Western Horse Watchers Association
Exposing the Hypocrisy, Lies and Incompetence of the Wild Horse Advocates
Public lands in the western U.S. can support way more than 27,000 wild horses and burros, the number currently allowed by plan.
The advocates won’t tell you that because they’re fully subscribed to the overpopulation narrative. They sound just like the bureaucrats and ranchers.
RELATED: How Many Wild Horses Can Public Lands Really Support?
A study of the Virginia Range darting program has yielded surprising new findings according to a story dated April 23 by This Is Reno: Herd size goes down when you poison the mares with ovary-killing pesticides.
The low birth rate and high death rate have resulted in negative population growth, providing further evidence of the feasibility of PZP fertility control as a viable alternative to helicopter roundups, according to representatives of the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses, a leader in nonmotorized removal.
The article did not mention that the herd on Assateague Island continues to shrink eight years after the darting program was shut off, a pattern that will likely unfold on the Virginia Range.
It’s on the schedule with a start date of April 1 but that’s been moved to April 24 according to today’s news release.
The incident will be carried out with baited traps and operations will not be open to public observation.
The capture goal is 112 wild horses and 70 wild burros, and the removal goal is 92 horses and 70 burros.
Up to ten mares with be treated with GonaCon Equine, a fertility control pesticide, before being returned to the range with up to ten stallions.
The current population is thought to be 114 wild horses and 191 burros, not including this year’s foal crop.
The HMA lies within the Spring Mountain HA and covers 161,969 acres total acres west of Las Vegas, including 157,443 public acres.
The management plan allows 27 wild horses in the area along with 49 wild burros.
The HMA is not subject to permitted grazing.
Animals identified for removal will be taken to the Ridgecrest Off-Range Corrals.
Gather stats and daily reports posted to this page.
An emergency roundup took 237 wild horses off the range in 2019.
The incident started on April 16. Results through April 22:
The figures above are based on the daily reports.
A stallion was intentionally killed on Day 7 because of a missing eye, lifting the death rate to 3.3%.
The capture total includes 37 stallions, 42 mares and 12 foals.
Youngsters represented 13.2% of the animals gathered, consistent with a herd growth rate of eight percent per year.
Of the adults, 46.8% were male and 53.2% were female.
Body condition scores were not given.
The location of the trap site is not known.
The Complex is subject to permitted grazing.
There are no plans to treat any of the mares with fertility control pesticides and return them to the range.
The roundup supports three tenets of rangeland management.
RELATED: Caliente Roundup, Day 5.
Land managers say they can only sustain one wild horse per thousand acres (27,000 animals on 27 million acres).
The Allotment Information Report at RAS provides acreage. management status and active AUMs for BLM allotments in ten western states.
Here is an overview of the dataset.
Public lands in Arizona support livestock equivalent to 53,662 wild horses.
In California, they sustain livestock equivalent to 26,409 wild horses.
The total across all ten states is 1,023,481 wild horses.
On a per acre basis, Montana was highest and Nevada was lowest.
Overall, public lands in the western U.S. are supporting livestock equivalent to seven wild horses per thousand public acres.
Given that the HMAs are a subset of the allotments, with a few exceptions, they should be able to support an average of 1 + 7 = 8 wild horses per thousand public acres, eight times higher than the bureaucrats admit.
That works out to a capacity of 8 × 27,000,000 ÷ 1,000 = 216,000 wild horses, enough to empty all of the off-range corrals and long-term pastures several times over, at great savings to American taxpayers.
The loss in grazing fees would be negligible.
As it is, for every wild horse allowed on public lands in the western U.S., seven have been consigned to off-range holding because of permitted grazing.
NOTE ON METHODOLOGY: The active AUMs were found by adding the values in column Q of each worksheet. The public acres were found by removing rows with duplicate entries in column A and adding the remaining values in column E.
RELATED: Why Are There So Many Wild Horses in Off-Range Holding?
In the Tonto National Forest with Robert Little.
The incident started on April 16. Results through April 20:
The figures above are based on the daily reports.
The death rate is 2.7%.
The capture total includes 28 stallions, 37 mares and 8 foals.
Youngsters represented 11.0% of the animals gathered.
