse Watchers does not know if the two overlap. Would you be surprised if they did?
The Allotment Master report shows Pine Nut in the Improve category.
The Virginia Range, on the north side of 50, includes some BLM land.
UPDATE: Table 1 in a 2018 EA for wild horse management actions shows nine allotments intersecting the HMA but Pine Nut is not one of them.
On the Currituck Outer Banks with Highest Education.
Some of the mares still look pregnant.
The corral has not been cleaned recently. Hay is thrown on top of the poop. It’s at the south end of the facility along Ironwood Road.
The horses congregate at the center of the pen, away from the two-legged predators that hang out near the fences.
Photo taken earlier today. Home range unknown.
He was captured as a yearling in 1993, according to papers posted at Think Like a Horse and appeared in most of the YouTube videos starting in 2009.
Nicknamed Mr. T, he “was sold three different times for being crazy, dangerous, unrideable and too wild to train…with no consideration that the idiot owners were the real problem.”
The HMA, part of the Calico Complex, is north of Gerlach, NV and west of the Black Rock Playa, site of Burning Man. See page 20 in Nevada wild horse maps.
Images must be captured on BLM lands between January 1, 2019 and August 31, 2021, according to the contest rules. Photos will be featured in a 2022 BLM Nevada Planner.
The May 27 news release suggests a theme of responsible recreation on public lands.
The announcement did not indicate if photographs of wild horses would qualify but an email inquiry has been sent to the BLM representative.
A map showing BLM lands in Nevada was not provided but those areas are generally shaded tan in the wild horse maps for the state.
Entries must be submitted by September 15.
UPDATE: BLM rep said photos of wild horses can be submitted.
Refer to this 26-minute interview by KDNK Radio of Carbondale, CO, featuring the director of the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses. Audio only, no transcript.
The host seems to know more about the subject than the guest.
The darting program mentioned at the end of the segment, which is harmless according to the advocates, is on the Virginia Range.
RELATED: Undeniable Truths of the Wild Horse World.
Congress should direct the BLM use a proposed funding increase to begin a robust and sustainable fertility control program for wild horses and burros, according to a news release by Return to Freedom, signatory to the rancher-friendly ‘Path Forward.’
These animals are federally protected, but most of their food has been assigned to privately owned livestock, so we need to reduce their numbers. Humanely, of course.
RELATED: Undeniable Truths of the Wild Horse World.
If public-lands ranching is the problem (which it is) and wild horses are not overpopulated (which they aren’t), then why not halt the darting effort as well?
The letter, linked to yesterday’s news release by Animal Wellness Action, calls for a moratorium on non-emergency gathers and removals of wild horses and burros until the BLM conducts a comprehensive review of its wild horse and burro program and the impacts of private livestock grazing.
Why would you want to review the WHB program and the consequences of permitted grazing? They are effects—too late, too far downstream in the management process.
You have to look upstream for causes, such as resource allocations and the land-use plans where they originate, as well as the statutes, regulations, attitudes, beliefs and external influences that precede them.
Solutions are always aimed at causes, not effects. Treating the symptoms can only prolong the problem.
As the publicity and propaganda surrounding the Onaqui roundup escalate, it’s time to state the obvious:
1. The greatest threat to America’s wild horses is public-lands ranching.
2. The advocates, with their darting programs, are #2.
3. The impact of drilling and mining, compared to #1 and #2, is negligible.
The advocates are getting rid of more wild horses than drillers, miners, loggers, hikers, campers, motorists, shooters and predators ever could.
The online meeting, to be livestreamed, is set for June 30 and July 1, according to a BLM news release.
Meeting materials will be posted to the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board’s home page at least 15 days earlier.
A preliminary agenda will be posted tomorrow in the Federal Register.
Public comments will likely be taken both days.
UPDATE: Meeting notice and agenda posted, along with instructions for commenting.
As usual, the advocates want darting programs, not helicopter roundups, according to a story in today’s edition of Deseret News.
Livestock grazing should be limited to protect the ecosystem, not to shift the resources back to the horses.
The next roundup is set for July per the latest schedule.
RELATED: Running the Onaqui Numbers.
The photos in this report by the Pahrump Valley Times tell the story of America’s wild horses and burros—cordoned off from resources so they can be enjoyed by privately owned livestock.
If the woman running a nonprofit to promote sporting activities in the community, including baseball, places her own animals on the ball field for weed control, would that qualify as a conflict of interest?
The town of Beatty is in the Bullfrog HMA, an area set aside for wild burros.
A report published yesterday by Gray DC, the Washington news bureau for Gray Television Inc, says the new but illegitimate administration agrees with the approach of the Trump administration, which features helicopter roundups and fertility controls.
“We’re going to let the science guide us.”
A spokesman for the Nevada Farm Bureau, a front group for ranching interests, applauded the decision.
Bringing equine populations down to AML means livestock operators will receive most of the resources in areas set aside for wild horses and burros.
The advocates will argue that the best way to get rid of the animals is contraceptives, not roundups, oblivious to the lopsided resource allocations they’ll be helping to achieve.
As for the science, you only need to look at the numbers in the EAs and RMPs and be able to compute some basic management indicators to know what the problem is.
RELATED: Will Letter to Haaland About Livestock Grazing Do Any Good?
The ‘harem hopper’ was finally spotted with a youngster from another band, according a story posted today by The Charlotte Observer.
Don’t worry, she’s not trying to steal the foal and the behavior has nothing to do with the darting program.
The studs, also confused, can’t understand why the mares aren’t bearing more fruit.
RELATED: Foal #6 Appears on Currituck Outer Banks.
West Virginia has them and so does eastern Kentucky. Some are unbranded/unclaimed and some are privately owned. They’re not federally protected.
Stallions have joined the herds in Kentucky and populations are growing, according to a story posted this morning by WHAS-TV of Louisville.
Volunteers with a nonprofit care for sick and injured animals, Their history page says the horses have been roaming in a nine-county area for at least 30 years, some on reclaimed lands after the mines were closed.
Horses in Floyd county had to be evacuated in late 2019 after 21 were shot dead.
UPDATE: Added video.
DNA testing says they are and conservation efforts should be initiated, according to a report published today by American Press of Lake Charles, LA.
The horses live in the Kisatchie National Forest and are not federally protected.
The Fort Polk Army base overlaps some of the territory and in 2015 the order was given to get rid of them.
The Pegasus Equine Guardian Association says the horse have roamed the area for centuries and have reverted to a wild state, especially through their offspring who have never known anything other than wild.
RELATED: Fort Polk Herd Dwindles.
On the Virginia Range with Jeremy Cole.
The Warm Springs HMA is managed primarily for livestock, as shown in the resource allocation quiz.
The current forage allocations are noted in a 2018 EA for resource enforcement actions in the HMA (bottom of page 15 in the pdf).
The management plan allows 202 wild horses in the HMA, which is the current AML.
What would the allocations look like if it was managed as Congress originally intended?
How many horses could the resource support?
This is what the letter to Haaland is trying to accomplish.
The HMA covers 475,574 acres, so the stocking rate at the new AML would be 1,818 ÷ 475,574 × 1,000 = 3.8 wild horses per thousand acres, about four times higher than the target rate of one wild horse per thousand acres across all HMAs.
Wild horses made the list in a guest column posted today by The Lewiston Tribune but domestic livestock did not.
Western Horse Watchers Association 