Western Horse Watchers Association
Exposing the Hypocrisy, Lies and Incompetence of the Wild Horse Advocates
The story has faded from the headlines but a report posted today by KNPR of Las Vegas says most of the dead burros were found near water holes and some appear to have been shot from the highway (I-15).
The animals share the land with wildlife and livestock, according to the report, and the investigation continues.
An audio segment with Jason Lutterman of the BLM was provided.
RELATED: Clark Mountain Burros Still in the News.
Filmed after the swim back to their home island by Those Aquatic Chickens.
RELATED: Chincoteague Ponies Make Annual Swim.
They’re not exactly free-roaming horses, but they’re okay according to a story posted today by WAVY News of Portsmouth, VA.
NPS says the Ocracoke Ponies have been housed in pens since 1959. They differ from other horses in their size and posture, as well as the number of vertebrae and ribs.
RELATED: Rachel Carson and Corolla Wild Horses Survive Dorian.
A story posted today by Inforum of Fargo, ND says the fourteen young horses removed last month from Theodore Roosevelt National Park have been adopted.
Critics believe that current herd management practices at TRNP have produced low genetic diversity and a greater risk of inbreeding, according to the report.
RELATED: Wild Horse Roundup Starts Today at TRNP.
Trailcam photos from the Virginia Range.
From a different angle.
The condition of the Ocracoke and Shackleford horses is still not known, according to a report posted yesterday by WECT News of Wilmington, NC.
RELATED: Dorian Leaving OBX.
On Sand Wash Basin HMA with Steve Hostetler.
Trailcam photos from the Virginia Range. OK, hop in!
Trailcam photos from the Virginia Range (not enough daylight for full color mode).
Earlier that day, these guys decided to chill at the same location.
Paddle boarding with the wild ones, by Aging Ethically.
The worst is over for the Banker Horses. The storm has picked up forward speed and is now moving up the coast.
Reports on the condition of the horses may still be a few days away, depending on the amount of storm damage and how easily their territory can be accessed.
RELATED: Dorian Closing in on OBX.
The first step is to build public support for the plan—just like Velma did—and to find individuals in Congress who believe in freedom/ruggedness/self-reliance and want to conserve something that’s right and good.
This automatically excludes liberals.
Individuals who signed on to the new wild horse management plan, the PZP zealots and others that have bought into the overpopulation narrative (indicated by their support of wild horse gathers, adoption incentives and expanded training programs) are of no use to the effort.
RELATED: Mass Training Is Not the Answer!
Holding pens are flooded with wild horses and burros because the WHB Act no longer functions as Velma intended. The safeguards that would keep these animals on public lands in the western U.S. are gone.
Meanwhile, back on the range, privately owned livestock graze peacefully on land that belongs to the horses and burros.
The alternative is not slaughter and euthanasia, it is to end public-lands ranching and roll back the changes to the statute.
RELATED: PZP Is Not the Answer!
Virginia Range mustangs grazing in the Hidden Valley area, by Scott. Note the Flehmen response at 10:40 and 11:00.
The track hasn’t changed very much in the past 24 hours. The Banker Horses are likely feeling the effects already, with water starting to rise in low lying areas. Their story has been picked up by major news outlets.
The flow will switch from onshore to offshore as the system passes by tomorrow, with the strongest winds near the center (indicated in red on the map above).
RELATED: Dorian Still Heading to OBX.
BLM said today that 200 wild horses would be removed from the Range Creek HMA in September but did not give a starting date. Declining rangeland health was cited as a reason for the action. The roundup follows the removal of 92 wild horses from lands surrounding the HMA last year.
The news release did not indicate how the gather would be carried out (helicopters or baiting) and if it would be open to public observation.
The HMA covers 55,023 acres in eastern Utah and has an AML of 125, for an aimed-at population density 2.3 horses per thousand acres. The target density across all HMAs is one animal per thousand acres.
The announcement did not say where the captured horses would be taken and did not provide a link to the gather stats and daily reports.
