Western Horse Watchers Association
Exposing the Hypocrisy, Lies and Incompetence of the Wild Horse Advocates
The formal name is J.R. Simplot Company.
The DNA for renewal of business at the Bruneau corrals refers to Simplot Livestock Co.
Better to drop the “R” and make people wonder for a while.
Western Horse Watchers has no credible evidence at this time to show that Simplot and/or a related entity are involved in the project.
RELATED: Hurdles Ahead for JS Livestock?
The BLM has already signed off, but what type of challenges will the company face getting the project approved?
In an area where state and local governments sympathize with the public-lands ranchers, the plans will probably pass through the permitting process like red clover through a bull.
RELATED: Site of New Off-Range Corrals Sells for $3.8 Million.
The facility would be located north of Winnemucca, NV and east of Highway 95 in an area known as Paradise Valley. Click on image to open in new tab.
The transaction occurred in November. The property includes 1048.43 acres divided among four parcels, two homes, a piped arena, working pens and a shop, according to the listing on Redfin.
The ranch currently has 400 acres in hay production, with 85 acres in alfalfa/grass mix and the balance in straight alfalfa.
Refer to photo 38 in the listing for an aerial view.
The proposed feedlot would reduce hay production slightly, according to Figure 2 in the Final EA, reproduced here for reference. The living quarters would be situated on the left (west) side of the corrals.
The address given in the listing is 9145 101 Ranch Rd, which matches the information in Dun & Bradstreet for JS Livestock.
Area code 541 covers most of Oregon.
The EA can be found with other supporting documents at the project page on ePlanning.
RELATED: Bruneau Off-Range Corrals Owned by Simplot Livestock.
The facility can accommodate 3,500 wild horses and burros on 80 acres, according to the Determination of NEPA Adequacy for the continuation of funding by the BLM.
The project appeared at ePlanning on December 20.
The company grazes cattle on public lands in Idaho and on allotments overlapping the Paisley Desert HMA in Oregon.
Imagine paying $1.35 to graze one cow/calf pair on public lands for one month, while collecting $5 per day ($150 per month) to care for the wild horse displaced thereby.
Simplot partnered with Caviness Beef Packers to form CS Beef Packers in 2014.
With the “S” denoting the involvement of Simplot in that operation, could that be a clue to the owners of the proposed off-range corrals near Winnemucca, NV, referred to in the Decision Record as JS Livestock?
A NEPA project appeared at ePlanning yesterday. The caption in the documents section suggests it’s in the scoping phase.
No announcements could be found at the BLM news site.
The HMA covers 411,636 acres west of Salt Lake City. The 390 horses allowed by plan require 4,680 AUMs per year.
The stocking rate allowed by plan is 0.9 horses per thousand acres, in line with the target rate across all HMAs of one wild horse per thousand acres.
The current population is thought to be 790.
The HMA intersects four grazing allotments according to the Western Watersheds map and appears to be 100% subject to permitted grazing.
The amount of forage assigned to livestock inside the HMA is not known.
There are no opportunities for public comment at this time.
An opinion piece published Thursday by the Reno Gazette Journal, in response to a story appearing the day before, claims that the reporter failed to explain why the BLM continues to aggressively remove wild horses from western rangelands.
The response didn’t either, so lets take a closer look.
Overpopulation, excess animals. The terms appear in the original statute but were not clarified until 1978, when Appropriate Management Levels were introduced.
AMLs are small relative to the available resources because most of them have been assigned to privately owned livestock. There is nothing in the current statute that says they must correspond to 20% or less of the authorized forage, but that’s how they’re structured.
Grazing fees. Public-lands ranchers pay about five cents on the dollar to feed their animals, compared to the going rate. The grazing program insulates them on the cost side from the realities of a free market.
Public-lands ranching is government dependency and redistribution of wealth, which the writer overlooks. State and federal agencies operate taxpayer-funded programs that alleviate adverse conditions, improving the ranchers’ fortunes.
Ranching income and profitability are inversely related to the number of horses allowed on the range, contrary to the writer’s claim. By getting rid of the horses, roundups help the ranchers access all of the AUMs on their permits. The advocates reinforce the effort with their darting programs.
Land ownership. The public acres in an allotment or HMA or WHT belong to the American people, not the permittee, as implied in the commentary. Grazing is a privilege, not a right. In the U.S., the people tell government what to do, not the other way around.
