Western Horse Watchers Association
Exposing the Hypocrisy, Lies and Incompetence of the Wild Horse Advocates
Opinion
Fragmented by what? Livestock fencing? Cattle guards? Pasture rotation?
Areas identified for wild horses but subsequently zeroed out are now managed almost exclusively for livestock.
How can you be recognized as an authority on wild horses, raking in untold financial support, yet be so out of touch?
Livestock grazing represents one layer of forage demand on America’s public lands, followed by wild horses and wildlife.
To estimate the carrying capacity of an HMA or WHT, you have to determine the forage assigned to livestock and the number of wild horses displaced thereby.
The Socorro Field Office recently posted a Draft CX for the renewal of five grazing permits in western New Mexico.
Comments can be submitted at the project site through March 12.
Table 1 in the CX provides livestock types, grazing seasons and active AUMs.
The Allotment Master Report at RAS is not working so the management status and public acres were sourced from the Allotment Information Report.
The allotments are not contiguous and don’t overlap any HMAs, but you can still use the data for practice.
The weighted average forage density is 182.5 AUMs per year per thousand public acres, enough to support 182.5 ÷ 12 = 15.2 wild horses per thousand public acres, or 30.4 wild burros per thousand public acres.
Public lands in the western U.S. can only support one such animal per thousand acres according to the BLM (27,000 animals on 27 million acres).
The forage assigned to livestock would support an additional 6,172 ÷ 12 = 514 wild horses.
If the allotments coincided with an HMA that has an AML of 60, the True AML would be 574.
If the current herd was at 4X AML, there would be no excess horses in the HMA but the advocates would try to beat the population down with their favorite pesticide, because they want the ranchers to succeed, not the horses.
RELATED: AMLs and Carrying Capacities.
It’s not ground zero in the wild horse preservation movement.
It’s not the most glaring example in the western U.S. that contradicts the overpopulation narrative and statements by the bureaucrats and ranchers about how many wild horses the land can support.
Instead, the Virginia Range is one of the largest humane management programs for wild mustangs according to the bill text, a product of the Nevada Department of Agriculture and the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses.
Did you know that Velma Johnston advocated for humane management of wild horses, a euphemism for destroying their ovaries with a restricted-use pesticide?
A story posted yesterday by KOLO News said the Nevada Senate Committee on Natural Resources will consider the measure on March 7, consistent with the overview at NELIS.
What’s the major difference between roundups and fertility control programs?
The herds bounce back after roundups.
The advocates tell you that PZP is safe and reversible while GonaCon is a sterilant, but the only difference is timing: GonaCon sterilizes with one or two doses while PZP requires five or six.
Thus, the Montana Solution is to wild horses as the Final Solution was to Jews.
Gradual extermination of the pests.
The advocates refer to it as “a better way.”
The current lull in gather activity, and a roundup schedule dominated by fertility control programs, means the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses, its affiliates, offshoots and supporters, are now the undisputed leaders in the wild horse removal industry.
Western Horse Watchers does not expect the pattern to continue, because the ranchers are impatient.
RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, Keeping Them Wild and Free Edition.
“They make us happy, we watch them grow, they have names, they have strong family bonds, we practice birth control and watch over them like mother hens. They are magnificent creatures.”
As suggested by this letter to The Record-Courier of Minden, NV, they don’t see themselves as part of the problem.
“There is a small faction of people in Nevada pushing for full extermination of wild horses,” according to the writer of a column in today’s edition of The Nevada Independent.
“Some want immediate removal of all wild horses and others want to get rid of wild horses a little at a time by cutting down the size of the herds well below what is needed for healthy breeding by frequent roundups and removals—death by a thousand cuts,” yet he applauds a variant of the latter carried out by the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses and its army of volunteers.
Many of the mares are now at risk of sterility as the program moves into its fifth year, but because he doesn’t see any adverse effects, it must not be a concern.
The wild horse preservation advocates, as he calls them, look at the Virginia Range as a demonstration project, an opportunity to convince the bureaucrats and ranchers that they have a better way (to get rid of wild horses).
And they want you to pay for it.
How do the advocates protect their cherished/beloved/innocent/treasured wild herds?
By destroying their ovaries with a restricted-use pesticide.
RELATED: Nobody’s Getting Rid of More Wild Horses Than the Advocates.
In this paid position, you’ll convince unsuspecting donors that you actually care about wild horses, while your colleagues work behind the scenes to displace as many as possible from their lawful homes.
You’ll carry on a fine tradition of not only caving to the ranching agenda, but actively supporting it.
And, like most advocacy groups, you’ll claim that the only way to save wild horses is to destroy their ovaries with a restricted-use pesticide or move them to remote wilderness areas where they’ll welcomed like the Gila livestock.
The site is not going anywhere.
The Follow button has been removed and E-mail distribution has been discontinued.
Thank you for your support.
Today we recognize a remarkable achievement of the advocates.
With an unexpected lull in gather activity and a schedule dominated by fertility control programs, they are now leaders in the wild horse removal industry.
In fact, if they get their way, future schedules will have a limited number of roundups but massive delivery of their favorite pesticide.
This practice, sometimes referred to as keep them wild and free, humane management, or a better way, means few if any youngsters, gradual extermination of the herds and most of their food consumed by livestock, as specified in the land-use plans.
You can learn more about these concepts at the SOWH DC conference.
Pre-conference activity includes a postcard campaign.
Events like this keep their base fired up while accomplishing nothing for wild horses.
RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, Spending Your Money Wisely Edition.