The HMA lies within a single grazing allotment, according to the Final EA, with grazing activity held to 15% of permitted use for the past six years.
The roundup will not increase the permitted AUMs for livestock grazing but will allow increased grazing activity.
RELATED: Comments Invited on EA for Range Creek Gather Plan.
The latest track has the storm approaching the Outer Banks on Friday but the expected path has bent slightly to the east compared to yesterday. The onshore flow will increase as the storm moves in from the south due to its counter-clockwise rotation.
A syndicated report posted by WBTV News of Charlotte, NC says the horses usually go to higher ground and huddle together to ride out the storm, with their butts to the wind.
RELATED: Dorian to Drench Banker Horses?
The latest track puts the hurricane along the North Carolina coast on Friday, bringing the onshore flow (storm surge) to the wild horses of the Outer Banks.
The area took a direct hit from Florence almost a year ago. The counter-clockwise rotation of the system will push seawater inland, flooding low lying areas.
Those evil horses.
“As [their] numbers have grown beyond the AML upper limit, livestock operators have experienced an increasing number of conflicts between wild horses and their permitted livestock use. Fence damage has increased as have maintenance costs. In some locations, wild horses have been very aggressive and kept livestock (and wildlife) from using the available water. In other locations, heavy-severe utilization by wild horses has prevented the [poor] operator[s] from making use of all or a part of their term permitted grazing use [on land set aside for the horses].”
Some ranchers have had to pay (OMG) market rates for rental pastures as a result of wild horse ‘overpopulation.’
The Devil’s Garden Plateau WHT covers 232,520 acres in northeastern California and has an AML of 335, for an aimed-at population density of 1.4 horses per thousand acres.
The Environmental Assessment for the WHT Management Plan indicates that 4,400 AUMs per year were allocated to these animals, a bit more than expected for 335 horses in a 12 month grazing season (335 × 12 = 4,020 AUMs per year).
The latter figure is used in the charts below.
The WHT intersects eight grazing allotments. See Tables 14, 15 and 16, beginning on page 79 in the EA, along with Figure 9 on page 80.
The EA provides the allotment size, authorized AUMs and the portion of the allotments within the WHT, but omits two of the grazing periods, citing them as variable. A term of six months was used for those calculations. Data for the East Grizzlie allotment were not provided because it is 98% outside the WHT.
The total permitted AUMs (26,880 AUMs per year) was used to scale the authorized AUMs to permitted AUMs but those figures were not used in the calculations.
Assuming that forage is uniformly distributed across the allotments, Carr contributes 1,701 AUMs to livestock inside the WHT because 40.7% of the land is inside the WHT.
The forage contribution of the other six allotments, added to Carr, yield 15,711 AUMs per year for domestic livestock inside the WHT.
Livestock can occupy an estimated 232,424 acres inside the WHT, computed in the same manner, which, allowing for rounding error, is taken to be all of it.
A six month grazing season yields 283 cow/calf pairs on Carr inside the WHT.
The other six allotments, combined with Carr, yield 2,856 cow/calf pairs on the WHT, for a weighted average grazing season of 5.5 months (15,711 ÷ 2,856) and average population density of 12.3 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres (2,856 ÷ 232,520 × 1,000).
These figures are presented in the following charts.
Land that can only support 1.4 horses per thousand acres can support eight times as many cow/calf pairs. The Pine Springs and Timbered Mountain allotments can support eleven times as many. A fine example of ‘thriving ecological balance.’
The current wild horse population at Devil’s Garden yields a pre-gather density of 7.7 animals per thousand acres, well within the range allowed for livestock. The roundup that starts in a few days will shift the numbers closer to those allowed by plan but will not achieve them.
The permitted AUMs for livestock across all of the allotments, inside and outside the WHT, yield an-aimed at density of 9.8 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres, using a grazing season of 5.5 months per year (22,608 ÷ 5.5 ÷ 419,249 × 1,000).
The WHB Act of 1971 was a dark stain on American history. Things will be so much better, at least for the ranchers, now that it’s gone.