Of the adults, 43.1% were male and 56.9% were female.
Body condition scores were not given.
The location of the trap site is not known.
The Complex is subject to permitted grazing.
There are no plans to treat any of the mares with fertility control pesticides and return them to the range.
The roundup supports three tenets of rangeland management.
RELATED: Caliente Roundup, Day 3.
If the Save Our Wild Horses conference was even halfway sincere, and this is not known, most wild horse advocates would stay away because they are frauds.
They would be attracted, however, to a Save Our Poor Ranchers conference, because that’s what they do. Actions speak louder than words.
The event would give them an opportunity to stop pretending that they care about wild horses, let their hair down, and schmooze with the bureaucrats and ranchers, whose approval they seek at all costs.
With more evidence coming out of Assateague Island, soon to be followed by the Salt River and Virginia Range, they can prove that they do indeed have a better way to get rid of wild horses.
Forced to live in multi-million-dollar base properties, if they live on site at all (some are investors or corporate owners), the ranchers receive only 80% of the authorized forage in the lawful homes of wild horses.
For this they pay pennies on the dollar compared to market rates.
The bureaucracies keep predators in check, repair wildfire damage and provide funding for range improvements.
They remove wild horses and cram them into off-range corrals, also at taxpayer expense, while the ranchers pocket the profits.
It’s government dependency and redistribution of wealth, no getting around it.
The advocates, desperate for a seat at the table, have a plan that will fix the problem once and for all.
The ranchers can realize their dream of 100%. They just need to be patient.
RELATED: SOWH Conferees Tour Palomino Valley Off-Range Corrals.
This does not mean the idea is dead.
The project covered land health assessments for the Basalt, Belleville, Little Huntoon and McBride Flat Allotments to evaluate their potential for livestock grazing and other land uses.
Belleville overlaps the southern half of Marietta, which is managed principally for wild burros.
A subsequent effort, based on findings in the LHAs, may bring the project back to the planning process, resulting in the demotion of the WBR to an HMA, or even an HA, an outcome for which there is well-established precedent.
RELATED: Marietta Wild Burro Range to Become HMA?
The incident started on February 5. Results through April 18:
The figures above are based on the daily reports. The sidebar indicates 376 animals captured, including one freeze-marked horse.
The death rate is 1.1%.
The capture total includes 140 jacks, 176 jennies and 37 foals.
Youngsters represented 10.5% of the animals gathered.
Of the adults, 44.3% were male and 55.7% were female.
The location of the trap site was not given.
The HA and HMA are the same size. The area is subject to permitted grazing.
There are no plans to treat any of the jennies with fertility control pesticides and return them to the range.
The roundup targets animals that are damaging private property and creating a public safety hazard, purposes for which PZP was not authorized.
The incident supports three tenets of rangeland management.
RELATED: Lake Pleasant Roundup, Day 63.
The incident started on April 16. Results through April 18:
The figures above are based on the daily reports.
A mare died of a fractured neck on Day 3. Another mare was put down due to blindness in one eye, bringing the death rate to 3.1%.
The capture total includes 24 stallions, 33 mares and 7 foals.
Youngsters represented 10.9% of the animals gathered.
Of the adults, 42.1% were male and 57.9% were female.
The Complex is subject to permitted grazing.
There are no plans to treat any of the mares with fertility control pesticides and return them to the range.
The roundup supports three tenets of rangeland management.
RELATED: Caliente Trapping Begins.
A few years ago the advocates pointed to the herd as a model of wild horse management.
Now that the Park Service has released another report indicating that it’s still shrinking, eight years after the darting program was shut off, they know nothing about it.
Their safe, proven and reversible vaccine turned out to be an ovary-killing pesticide that plunged the herd into irreversible decline.
It’s great news for the advocates and should convince their allies that nonmotorized removal is more effective in the long run than motorized removal.
RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, More Bang for Your Buck Edition.
The bureaucrats, ranchers and advocates want you to think there’s not enough food and water for wild horses on America’s public lands, thereby justifying their removal.
It’s all bullcrap, as discussed earlier this week for public lands in Wyoming and a few weeks ago for Nevada.