If the ranchers cited in the article couldn’t graze those allotments due to lack of forage, did they leave the profession? Or did they continue operations on rented pastures or their deeded acres, importing feed as necessary?
If they can do that during droughts and off-seasons, why not do that year around?
The writer did not cite any adverse impacts to drilling and mining in Nevada attributable to wild horses.
She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2012, according to the article in Wikipedia, and serves as the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada in Reno. Here she poses with the instigator of the Burns Amendment, now deceased.
Rulings in 2020 regarding mail-in balloting suggest she leans left politically, which was almost certainly a prerequisite for her nomination.
RELATED: Judge Rejects Advocates’ Claims, Won’t Halt Pancake Roundup.
The incident began on January 11. Gather stats through January 27:
Helicopters did not fly on Day 15 due to high winds.
The death rate is 0.9%.
The cumulative total includes 499 stallions, 531 mares and 152 foals.
Youngsters represented 12.9% of the horses captured, consistent with a herd growth rate of 8% per year, assuming a 5% death rate. A growth rate of 20% per year is often used by land managers to predict herd sizes.
Of the adults, 48.4% were stallions and 51.6% were mares.
Body condition scores were not reported.
The location of the trap site within the Complex was not provided.
Day 17 ended with 168 unaccounted-for animals.
The number of horses removed to date is 1,178. Mares returned to the Complex will be treated with fertility control of unspecified type.
Other statistics:
RELATED: Pancake Roundup Day 14.
District Judge Miranda Du said she wasn’t convinced that they could win their underlying lawsuit, according to a story posted this evening by AP News.
Operations concluded yesterday, according to a BLM news release, with 200 horses captured, 154 shipped, six dead and two returned.
The capture goal was 233 and the removal goal was 150.
The death rate was 3%.
Foals represented 14% percent of the captured animals, consistent with a herd growth rate of 9% per year, assuming a 5% death rate.
Of the adults, 50.6% were male and 49.4% were female.
The cumulative total included 87 stallions, 85 mares and 28 foals. More details at the gather page.
The 38 unaccounted-for animals are mares treated with GonaCon Equine. They will be released in 30 days after a booster, bringing the number of horses removed to 160.
RELATED: Desatoya Roundup Announced.
Predictably, in this 26-minute audio segment by KDNK Radio of Carbondale, CO, she laments the lukewarm support in Congress for wild horse eradication by contraception.
Roy is the executive director of the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses and the ringleader and standard-bearer of the wild horse prevention movement.
She and her army of volunteers want the lopsided resource allocations in HMAs enforced by PZP darting, not by helicopter roundups, with benefits accruing to the public-lands ranchers.
The ‘Path Forward‘ is a plan developed in the private sector to achieve and maintain AMLs, which are small relative to the available resources, as seen recently at the North Lander Complex in Wyoming.
A story by AP News indicates that a ruling is expected by Monday, possibly sooner.
A Justice Department lawyer, representing the BLM, said a delay of even two or three days would prevent the agency from completing the roundup before the end of the year, noting that helicopters cannot be used to drive the herds into the traps from March 1 to June 1 when mares typically are pregnant and give birth.
As of January 24, Day 14 of the roundup, foals represented 13% of the horses captured.
With an average daily take of 70, the capture goal should be reached within two weeks.
Torture? This news release by TCF is over the top.
If the foal was captured safely with its mom would they drop their opposition to the roundup?
RELATED: Group Calls for End of Pancake Roundup, Demands Investigation.
Unadoptable horses are also returned, according to the writer of a letter to the Lassen County Times published today.
The Park Service is working on another wild horse census, according to a story posted today by the Maryland Coast Dispatch.
An advocacy group associated with the effort reported that two mares were confirmed dead by Assateague Island National Seashore staff.
As for the other findings, the agency probably won’t post them to their news site.
That stopped over two years ago.
The fertility control program was shut off in 2016, contrary to remarks in the article, and the herd declined in size for the next four years, until it rebounded slightly in 2021.
In 2020, females outnumbered males 51 to 21.
The advocates point to the island as a paragon of wild horse management.
Reports for the four HMAs are listed here for reference:
Data were sourced from the Draft EA for resource enforcement actions in the Complex.
