Western Horse Watchers Association
Exposing the Hypocrisy, Lies and Incompetence of the Wild Horse Advocates
A wild mare suffered fatal injuries yesterday after hitting a guy wire from a power pole, according to a report by The Virginian-Pilot. Her foal, born in March, can survive on solid food and is staying with the family band.
The incident comes about a week after a Corolla stallion was hit by a vehicle and underscores the importance of keeping the mares up to date on their contraceptives.
This area is shown as a dry lake on maps but has held water for over two years (it’s the opening scene in this video). Finally saw some Virginia Range mustangs on 07/12/19, when this photo was taken. They appear as little dots near the center of the image.
The Park Service said in a news release dated 07/11/19 that, at the end of 2018, there were 116 wild horses on Shackleford Banks, with 62% females and 38% males.
Other statistics include:
The oldest mare, aged 34 years, died in 2018 according to the report.
The range of variation attributable to natural causes, for the proportion of males (or females) in a herd this size, is 36% to 64%. (Refer to the statistical formulas on this page, where n = 116 and p = .50.)
Thus, unlike the Assateague herd, the reported proportions fall within the limits and searching for an assignable cause—to explain the observed difference between males and females—would be a waste of time.
The news release did not indicate if any of the deaths were associated with the arrival of Hurricane Florence in September 2018.
RELATED: Update on Shackleford Horses.
On Day 2 of the WHBAB meeting in Boise (07/10/19), one of the Board members asked “If I were to take a couple of these horses, is that $2,000 taxable income? Or how is it viewed by the IRS?” Answer: “It is taxable.”
Depending on your location, the state may want a piece of the action too.
Financial incentives shift the motivation from intrinsic to extrinsic: Do it for the money.
Then, when the reward goes away, so does the behavior.
NPS said there were 22 stallions and 55 mares on the island in July, according to a report posted yesterday by WBOC News of Salisbury, MD. A herd of 77 should have between 26 and 51 males (or females) if left to natural causes.
Why is the sex ratio skewed? The calculation says ‘Look for an assignable cause.’
RELATED: Latest Census Shows Major Problems in Assateague Herd.
Five hundred and one wild horses have been forced off their home range during the first week of the roundup, according to today’s report, liberating approximately 6,000 AUMs per year for the public-lands ranchers.
The government can expect to receive an additional $8,000 per year in grazing fees in exchange for the roughly two hundred thousand of dollars it has spent so far on the operation, for a simple payout of 25 years.
Given that most of them won’t be adopted, the added cost of off-range holding means there is no payout at all.
The answer is clear: Leave them on the range, end public-lands ranching.
RELATED: Triple B Horses Get Short End of Stick, Economics of Wild Horse Gathers.
On Day 3 of the WHBAB meeting in Boise (07/11/19), Fred Woehl, Jr. (Chair) suggested that anyone interested in working with the wild horse program should be able to answer three questions. If they can, sign them up:
The following video by hea art will answer the first one. Filmed on the Virginia Range, a few miles south of Virginia City, NV.
The investigation continues, according to a story published this morning by the White Mountain Independent, but no new information has been released.
RELATED: Gossip About Motives in Heber Wild Horse Shootings?
The meeting concluded today. In a nutshell, the task before the Board was to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict by only sanctioning the Israelis.
Public comments were heard after lunch. Notably absent were representatives of oil, mining and timber companies.
But shills for the public-lands ranchers did all of those things.
Where’s the common ground, the two-state solution?
There isn’t any.
RELATED: WHBAB Day 2: Faulty Premise.
Signs were erected July 1 near the McCullough Peaks HMA to designate the portion of U.S. Highway 14/16/20 from Cody to Emblem as the ‘Wild Horse Highway.’ See this report posted today by the Cody Enterprise.
Much of the discussion today focused on getting wild horses and burros off western rangelands and what to do with them once they’re gone: Achieving AML, adoptions, sales, off-range holding, training, partnerships, volunteering.
Nobody wanted to talk about the driver of these things, namely, public-lands ranching, as if it was a given, self evident, unchanging.
Figures were presented on the land available to wild horses and burros and the number of them that it can support, but nobody could provide the number of AUMs allocated to domestic livestock on those same lands.
You can’t have a conversation about wild horses and burros on public lands without having a conversation about privately owned cattle and sheep.
This is the problem with the WHB program: Too many administrators have bought into the overpopulation narrative, not because it’s true but because they believe land set aside for horses and burros should be managed primarily for cattle and sheep.
RELATED: WHBAB Meeting Starts Today.
UPDATE: This syndicated report by AP News shows what’s being fed to the public.
What’s going on at the left hindquarters of this mare? Trailcam photo taken 06/11/19 on the Virginia Range. There were no youngsters in the band.
RELATED: PZP Zealots in Action on the Virginia Range.
