Western Horse Watchers Association
Exposing the Hypocrisy, Lies and Incompetence of the Wild Horse Advocates
Opinion
A BLM wild horse and burro specialist said the number could have been two to three times higher if it wasn’t for the 2021 roundup, according to a story by the Steamboat Pilot & Today.
Makes perfect sense. Take them all off the range.
Give everything to the public-lands ranchers.
RELATED: Vegetation Study to Determine Sand Wash Carrying Capacity?
The Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses indicated in the October report that 120 mares received 121 doses of Zonastat-H during the month, 20 given as a primer and 101 as a booster.
Over the life of the program, which began in 2019, 1,961 mares have received an astonishing 8,231 doses of the ovary-killing pesticide.
Of the 169 foals born this year in the primary target zone, 85 have died.
The current population is thought to be 3,498 with 338 horses listed as missing, compared to 3,513 with 356 listed as missing in September.
Not discussed in the report:
The program, now in its fifth year, is at the point of no return.
The report will be submitted to the Nevada Department of Agriculture.
RELATED: Virginia Range Darting Update for September 2023.
The aging population may suffer major losses this winter, according to the advocates, but this is not a normal condition of a wild horse herd—unless it can’t have any babies.
Who’s responsible for that?
The bureaucrats may have requested a darting program, but the advocates delivered it.
RELATED: Advocate Takes McCullough Plea to Casper.
This letter to the editor marks her third attempt to forestall the bait-trap removal at McCullough Peaks, which was set to begin on November 1.
She’s so far gone and so lost in the pesticide paradigm that she can’t even see that she’s advocating for the ranchers, not the horses.
Let’s take a closer look.
From the second paragraph: To avoid motorized removal, the BLM implemented a reversible birth control program using Porcine Zona Pellucida. This program, administered through field darting, reduced the birth rate to 2% annually, keeping the herd’s numbers within the appropriate management level of 70-140 horses.
It’s not reversible! Damage begins with the first injection and progresses to sterility after five consecutive years. This is happening at the Virginia Range. The advocates refer to these mares as self-boosting.
If the birth rate is 2% per year, the growth rate is -3% per year, assuming a 5% death rate, meaning the herd is shrinking. Exactly what the ranchers want!
Third paragraph: The BLM’s plan involves trapping and removing 41 or more wild horses and using a controversial fertility control vaccine called GonaCon on the mares, for which preliminary evidence indicates permanent sterility.
It’s a pesticide not a vaccine! Vaccines prevent illness, supposedly.
A 2017 labeling amendment extended the interval between primer and booster from 30 days to 90 days but the BLM ignores it, an issue for law enforcement.
The remark about sterility is likely true, because the agency prefers it almost exclusively to PZP. Just look at the news releases over the past year. The condition is sometimes described as long-term infertility.
Fourth paragraph: The aging herd, with a significant portion over 15 years old and 22 horses over 20 years old, requires a population of at least 150 breeding aged adults for genetic viability. To make matters worse, the operation is scheduled to take place next month, before the impact of winter conditions can be assessed, possibly resulting in a slow decline toward extinction of this cherished herd.
That’s not the concern! It’s the size of the breeding population that matters. The 2% birth rate suggests it’s very small and that would be true if the AML was 500.
Describing the herd as “cherished” suggests she walks in lockstep with the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses, a leader in nonmotorized removal.
No word about resource management and the prevalence of livestock in the HMA.
Next to the federal government, nobody’s getting rid of more wild horses and causing more long-term harm than the advocates.
Opposition to wild horses is expected from hunters, ranchers and bureaucrats who manage the public lands for their benefit.
But not from the advocates, who claim to be voices for the horses.
One of the most pressing issues in the wild horse world is to expose, dislodge and dismantle these groups, prohibiting their staff and membership from ever stetting foot in areas identified for wild horses.
Consider this example from the Virginia Range:
Scenario A, man kills stallion with arrow. Horse not replaced because the advocates have poisoned the mares with Zonastat-H
Scenario B, stallion dies of natural causes and is not replaced because the advocates sterilized the mares with Zonastat-H
Scenario A is bad, but Scenario B is good, according to the advocates.
Barren mares, shrinking herds and loss of genetic diversity are also good and the advocates are positioning themselves to be leaders in the industry.
They use footage from roundups to convince you that removal by pesticide is better than removal by helicopter.
They want you to think they have all the answers. They can’t distinguish between cause and effect, and won’t look at the data, so they don’t even know what the problem is.
And they hate dissent. If you disagree with them, or their allies, you’ll be disappeared by their big-tech minions.
This commentary was inspired by the real estate agent and PZP darter in the Minden/Gardnerville area, whose column about inhumane treatment of animals appears in the October edition of Horse Tales, starting at the bottom of page eight.
Naturally, she absolved herself and other field workers from any wrongdoing and couldn’t heap enough praise on the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses and Wild Horse Eradication, two of the greatest offenders.