Figures from the reports are summarized as follows:
An estimated 4,108 wild horses have been denied a place on their home range by permitted grazing. The True AML, the number of animals the Complex could support if it was managed principally for wild horses, is 4,644.
The current population is well within this range.
The combined AML represents 11.5% of the authorized forage, neglecting wildlife.
The 4,108 horses displaced from the Complex account for 8.2% of the 50,000 animals in off-range holding.
How do you convince the American people that the Complex is overpopulated with 1,664 wild horses, and that the herd must be drastically reduced, when you authorize privately owned livestock equivalent to 4,108 horses in the same area, on top of the 536 allowed by plan?
The same way you sell umbrellas in the desert.
RELATED: Preliminary EA for North Lander Complex Out for Public Review?
At the upper end of the AML, the 100 horses allowed plan receive 8% of the authorized forage, neglecting wildlife, as noted earlier today.
At the low end of the AML, the 50 horses allowed by plan receive 4% of the authorized forage, sometimes referred to as ‘their food.’ The remainder goes to privately owned livestock. This is the goal of the North Lander resource enforcement plan.
The BLM says the HMA is overpopulated with 270 wild horses, while it authorizes privately owned livestock equivalent to 1,133 wild horses in the same area, on top of the 100 horses allowed by plan.
Without changes to the resource management plan(s), a herd management area plan (HMAP) could only ratify and reinforce the lopsided forage allocations that benefit ranching interests at the expense of our wild horses.
The incident began on January 16. Gather stats through January 25:
A stallion was euthanized on Day 9, boosting the death rate to 1.6%.
The cumulative total includes 82 stallions, 80 mares and 26 foals.
Youngsters represented 13.8% of the horses captured, consistent with a herd growth rate of 9% per year, assuming a 5% death rate.
Of the adults, 50.6% were stallions and 49.4% were mares.
Body condition scores were not reported.
The location of the trap site within the HMA was not provided.
Day 10 ended with 68 unaccounted-for animals.
The number of horses removed to date is 186. Mares returned to the HMA will be treated with GonaCon Equine.
Other statistics:
RELATED: Desatoya Roundup Day 6.
The incentive payment will now be made no later than 60 days after title, rather than half at the time of adoption and half at the title date, according to today’s news release.
Title applications will have to be signed by a veterinarian or BLM-authorized officer for the adopter to receive payment.
RELATED: New Safeguards for AIP?
For a quick estimate, convert the livestock AUMs to wild horses and add the result to the AML.
The HMA intersects two grazing allotments according to Table 2 of the Draft EA for resource enforcement actions in the North Lander Complex.
The HMA boundary coincides roughly with the boundaries of the Dishpan Butte and Big Pasture allotments, as shown in the Western Watersheds map. Long Creek Pasture is not included.
The 100 horses allowed by plan require 1,200 AUMs per year. The HMA covers 99,736 total acres, including 92,373 BLM (public) acres.
The eight permittees receive a total of 13,597 AUMs per year according to Table 2.
The Allotment Master Report indicates a forage allocation of 13,892 AUMs per year across the two allotments. Both are in the Improve category and contain a total of 92,371 public acres.
The forage assigned to livestock, based on data in the EA, would support an additional 13,597 ÷ 12 = 1,133 wild horses, for a True AML of 100 + 1,133 = 1,233. This is the number of animals the HMA could support if it was managed principally for wild horses, as specified in the original statute.
The current population of 270 is well within this range, so there are no excess horses in the HMA and there is no need for a roundup or fertility control program.
The 1,133 horses displaced from the HMA by permitted grazing represent 2.3% of the 50,000 animals in off-range holding.
The current AML corresponds to about 8% of the total authorized forage, neglecting wildlife, meaning the HMA is managed principally for livestock.
Forage availability in this area is very high, about 160 AUMs per year per thousand acres, which would support a stocking rate of 13 wild horses per thousand acres!
The target rate across all HMAs is one wild horse per thousand acres.
AMLs and stocking rates are low relative to the available resources because the bureaucrats put ranching interests far above those of the horses.
The advocates would have you believe that Herd Management Area Plans (HMAPs) are the answer to wild horse mismanagement, but until the Resource Management Plans are changed, they can only prolong it.
Confine the ranchers to their base properties, including those who secure grazing preference with water rights, and let them pay market rates to feed their animals.
RELATED: Preliminary EA for North Lander Complex Out for Public Review?
