Musk and Ramaswamy will review the top 1% of applicants according to a November 17 story in The Hill.

Consider one AUM, the amount of forage necessary to keep one wild horse or one cow/calf pair on the range for one month.

If the bureaucrats assign it to a rancher, he’ll pay $1.35 to the government while it spends $150 to care for the horse displaced thereby.  This is current practice.

If the bureaucrats assign it to a horse, the government saves $150 in holding costs while forfeiting $1.35 in grazing fees.

You don’t need a high IQ to realize that best option is the latter, to be achieved by confining the ranchers to their base properties in a year-round off season.

The advocates, not known for superior intelligence, claim that the problem can be solved by shooting the mares with pesticide-laced darts.

RELATED: What Are Musk and Ramaswamy Being Told About Wild Horses?

The simplest way is to give money to the advocates.

They oppose principal use and management at the minimum feasible level.

They’re always talking about wild horse removal.

They want the ranchers to win.

There is another option that requires more effort on your part but the pass-through cost is zero.

Go cut a Christmas tree in one of the HMAs.

You’ll need a permit as explained in this announcement.

Only pinyon pines and junipers may be taken.

The Pine Nut Mountains and Virginia Range are off limits.

These trees are subject to hand thinning, mastication, chaining and “lop and scatter” because they crowd out forage preferred by livestock.

The projects are usually peddled as sagebrush restoration and fuels reduction, as in this example by the Ely District Office.

Junipers would not make very good Christmas trees in this writer’s opinion but pinyon pines would make a nice addition to your holiday decor.

Better yet buy some land in Nevada and you can decorate them in place year after year.

RELATED: Who Benefits from Cheatgrass Mitigation Projects?

Field audits are a good way to ensnare the advocates in their own destructive activity.

A pesticide label (PZP | Gonacon) tells you how the product can be used.

The first requirement is that the field workers have it with them.  Ask to see it.

Are they wearing the proper PPE?

Are they following the specified interval between doses?

Are they adhering to the approved uses of the pesticide?  For example, PZP can only be used on female horses and burros capable of doing environmental damage.

The Salt River advocates say the horses are good for the environment but they’re using the product to shrink the herd.

Not only do they contradict themselves but thinning overpopulated herds is not an approved use of the pesticide.

Using it to control herds that interfere or could interfere with animal agriculture is not an approved use.  Same for herds that pose safety hazards to motorists.

Referring to pesticides as vaccines may constitute misbranding, another unlawful act.

The EPA offers several options for reporting illegal use:

• Contact your state regulatory agency
• Send an email to report.pesticide.incident@epa.gov
• Fill out a report online

RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, Army of Nitwits Edition.

President-elect Donald Trump announced on November 12 that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new task force on government efficiency according to a report by AP News.

The Department of Government Efficiency will work outside the bureaucracy to drive large-scale structural reform and create an entrepreneurial approach to government.

You can be sure the farm bureaus, stock grower’s associations and public lands councils, already circling their wagons, will point to the wild horse and burro program as wasteful government spending, when most of its costs are incurred because of them.

The same is true for wildfire restoration, fuels reduction, cheatgrass mitigation, predator control and pinyon-juniper management on America’s public lands.

Hundreds of millions of dollars spent every year on affluent ranchers who pocket the profits and pay almost nothing for the services, as nearly 70,000 wild animals rot in government holding.

If Musk and Ramaswamy understood the waste and sleaze, and they had the authority, they’d kill this boondoggle Monday morning and put those animals back on the range.

The agency has offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible according to today’s news release.

In an effort to trick you into thinking they care about wild horses, the pesticide pushers and ranching sympathizers have pledged $14,000, bringing the total to $19,000.

They know they won’t have to make good on their promises.

RELATED: Onaqui Stallion Found Dead.

A federal judge has dismissed the case seeking their removal from the barrier island off the coast of Georgia, according to a report by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The original article was placed behind a paywall but was reprinted in full by the Union-Bulletin of Walla Walla WA.