Next to the federal government, nobody’s getting rid of more wild horses and causing more long-term harm than the advocates.
RELATED: Combatting Duplicity in the Wild Horse World.
Proposals should align with the 2021 Strategic Plan and funding is subject to Congressional direction and appropriations. according to yesterday’s news release.
Priorities include new or improved fertility control methods for wild horses, examining the relationships between wild horses or burros and their environment, and improving a variety of wild horse and burro program activities, such as aerial surveys, genetic monitoring, animal handling, adoption rates and the human dimensions of wild horse and burro management.
An interesting topic in the area of human dimensions would be the role of moral depravity in wild horse and burro management.
For example, how do promiscuity, adultery, contraception, abortion, sterilization, divorce and sexual perversion (LGBT) influence policy and practice?
How many of the advocates subscribe to these values?
As for the role of man-made climate change, there is none.
Absence of predators? Totally man made, to protect the most noble and deserving nonnative species on America’s public lands.
RELATED: Decision Published for Fertility Control Research.
Traffic from Facebook returned to the new normal last month after an unexpected jump in September.
The downward trend in 2023 may indicate that material by Western Horse Watchers has been banned or blocked by the advocates.
Hopefully their little Potemkin Villages are crumbling.
WordPress stopped reporting traffic from Twitter in August 2023.
RELATED: Socialist Media Update for September 2023.
The BLM should give the darting program a chance according to the writer of a letter to the Powell Tribune.
The herd is aging. The death rate is increasing. The ranchers need to be patient.
GonaCon will sterilize the mares.
If the agency removes the younger horses the herd will be in danger of dying out.
The capture goal will bring the herd well below the 150 adults needed to maintain genetic viability.
What a bunch of crap!
PZP sterilizes mares.
As birth rates go down, the herds die off.
Breeding populations are too small to sustain genetic diversity.
The minimum herd size of 150 to 200 wild horses (recommended in Section 4.4.6.3 of the WHB Handbook) assumes the advocates are not trying to beat the populations down with ovary-killing pesticides.
The Salt River and Virginia Range, known for their fanatical darting programs, have herds well above 150 but the advocates are driving the breeding populations to zero.
They are responsible for as much or more long-term harm as the federal government.
RELATED: Advocates Say McCullough Peaks Roundup Not Necessary.
The mares have been darted with birth control medication for years. It’s an aging population that will shrink naturally through deaths from old age.
Six horses died over the summer and more will be lost to winterkill according to an advocate interviewed for a story dated October 30 by Cowboy State Daily.
Articles like this confirm your suspicions that they’re sick in the head and want the ranchers to win.
The HMA has the unfortunate distinction of being in the motorized and nonmotorized removal sections of the latest schedule.
RELATED: McCullough Herd to Achieve AML on its Own?
The Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses answers three questions about wild horses in a news flash posted by Lucky Three Ranch.
If horses are not the problem, why are they trying to get rid of them?
On the Virginia Range, they’ve pumped an astonishing 8,116 doses of Zonastat-H into the herd since 2019. Many of the mares are now at risk of sterility.
At the Salt River, their affiliate, the Salt River Wild Horse Darting Group, is not trying to slow population growth, they’re trying to reverse it. Same as the Virginia Range.
At Cedar Mountain in Utah, CAAWH received $91,865.50 from the BLM to spread the poison around in that HMA. The money didn’t just fall out of the sky, they requested it!
What do these examples have in common?
Their words say “We love the horses” but their deeds say “We despise them.”
This is standard practice for the wild horse advocates.
They are like the scribes and pharisees of the New Testament. They sail the high seas to win one convert then make him twice as deserving of Hell as they are.
“I am not the only one doubting your advocacy for wild horses,” she wrote in an October 14 email.
You got a mouse in your pocket?
To repeat: I am not an advocate. I am a voice for wild horses. The advocates are part of the problem.
If you want to dabble in this field, you need to put on your big girl panties and admit that your ranks are filled with liars and frauds.
There is no two-state solution on America’s public lands, the ranchers must be defeated.
Confine them to their (multi-million dollar) base properties and let them pay the going rate to feed their animals.
No more gravy train, no more sucking on the government teat.
It’s time to man up and oppose the removal of wild horses from their lawful homes by any means, whether it’s helicopters, bait or pesticides.
RELATED: Western Horse Watchers Q&A.
In this role, you will analyze and interpret Wild Horse and Burro policy and related manual guidance to respond to requests from the District Office, State Office and Headquarters for technical assistance, according to the listing at ZipRecruiter.
For example, if the EPA specifies a minimum 90-day interval between primer and booster doses of GonaCon Equine, you can interpret that as 30 days.
If federal law says wild horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment or death, you can ignore it.
If you believe that areas identified for wild horses should be managed primarily for cattle and sheep, you can use your organizing skills to get the ranchers to control the pests, as Shaney Rockefeller did at the Vale Office.
Her advice is only a phone call away.
