Author: Western Horse Watchers

Virus or No Virus, Salt River Herd Is Toast

You cannot use PZP to take a herd from 450 to 280 without sterilizing the mares.

If the death rate was 6% per year, typical for wild horses, you’d need eight years of nonstop darting.

If any foals were born the death rate would need to be higher.

If the death rate was 8% per year, unusual for wild horses, you could do it in six years.

Sterility sets in after five years.

Given that the program has been active for six years, maybe closer to seven, the death rate must be at the higher end of the range.

Are they spiking their darts with some other toxin?

It’s not about the horses.  It’s about pesticides and convincing the bureaucrats and ranchers that the helicopters can be grounded in favor of mass sterilization.

RELATED: Salt River Herd Cannot Recover from a Deadly Disease.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Salt River Herd Cannot Recover from a Deadly Disease

Because the advocates have ruined the mares with PZP.

They may even view the loss of a few dozen horses favorably, as it would move them closer to their population reduction goal.

The advocates, along with their overlords at the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses, are far more interested in demonstrating that mass sterilization is a practical alternative to motorized removal than actually protecting the herd.

RELATED: Salt River Stallion First Victim of Virus?

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Virus Detected in Salt River Herd

The news release does not indicate if it was associated in any way with the advocates and their mass sterilization program.

The alert runs from December 6 to March 6.

The closure order prohibits riding, hitching, tethering or hobbling a horse or other saddle or pack animal in the Described Area.

The map indicates the Described Area to be most if not all of the designated habitat.

The wild horse habitat overlaps the Goldfield and Sunflower Allotments in the Tonto National Forest.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Foal-Free Friday, Humane Conservation Edition

Ater WWII, bald eagles were nearly wiped out in the U.S. by widespread use of DDT.

In a process known as bioaccumulation, the pesticide weakened the shells of their eggs, turning reproductive success into reproductive failure.

The advocates use pesticides to cause reproductive failure in wild horses, selling the practice as humane conservation.

What would you say about women who hiked into the wilderness and climbed to the mountaintops to smash the eggs of bald eagles?

PREVIOUS: Foal-Free Friday, Envy and Jealousy Edition.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

BLM Launches Wild Horse and Burro Public Dashboard

It’s like RAS only for wild horses and burros.

Adopters can now find basic information about the history of their animals according to the news release.

The system will give you their vaccination status and other health information if you supply the freeze mark or microchip number.

It will not tell you how many AUMs were liberated by their removal or the names of the permittees benefitting therefrom.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

On the Eve of Defund the Advocates Day

They protect ranchers, not wild horses.

They’re sterilizing the mares and calling it preservation.

They’re driving genetic diversity into the ground and calling it conservation.

They’re demanding new management plans that reinforce old policies and practices while calling it protection.

They want you to think the herds will vanish without their involvement when in reality they’re disappearing because of their involvement.

Let this year be different.  Give them the boot, along with their pesticides and HMAPs, on Giving Tuesday.

PREVIOUS: Two Days Until Defund the Advocates Day.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Crocodile Tears for Indigenous Communities at Mono Lake

The turncoats at the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses think you’re malleable, dumber than a bag of hammers, and can be easily persuaded to finance their mass sterilization programs.

The indigenous peoples who might be affected by wild horse migration into their communities come in two varieties: Ranchers who graze BLM allotments and ranchers who graze Forest Service allotments.

The ArcGIS Viewer shows the arrangement.  Click on image to enlarge.

RELATED: BLM Issues Montgomery Pass Final Planning Documents.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Morons and Malice at the Salt River

The morons are those who lap this stuff up without question.

The malice comes from those who post it, trying to give the impression that all is well while sweeping the mass sterilization program under the rug.

They deserve your contempt not your money.

RELATED: What’s Harder to Find Than a Salt River Foal?

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Three Days Until Defund the Advocates Day

They’re selling mass sterilization as wild horse conservation.

They want you to think that drillers and miners are the greatest threats to wild horses.

They want privately owned cattle and sheep to have most of the food and water in the lawful homes of wild horses.

Send them packing on December 2.

PREVIOUS: One Week Until Defund the Advocates Day.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Why Ranchers Like Public Lands

An ad in the November edition of Horse Tales puts the value of forage in a rented pasture at $125 per AUM, assuming a horse can survive without supplemental feed.

Why pay the going rate when you can graze the public lands for $1.35 per AUM?

The grazing fee, which does not give the American people a fair price for the use of their public lands, is set by a formula in the Public Rangelands Improvement Act.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Should Rangeland Degradation Correlate with Resource Loading?

The Stewart Creek HMA lies within the Stewart Creek Allotment with a little room to spare in the northeast corner.

Size

Animals allowed by plan

  • HMA – 175 wild horses
  • Allotment – Livestock equivalent to 689 wild horses

Resource loading

  • HMA – 1.1 wild horses per thousand public acres
  • Allotment – Equivalent to 4.2 wild horses per thousand public acres

The HMA would be well over 3X AML with no wild horses.

Livestock exert 3.8 times more grazing pressure than horses.

If the land can only support 1.1 wild horses per thousand acres but routinely carries the equivalent of 5.3 wild horses per thousand acres, then rangeland degradation must be a goal, not a defect of permitted grazing.

Another possibility is that the land can support more wild horses than the bureaucrats admit.

The advocates won’t talk about it because it undermines the rationale for their darting programs.

RELATED: Resource Management in the Beaty Butte Allotment.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Foal-Free Friday, Envy and Jealousy Edition

How many wild horse advocates are depressed because they can’t participate in the mass sterilization programs at the Salt River and Virginia Range?

How many field workers would reject their assistance because they want all the glory for themselves?

PREVIOUS: Foal-Free Friday, Uh-Oh Edition.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.