The writer said the court ruled against them because the do-gooders in the coalition named them as plaintiffs.

RELATED: Coalition Seeks Removal of Cumberland Island Horses.

Five new public-private partnerships could place an additional 11,000 wild horses and burros into private care over the next five years in exchange for $25 million in funding, according to today’s news release.

That’s on top of the existing adoption program.

Leading the way is Forever Branded, a Texas nonprofit that will receive over $16 million.

Western Horse Watchers believes that these programs will not reduce expenditures for off-range holding but will accelerate turnover so more wild horses can be removed from their lawful homes.

The off-range corrals could be emptied several times over by confining the ranchers to their base properties in a year-round off season.

The agency spends tens of millions of dollars every year stockpiling wild horses so it can collect a few million dollars in grazing fees from the ranchers.

Nobody in the private sector would do that.

He was found in the HMA on November 10 according to a report by KSL News, killed by gunfire.

Your host was unable to find a statement from the BLM at their news site.

The HMA is subject to permitted grazing.

Advocates with the Wild Horses of America Foundation are poisoning the Onaqui mares with PZP and Gonacon Equine.

They should be investigated for unlawful use of pesticides.

RELATED: Reward Offered as Two Onaqui Stallions Found Dead.

Refer to §136j(a)(2)(G) in FIFRA.

If the Gonacon label says a second dose can be given 90 days after the first and you give it after 30 days, you violated federal law.

If the Zonastat label tells you what PPE to wear when applying the product and you don’t, you violated federal law.

If persons using these products don’t have the labels in their possession when applying them to equines, they’re violating federal law.

These requirements are easy to check during field audits.

RELATED: There’s a Cancer on the Wild Horse and Burro Program.

ALLEGATION: The federal agencies responsible for wild horses and burros knew about the 2017 labeling amendment for GonaCon Equine but ignored the parts they didn’t like, referring instead to specifications of the 2013 and 2015 registrations which better served their anti-horse agenda.

In the 2017 edition, persons injecting the pesticide need not be certified applicators, which they liked, but the minimum interval between treatments was 90 days, which they didn’t like.

In the previous editions, persons injecting the pesticide had to be certified applicators, which they didn’t like, but the interval between treatments was 30 days, which they could tolerate.

So they invented a hybrid registration, without the consent of the EPA, consisting of certification-free application with 30 days between treatments and fed it to the public through the planning process.

Let the denials and coverups begin.

RELATED: Gonacongate: What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?

The case centers around the unlawful use of pesticides and falsification of government documents.

If BLM staff knew about the 2017 registration amendment, and recent EAs for wild horse roundups suggest they did, but referred to the 2013 and 2015 registrations because they better served their anti-horse agenda, that would constitute falsification of official government records.

The Kiger-Riddle management plan, published in July, is one example.

Initiated in early 2020, the project took over four years to complete.

The EA refers to the 2013 registration, according to which the product was a restricted-use pesticide requiring applicator certification, and the minimum interval between doses was 30 days.

But, unlike the discussion of PZP, the EA is silent about the certification requirement, which is consistent with the 2017 update.

The Pancake EA provides the same evidence.

In addition to dropping the RUP designation, the 2017 update increased the minimum interval between doses from 30 days to 90 days.

Yet the agency typically waits only 30 days to administer the booster, which constitutes unlawful use of the pesticide.

The driver may be cost avoidance—the goal is to spend more of your budget on wild horse removals, not temporary holding of mares that will go back on the range and rob the poor ranchers of their birthright.

How many of the GonaCon darters at Piceance Mustangs and High Desert Strategies are certified applicators?  More evidence that our faithful public servants knew about the 2017 amendment but ignored the parts they didn’t like.

This is a matter for law enforcement.

The response to a comment in the Buffalo Hills DNA indicates they’re aware of the 2017 update but want to shrink the treatment window to 7 days.

Unfortunately for them, asking the EPA to change the registration does not absolve prior wrongdoing.

RELATED: Another Amendment to Gonacon Registration in the Works?