1. The greatest threat to America’s wild horses is public-lands ranching.
2. The advocates, with their frivolous spending, false promises and obsession with pesticides, are a close #2. They are part of the problem, not the solution.
3. Drilling and mining are a distant #3. They affect anywhere from a few acres to a few thousand acres, while animal agriculture devours entire HMAs and beyond.
RELATED: Undeniable Truths of the Wild Horse World.
They sent delegates to the FREES Conference.
Or they lobby for on-range management, referred to on these pages as poisoning the mares with ovary-killing pesticides.
Nevada State Senator Hansen said the BLM was not in bed with the livestock industry at the September 7 “Dust Up in the Desert” but have you ever heard the advocates deny it?
The agency refers to them as partner organizations.
They claim to be voices for the horses while aiding and abetting their removal.
Who benefits from that?
The advocates need donors to sustain their work.
If you’re a hunter, rancher or supporter thereof, little if any convincing is needed.
You might even be tempted to support the legacy contractors but they’re for-profit companies.
What if you actually care about the horses?
If you understand their true intentions and loyalties, you won’t give them a penny.
If you’re new to the wild horse world, you can be propagandized with flowery terms such as cherished/beloved/innocent wild horses, safe/proven/reversible fertility control and humane management.
You become a useful idiot, a person advocating for a cause, usually with devious or ruthless origins, without understanding its means and ends, allowing yourself to be cynically used by its leaders.
Think about that next time you’re counting the Views and Likes on socialist media.
RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, Safer in Town than on the Range Edition.
Progress in wild horse management is never determined from the horses’ viewpoint, only the special interests who benefit therefrom.
To understand the column about Colorado’s HMAs published today by The Colorado Sun, key terms should be explained. Meanings can be validated not by what the writer says but by what his organization does.
Herd Management Areas – A continually shrinking subset of the original Herd Areas, managed primarily for livestock with few exceptions, two cited in the article.
Herd Areas – The lawful homes of wild horses and burros, identified in 1971 when the WHB Act was signed into law.
Sustain Wild Horses – Control the pests.
Fertility Control Darting – Beating wild horse populations down with ovary-killing pesticides, usually Zonastat-H or GonaCon Equine, so livestock can access most of their food and water.
Appropriate Management Level – The number of horses allowed by plan, not the number of horses the land can support, usually small relative to the available resources.
Carrying Capacity – The number of wild horses the land can support if it was managed principally for them, referred to on these pages as the True AML.
Healthy Horses on Healthy Rangelands – Appropriate management levels achieved, ranchers enjoying more of what their allotments have to offer.
Partner Organizations – Groups that claim to be voices for the horses while aiding and abetting their removal, referred to on these pages as charlatans.
The author noted that the Sand Wash roundup was called off because of winterkill.
He stated that livestock grazing in Sand Wash Basin and Piceance East Douglas accounts for 14% and 20% of forage use, respectively, while your host has determined that livestock in Sand Wash Basin receive 3.9 times more forage than the horses and those in Piceance East Douglas receive 2.4 times more forage than the horses.
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The BLM reported 31 deaths during the 2022 roundup, but a Freedom of Information request revealed that 69 additional animals died at government holding facilities during and after the roundup.
Fourteen of the deaths were very young foals.
Government records suggested they were foundering due to being run too far during the gather.
One report attributed a death to the stress of being run long distances in rough terrain and in high temperatures.
“It was heartbreaking.”
Who published the findings?
The Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses.
They hate foals! They’re trying to get rid of as many as possible on the Virginia Range.
They tell you these things because they’re trying to separate you from your money.
Don’t fall for it. They are a voice for the bureaucrats and ranchers, not wild horses.
Helicopter roundups are the fastest and most effective way to shift resources from wild horses to the public-lands ranchers.
The optics aren’t great, especially when injuries are caught on film, but at least they are seen and understood by the public.
Have you ever seen video of horses being shot in the head by wranglers because of blindness, swayback or club feet?
It happens at most roundups but is concealed from the public, even the observers who are stationed a mile or more from the trap site.
The advocates have a better way.
Don’t even let them be born.
Snuff out new life and let the herds die off.
Let the ranchers have all of their food and water.
Put the legacy contractors out of business.
Replace motorized removals with removal by pesticides.
The public won’t notice, won’t even care, and that’s a problem.
They’re taking wild horse removals out of the spotlight.
We need to keep the pressure up, keep the bureaucrats and politicians on the hot seat.
That’s what Velma did.
Pay no attention to the advocates. They’re protecting the ranchers, not the horses.
RELATED: What You Won’t Hear at Wild Horse Lobby Day.
If the delegation is led by pesticide pushers and ranching sympathizers, the predominant constituency in wild horse advocacy, there will be no requests to
Instead, you’ll hear complaints about
The advocates will call for an end to the roundups but not the removals, pushing instead for innocuous methods that achieve the same results as helicopters.
RELATED: Wild Horse Lobby Day Set for Next Week.
Western Horse Watchers Association 