Western Horse Watchers Association
Exposing the Hypocrisy, Lies and Incompetence of the Wild Horse Advocates
KTVB News of Boise, ID said in a story posted this morning that the BLM will return five mares and six studs to the HMA today. The mares have been treated with a fertility control vaccine, according to the report.
The agency removed 104 wild horses from the area earlier this year.
RELATED: Saylor Creek Roundup Over.
The Draft EA for wild horse management actions in the Pancake Complex provides forage allocations for horses and livestock.
Wild horse forage requirements are computed as AML × 12. Refer to Table 1.
The forage assigned to livestock is computed as the sum of the permitted AUMs for each allotment times the portion of each allotment inside the wild horse area, assuming the resource is evenly distributed across those parcels. Refer to Tables 3 – 6.
The forage assigned to wildlife has been ignored. Cattle and sheep are authorized but an AUM is an AUM regardless of who eats it.
Pancake HMA
Jakes Wash HA
Sand Springs West HMA
Monte Cristo WHT
These figures are compared in the following charts.
None of the areas are managed principally for wild horses. Overall, livestock receive 85% of the authorized forage.
Don’t conclude that the Forest Service treats the horses better than the BLM. You only need to look at the numbers from Devil’s Garden to see that’s not true.
Next year marks its fiftieth anniversary.
Today, most wild horse areas are managed primarily for livestock.
Most of the so-called advocacy groups are trying to ruin the herds with contraceptives.
The rancher-friendly ‘Path Forward‘ will remove 70% of the horses from America’s public lands.
There will be five times as many horses in contracted pastures as on the range.
What exactly are we supposed to celebrate?
The operation concluded on November 13, according to the daily reports, with 1,970 horses gathered, 10 deaths and 197 horses returned, including 100 mares treated with fertility control.
The incident began on October 10 and the gather target was 2,400.
The number of horses shipped was 1,404, leaving 359 unaccounted-for animals.
A news release said the gather could continue at a later date to return wild horse populations to appropriate management levels.
Switched to Duraflex instead of Fortiflex. Water level is about two inches below the rim and barely touches the float valve. Next step will be to secure the valve to the bucket so the horses can’t flip it out of the water, which happened on the Virginia Range.
RELATED: Another Water Bucket Destroyed.
Like the Moriah HMA, it was evaluated for forage, water, cover, space and reproductive viability, and found to be deficient in forage, water, space and cover, according to Section 3.3 of the Draft EA for wild horse management actions in the Pancake Complex.
It was demoted to a Herd Area in 2008 and managed for zero wild horses. Some horses are present, however, according to Section 3.3, as many as 242.
An emergency roundup occurred in August due to insufficient water, which is consistent with the 2008 decision.
Roughly 8,000 AUMs per year are available to livestock, according to Table 4, which is not consistent with the 2008 decision. Water shortages are alleviated by man-made sources, such as wells.
The forage assigned to livestock would support over 1,300 cow/calf pairs in a six month grazing season. That’s equivalent to 650 wild horses.
Jakes Wash may be another example of management duplicity: Resources on public lands are low if you’re talking about wild horses but are more than adequate if you’re talking about privately owned livestock.
RELATED: Moriah’s Cousins, Paisley Desert Neighbors.
Resource management plans determine, among other things, who gets what on America’s public lands. They set the speed limits.
Roundups enforce those limits. They are the highway patrol of the wild horse world.
If you exceed the limits, you don’t get a ticket, you are removed from the road.
That you can only go 20 while others can go 80 is beyond the scope of the program.
Starting a list of comments on the Draft EA.
1. Include a map showing the allotment boundaries relative to those of the wild horse areas. [Are the horse areas 100% subject to permitted grazing?]
2. Add the allotment sizes to Tables 3 – 6. [What are the stocking rates for cattle and sheep and is the land more productive when designated for livestock?]
3. What are the resource impacts of mineral extraction? [What is the effect on water quality and availability? How much forage has been lost to drilling and mining? How many horses could be returned to the range if those activities were stopped? Would that exceed the number of horses that could stay put if public-lands ranching was ended?]
4. Add the appendix titles to the table of contents.
Comments regarding forage allocations and management priorities, although valid, should not be submitted. They are beyond the scope of the project.
BLM said today that the roundup has been postponed until later this year or early next year due to operational concerns with COVID-19.
The incident was set to begin next week.
Other scheduled gathers are moving ahead, according to the news release.
RELATED: Another Fish Creek Roundup In the Works.
The RMPs in the last paragraph of Section 1.0 in the Draft EA provide a frame of reference not for assessing the environmental consequences of the Proposed Action and its alternatives, but for evaluating the effectiveness of those options relative to the policies and goals therein.
For example, would you expect the No Action Alternative (Section 2.1) to be successful in achieving and maintaining AMLs in the planning area? Would Alternative D do a good job of enforcing the resource allocations of the RMPs?