The event kicks off at 8:00 AM MDT with a field trip to a nearby HMA (to see how wild horses are destroying their habitat and hurting the poor ranchers) then resumes with live-streamed proceedings from a conference room.
RELATED: WHBAB Meetings Set.
A story by the Los Angeles Times posted this morning says the facility, and the animals held there, are okay following major earthquakes on July 4 and 5.
The quake on July 5 knocked out power to the area, resulting in a loss of water, but trucks were located and it was hauled in, according to the report.
RELATED: Another Quake Hits Ridgecrest.
On the Virginia Range with Lauri Duke.
A report posted yesterday by The News & Observer of Raleigh, NC says a wild stallion who ran off after he was hit by a vehicle has been located and appears to be okay.
The incident occurred near Corolla, NC in an area frequented by bachelor bands.
Although he’s behaving normally, he will be monitored for internal injuries, according to the report.
News outlets are reporting a magnitude 7.1 earthquake—about five times stronger than the one that occurred yesterday—near Ridgecrest, CA, location of BLM’s Regional Wild Horse and Burro Corrals.
Earthquake scales are logarithmic. Magnitude 7 is ten times stronger than magnitude 6 and 100 times stronger than magnitude 5. The earthquake of July 4th had a magnitude of 6.4 (scale unknown) and the one on July 5th was reported as 7.1. To compute the strength ratio, take the difference in magnitude and use it as an exponent of ten:
10 ^ (7.1 – 6.4) = 5.0
Note that the ‘strength’ of an earthquake depends on the method of measurement.
Same for any other physical quantity, such as global temperature, or the number of wild horses in the Twin Peaks HMA.
This is very important if you have an agenda: Change the method, get a new number.
RELATED: Earthquake Near WHB Corrals?
Data from the news release announcing the roundup and final Gather Plan approved in December, 2017:
The aimed-at population density for wild horses in the Triple B Complex is 0.5 animals per thousand acres, compared to the target density of one animal per thousand acres for all HMAs (the land—27 million acres—can only support 27,000 wild horses and burros per current narrative).
The 889 horses allowed by plan would consume 10,668 AUMs annually, assuming they graze 12 months per year.
The horses found in the Complex today would consume 40,572 AUMs per year, with a population density of 2.1 animals per thousand acres.
Land in and around the Triple B Complex is also used for domestic livestock grazing, with 27 allotments involved. See Table 9 in the Gather Plan.
The forage allocated to livestock inside the Complex must be calculated because some of the allotments extend beyond its boundaries. For example, Gold Canyon contributes 1,068 × 0.59 = 630 AUMs, because 59% of its land is inside the Complex (assuming that forage is uniformly distributed across the parcel).
The 27 fractions, added together, yield 49,188 AUMs for livestock inside the Complex.
If livestock graze an average of six months per year, the AUM budget yields 8,198 cow-calf pairs inside the Complex, which are equivalent to wild horses in terms of their resource loading. The planned livestock density is 5.0 animals per thousand acres.
These results are summarized in the following charts.
Land that can only support 0.5 wild horses per thousand acres can support ten times as many cow-calf pairs. That’s what you’d expect if it was managed principally but not necessarily exclusively for livestock, contrary to the WHB Act.
The following options were considered in the plan but rejected:
Note that the map on page 9 of the Gather Plan shows both the Antelope and Triple B Complexes. Tables 1 and 8 could be used to generate the same charts and figures for Antelope. Any volunteers? The Antelope Complex contains the massive Spruce Allotment, site of the infamous Spruce-Pequop incident last August.
The gather that starts on Monday will shift 9,600 AUMs per year from the Horse column to the Cattle column, moving the plan one step closer to fruition.
RELATED: Triple B Gather Starts Next Week.
News outlets are reporting a magnitude 6.4 earthquake near Ridgecrest, CA, the location of the BLM Regional Wild Horse and Burro Corrals.
Gather stats indicate 128 jacks were removed from the HMA, along with 56 jennies, for a total of 184 wild burros. Four foals were also captured but their gender was not given.
Seventy percent were males, thirty percent were females.
Do those numbers look like they came from a herd where males and females are evenly distributed? The range of variation in these values attributable to natural causes can be found from some basic statistical formulas, where p = .50 and n = 184.
The following chart shows the range between jacks and jennies is larger than expected.
Why would there be an assignably high number of males in the traps (or assignably low number of females)?
Are males and females evenly distributed in the herd? If not, why?
Were there riders in the field steering the jacks toward the traps? Do jennies have an innate ability to see danger ahead and move away?
What else could skew the results?
If 60% of the captured animals were male and 40% were female, you’d be wasting your time trying to explain the difference, because those results fall within the limits.
RELATED: Seven Troughs Gather Complete.
Western Horse Watchers Association 