The off-range corrals, adoptions and long-term pastures are part of the ruse.
Resource availability is already known. There’s no need for scientific studies.
Most of the forage has been assigned to the public-lands ranchers and this can be quantified with the reports at RAS.
With those numbers in hand, you can estimate the True AMLs, compare them to the current AMLs and show others how the horses are getting the short end of the stick.
If you did this for every HA, HMA and WHT, you’d find that all of the off-range corrals and long-term pastures could be emptied several times over by confining the ranchers to their base properties, at great savings to American taxpayers.
The decrease in grazing fees would be trivial.
RELATED: The Allotments Tell the Story: They’re Lying, All of Them.
Tours will be offered on May 16 and 17 according to today’s announcement.
Registration is required and groups are limited to 20 persons each.
The facility, owned and operated by JS Livestock, was at or near capacity after the East Pershing roundup earlier this year.
RELATED: Site of New Off-Range Corrals Sells for $3.8 Million.
Story by KRNV News.
The facility is flooded with wild horses and burros because most of their food has been assigned to the public-lands ranchers.
RELATED: Challenge to SOWH Conferees.
The rate of decline (slope of line) in the last few years is almost as great as when the pesticide was applied for population reduction.
RELATED: How to Find the 2024 Census Report for Assateague Island.
The incident started on April 16 with 29 horses captured, none shipped, none released and none dead.
RELATED: Caliente Roundup in Progress?
That’s the estimated population in the state according to the 2024 HA/HMA Report.
The land-use plans allow 3,795 wild horses on 3,644,013 public acres, or approximately one wild horse per thousand public acres.
BLM allotments in the state offer 1,902,445 active AUMs on 17,312,214 public acres, according to the Allotment Information Report at RAS.
That means they’re supporting privately owned livestock equivalent to 158,537 wild horses on 17,312,214 public acres, or 9.2 wild horses per thousand public acres.
Why is this important?
The bureaucrats and ranchers tell us that public lands in the western U.S. can only support one wild horse per thousand acres (27,000 animals on 27 million acres).
Given that the HMAs are a subset of the allotments, they should be able to support 10.2 wild horses per thousand public acres, or approximately 37,000 wild horses, four times higher than the current population.
For every wild horse allowed on Wyoming public lands, nine have been consigned to off-range holding because of permitted grazing.
The advocates use this disparity to peddle their fertility control programs, helping the bureaucrats realize their goal of ranching superiority in the lawful homes of wild horses.
NOTE: The active AUMs in the allotments can be found by adding the values in column Q of the unfiltered dataset. The total public acres can be found by filtering the list for duplicate entries in column A and adding the remaining values in column E.
RELATED: Why Are There So Many Wild Horses in Off-Range Holding?
The AML would be 1,188 and the stocking rate would be 15.8 animals per thousand public acres.
The allotment, located northwest of Wells, NV, offers 14,258 active AUMs on 75,139 public acres, according to the Allotment Master Report.
Why is this important?
The bureaucrats and ranchers tell us that public lands in the western U.S. can only support one wild horse per thousand acres (27,000 animals on 27 million acres).
The advocates reinforce the story with their darting programs.
If it was an HMA, the AML would be 75 and 1,113 horses would be consigned to off-range holding because of permitted grazing.
RELATED: The Allotments Tell the Story: They’re Lying, All of Them.
We know from Assateague Island the fate of every wild horse herd where the advocates are involved, especially those identified for population reductions.
At the Salt River, the advocates need a zero percent birth rate and six percent death rate for ten consecutive years to achieve the goal.
The mares will be ruined after five years, setting the stage for collapse.
On the Virginia Range, the advocates need similar conditions for 30 years.
They can walk away after five years and let the herd implode.
This is the insidiousness of nonmotorized removal, attrition by pesticides.
Irreversible decline after the tipping point is reached.
The advocates won’t tell you the truth about PZP any more than they’ll talk about Assateague Island, an area they once praised as a paragon of wild horse management.
Don’t be confused if they refer to themselves as conservationists, influencers or experts.
They are phonies, allies of the ranchers, leaders of the blind.
RELATED: Latest Census Shows Assateague Herd Imploding.
Western Horse Watchers Association 