The total estimated forage assigned to privately owned livestock, based on data from Tables 3 – 6 in Section 3.7, is approximately 43,300 AUMs per year.
The AML for the Complex is 638, according to Table 1, requiring about 7,700 AUMs per year. The forage diverted to livestock would support an additional 3,608 wild horses, for a true AML of 4,246.
If you believe the Complex should be managed primarily for livestock, as it appears to be, then Alternative A (the Proposed Action) is best. It features roundups, fertility control, sex ratio skewing and castration.
Impacts to the horses will be great but those don’t count.
RELATED: Comments Invited on EA for Pancake Management Actions.
BLM announced today the availability of a preliminary environmental assessment for wild horse management actions in the Pancake Complex over a ten-year period.
Comments will be accepted through December 12, as noted in the news release.
The EA looks at the effects of a proposed action and several alternatives.
The Complex includes the Pancake and Sand Springs West HMAs, Jakes Wash HA and the Monte Cristo WHT. The WHT, not shown in the following map, is on Forest Service land east Pancake.
Section 3.7 in the EA provides data for permitted grazing. The numbers suggest the Complex is managed primarily for livestock.
Comments about resource allocations and management priorities should be avoided, they are outside the scope of the project.
The Park Service counts the horses six times per year, in February, March, May, July, September, and November, according to a news release published in November, 2019.
Western Horse Watchers has been unable to find any data since March, 2020.
Did they stop doing it? Probably not.
Why did they go underground? Perhaps they don’t want you to see the long-term effects of the darting program.
What about other such programs? There’s no accountability to the public.
Every group that administers a darting program, whether on public or private lands, should be required to produce a census count with demographics, at least once a year, so the American people can see what’s being done to their wild horses.
They already have the data.
Remember, there’s no such thing as birth control for horses, only safe and effective birth control for horses, and interfering with nature is a good alternative to roundups.
And above all, never talk about resource allocations, management priorities and privately owned livestock.
Roundups, sterilization and long-term holding are effects. They are outcomes of a process. If you want to change the outcomes, you have to look upstream in the process.
Why are these effects occurring?
How much forage has been allocated to public-lands ranchers? How many horses would it support? What is the true AML? How does the current herd size compare to that? Would the roundup be necessary if the HMA was managed principally for wild horses?
Why is it managed primarily for livestock? How are resource allocations determined?
Why are the horses treated like pests on land set aside for them?
RELATED: Confusion Wild Horses Get Short End of Stick.
Helicopters were grounded November 8 – 10 but a story posted today by Oil City News shows the progress of the roundup beginning with Stewart Creek, information not disclosed in the BLM daily reports.
The operation moved in a clockwise direction and has now shifted to Green Mountain, last of the five HMAs involved in the roundup.
RELATED: Red Desert Roundup Day 28.
The incident occurred a few miles west of Huggins. The horses roamed the area where Missouri Department of Conservation land is located, according to a report posted today by the Houston Herald of Houston, MO.
The current edition of Horse Tales includes a first-hand account of a darting expedition in the Pine Nut Mountains HA. See “Wild Horse Tales” on page 9 (pdf).
This is a good time of year to provide birth control to the mares, according to the writer.
We must reduce their reproduction rate to avoid BLM roundups. Interfering with nature is a good alternative.
Why was the area zeroed out for horses? Is it subject to permitted grazing?
How much forage has been allocated to the ranchers? How many horses would it support? Why aren’t you demanding changes to the management plan instead of shooting mares in the butt with contraceptives?
On the Bullfrog HMA with Death Valley Dazed.
BLM said today that 135 wild horses will be removed from the Fish Creek HMA, starting next week, due to overpopulation. The current herd size is at 1.4X AML according to the news release, which was dated November 6 but published a few hours ago.
The operation, to be carried out with helicopters, will be open to public observation.
The gather target is 195, including 60 horses to be returned to their home range. Mares in that group will be treated with PZP-22.
The HMA covers approximately 250,000 acres in central Nevada and has an AML of 180, for a stocking rate of 0.7 horses per thousand acres. It’s known for curly horses.
The HMA intersects four grazing allotments. The management plan assigns twice as much forage to livestock as it does to horses.
Captured animals will be taken to the off-range corrals in Bruneau, ID.
Gather stats and daily reports will be posted to this page.
The HMA was gathered a year ago, with 533 horses removed from a herd of 822. Now, the population is 240? That’s a negative growth rate.
RELATED: Fish Creek Horses Get Short End of Stick.
The NDOT weather station on SR 341 says 17 °F this morning. The water tanks are probably turning into skating rinks for the birds. Not a great time of year to be a wild horse. Elevation approximately 6,200 feet.
Other weather stations in the area can be found on the NDOT weather information map.
RELATED: Off for the Season.
Western Horse Watchers Association 