Author: Western Horse Watchers

The Greatest Threat to Public Lands is Public-Lands Ranching

Five areas were considered this week in a series of posts about the number of wild horses that have been displaced from public lands by privately owned livestock.

Yep, 8,127 wild horses have been denied a place on their home range by pro-ranching statutes and regulations of the federal government.

How many more HMAs would you have to look at to reach 50,000—the number of wild horses and burros languishing in off-range corrals and long-term pastures?

The government spends roughly $50 million every year to care for those animals, with the expectation of receiving just $12 million per year from the ranchers.

The ridiculous ‘Path Forward‘ will only make the situation worse.

There is no wild horse problem on western rangelands.

Public-lands ranching is rarely mentioned in news reports, such as this one, and most of allegations against the horses are aimed at getting them off the land—land that was set aside for them—so their food can be sold to the ranchers at fire-sale prices.

It’s a gravy train if ever there was one.

RELATED: Greatest Threat to Public Lands: Wild Horses and Burros.

Where Did All the Horses Go-1

Twin Peaks Quiz

A judge has ruled that the BLM cannot give itself power to decide which HMAs will be managed primarily for wild horses and burros, and that the ‘thriving ecological balance’ of the WHB Act refers to wildlife, not privately owned cattle and sheep.  With livestock coming off the Twin Peaks HMA at the end of the grazing season, by how much can the AML be increased?

A. 2,265

B. 1,550

C. 925

D. 385

E. 95

Answer: A (27,178 ÷ 12).

That’s on top of the 758 wild horses currently allowed by plan.

RELATED: BLM Invites Comments on Twin Peaks Gather Plan.

Silver King Quiz

Four years have passed since new rules went into effect regarding the labeling of range-fed beef.  Consumers, angered by the way wild horses were being treated, refused to buy the product, putting the public-lands ranchers out of business, including those at Silver King HMA.  With the livestock gone, by how much can the AML be increased?

A. 84

B. 313

C. 850

D. 1,645

E. 2,004

Answer: E (24,028 ÷ 12).

That would be in addition to the miniscule 128 wild horses already allowed by plan.

RELATED: Silver King Horses Get Short End of Stick.

Latest Assateague Census Shows No Improvement

The Park Service found 22 stallions and 54 mares on the Maryland side of the island in September, according to a story published today by WBOC-TV of Salisbury, MD.

One death was reported since the last census but no births.

Not noted in the report was the abnormal sex ratio of the herd, roughly 29% males and 71% females.  The range of variation attributable to natural causes for a herd this size is 33% to 67%.  Both of the observed values fall outside these limits.

Assateague Census Sep 2019-1

The upper and lower limits were computed with basic statistical formulas, where n = 76 and p-bar = .5.  The chart says ‘Look for an assignable cause.’

Could it be the contraceptives that have been applied to the herd for the last 25 years?

RELATED: Latest Census Says ‘Search for Trouble’ in Assateague Herd.

Devil’s Garden Quiz

Suppose the Devil’s Garden ranchers gave up their permits because the grazing fee had been brought in line with the cost of warehousing wild horses in off-range pastures ($60 per AUM vs. the current $1.35).  By how much could the AML be increased?

A. 1,309

B. 1,064

C. 897

D. 436

E. 149

Answer: A (15,711 ÷ 12).

On top of the 402 wild horses already allowed by plan.

RELATED: Devil’s Garden Horses Get Short End of Stick.

Caliente Roundup Ends

BLM announced today that 102 wild horses had been removed from the Caliente Herd Area Complex in an operation that began in late July.  No animals were returned to the range and one death was reported.

The news release said the horses had to go because they were harming private property, which doesn’t make sense in a fence-out state.

RELATED: Mustangs to Be Removed from Eastern Nevada Starting Today.

Lunacy at Warm Springs

The Warm Springs HMA can support 1,800 wild horses, but only 200 are allowed, because most of the forage has been sold to public-lands ranchers.

Many of the former inhabitants have been languishing in BLM corrals for a year, at a cost of $5 per day per head.  That’s almost $1.5 million per year for 800 horses.

The HMA has enough capacity to empty those corrals twice.

The ranchers pay $26,000 per year to graze livestock on the same territory.

Yep, the government is spending $1.5 million per year to warehouse wild horses so they can collect $26,000 per year from the ranchers, on land set aside for the horses.

Eventually, most of the captives will be moved to long-term holding, at a cost of $2 per head per day.

Even then, the economics stink.  Nobody in the private sector would do that.

The situation reeks of politics, favoritism and special interests, all at the expense of America’s wild horses.

RELATED: Warm Springs Quiz.

Warm Springs Horses Get Short End of Stick

The Warm Springs HMA covers 474,547 acres in southeast Oregon.  Most of the wild horses were captured and removed in 2018 with the intent of supplying mares for sterilization research.  BLM says it’s moving ahead with the study despite objections from most advocacy groups.

The plan was to return 200 horses to the HMA, including those that were ‘altered,’ to monitor herd behavior and growth.  That has not happened and the operators who graze livestock in the area had unfettered access to forage this year, save for the thirty or so horses that escaped the helicopters.

The story at Warm Springs was the same one repeated by the government and major news outlets: The horses are out of balance with ‘other uses of public lands.’  But they rarely say what’s on the other side of the scales.

The HMA has an AML of 202.  The horses graze twelve months per year, so their forage budget is 2,424 AUMs per year (202 × 12).  The target population density is 0.4 horses per thousand acres (202 ÷ 474,574 × 1,000).

Warm Springs HMA Map-1

The pre-gather herd size was around 850 wild horses.

The HMA intersects two grazing allotments, used by seven operators.  The acreage of the HMA differs slightly from the acreage of the allotments but for purposes of this post they are assumed to be coincident (subsequent calculations use 474,574 acres).

Table III-3 on page 87 of the Environmental Assessment for the Management Plan provides the allotment sizes, grazing seasons and permitted AUMs.  Those figures are on the left side of this spreadsheet:

Warm Springs Calcs-1

The forage allocated to livestock by plan amounts to 19,392 AUMs per year, compared to 2,424 AUMs for the horses.  Keep in mind the land was set aside for the horses.

The permitted forage can be converted to cow/calf pairs by dividing the AUMs by the grazing seasons.  The ranchers would have to place 2,030 cow/calf pairs on the West Warm Springs pastures to consume 11,167 AUMs in 5.5 months (11,167 ÷ 5.5  = 2,030).

The population density for livestock on that allotment would be 6.8 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres (2,030 ÷ 297,375 × 1,000).

The population density for livestock on the HMA is 8.1 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres, compared to 0.4 wild horses per thousand acres (3,858 ÷ 474,574 × 1,000).

The weighted average grazing season is five months (19,392 ÷ 3,858).

These figures are compared in the following charts.

Warm Springs Charts-1

Is this what they mean by ‘thriving ecological balance?’

The number of wild horses allowed on the HMA is not based on the carrying capacity of the land, but what’s left over after the lion’s share of the resources have been sold to the public-lands ranchers.

And how do roundups, contraceptives and sanctuaries fix this problem?

They don’t.

It’s time to end the ranching stranglehold on western rangelands and restore the WHB Act to its original form.

RELATED: Preview: Warm Springs Horses Get Short End of Stick.