With few if any helicopters forcing them off the range, and a schedule that’s dominated by fertility control programs, the advocates have taken the lead in 2023, fulfilling their goal, at least temporarily, of being leaders in the wild horse removal industry.
The bill status indicates that it did not pass an initial vote among the senators in the Agriculture, State and Public Lands & Water Resources Committee.
The resolution would ask Congress to enact legislation and make other necessary policy changes to allow the slaughter wild horses and burros for processing and shipment to markets within or outside the United States.
Western Horse Watchers is not aware of any legislature in any state calling for an end to public-lands ranching.
The advocates want to poison their treasured mares and jennies with a restricted-use pesticide.
Such animals would be unfit for human consumption?
RELATED: HJR3 Clears Wyoming House.
The company secured a $2 billion loan from the Department of Energy for a battery recycling and manufacturing plant east of Reno, according to a story dated February 9 by the Reno Gazette Journal.
The 173-acre facility, south of Tesla’s Gigafactory, will be able to process two-and-a-half Gigafactories worth of materials, enough to supply one million electric vehicles per year.
Why is this important?
The advocates will point to the project as further justification for their Virginia Range darting program.
As noted yesterday, their goal is to convince the bureaucrats, politicians and ranchers that they have a better way to get rid of wild horses.
As for you, they couldn’t care less.
Climate change, a fake problem invented by liberals, and the green energy movement, are designed to enrich the communists and punish the capitalists, while imposing totalitarian control on the American people.
Ever wonder what the propagandists at the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses are pushing out to their followers?
You don’t have to subscribe to their feed.
Meredith Hodges of Lucky Three Ranch runs an echo chamber for their news releases.
You’ll find all the buzzwords and all the lies, punctuated by their shameless attempts to separate you from your money.
What you won’t find is a sincere effort to help America’s wild horses and burros.
We are realists—we work with the bureaucrats and ranchers.
“Our own PZP fertility control program on Nevada’s Virginia Range has reduced foaling rates by 62%. And hard-hitting data like this has helped us demonstrate to the public, Congress, and the BLM that there is a better way to manage our wild herds.”
You are defeatists, turncoats and sellouts.
You say you’re protecting wild horses but your actions prove otherwise.
Letters to the editors of newspapers and online news services should focus on two issues, resource management and predation by the advocates.
This example from the Craig Press addresses the former but not the latter.
Mismanagement of resources, indicated by the prevalence of livestock, is largely responsible for the removal and stockpiling of wild horses, but attempts to eradicate the herds with a restricted-use pesticide, favored by most advocates, are far more insidious.
Therefore, one of the best ways to protect wild horses is to put the advocacy groups out of business.
RELATED: Undeniable Truths of the Wild Horse World.
They will be dispatched from the Gila Wilderness, starting on February 23, according to a report posted today by KQRE News of Albuquerque.
Unlike privately owned livestock covered by a permit, these animals have been aggressive towards visitors, graze all year and trample stream banks and springs, causing erosion and sedimentation.
And you thought only horses did that.
Speaking of wilderness, isn’t this where the Wild Horse Fire Brigade would ship our free-roaming horses?
Refer to the list at ePlanning. The numbers change minute by minute.
As of this morning, over 2,600 comments have been submitted.
There is only one document up for public review, a map.
The project would expand the 2012 Western Solar Plan from six states to eleven, among other things.
A February 7 news release indicated that an additional online meeting will be held on February 14, from 9:00 to 11:30 AM Pacific Time
Pre-registration is required.
The driver, of course, is man-made climate change, a fake problem invented by liberals to enrich the peddlers of renewable energy while imposing authoritarian control on the American people.
This is the watermelon theory of radical environmentalism: Green on the outside, red on the inside.
RELATED: Hallelujah, McCullough Comment Period Ends Today!
In the interview posted yesterday about the Wild Horse Fire Brigade, Simpson tells Sherwood that his mission is to resolve conflicts by moving wild horses from areas where they’re not wanted, sometimes referred to as their lawful homes, to remote wilderness areas not particularly suited to livestock grazing.
Not wanted by whom?
Why aren’t the horses there already?
Sherwood isn’t curious who might be backing the nonprofit and does not ask for disclosure of its supporters.
Although Simpson comes down on the right side of many issues, such as rangeland health and fertility control, he goes off the rails with WHFB. It is a scam, exactly what the ranchers ordered.
He does not acknowledge that the conflict can be resolved and the animals can be rewilded, several times over, by confining the ranchers to their base properties in a year-round off season.
As for Sherwood, her fawning support of the project represents total defeat.
The video description, presumably of her authorship, says “The Wild Horse Fire Brigade has the only viable sensible realistic solution if we really want to save the last remaining wild horses of America.”
You just screwed up, dear, big time.
RELATED: Capitulation, Surrender, Defeat.
The wild horse advocates are experts at concealing their true intentions and loyalties, much like the Democrat Party.
For example, “protect wild horses” means get rid of them with the Montana Solution, leave most of their food to the public-lands ranchers.
“Humane management” means beat down the horse population with a restricted-use pesticide in their lawful home so livestock can access most of the resources.
Systematic elimination by helicopter must be replaced with systematic elimination by poison-filled darts.
Vaccines don’t prevent illness, they cause it.
Mares ruined by the treatments aren’t sterile, they’re self-boosting.
On the Virginia Range, the herd isn’t dying off, it’s aging out.
McCullough Peaks doesn’t have an abnormal sex ratio, mares are living longer.
At Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the herd should be large enough to have a healthy breeding population but breeding should be limited with a fertility control program.
Makes perfect sense.
The advocates are voices for the bureaucrats and ranchers, not wild horses.
Why are you still giving them money?
RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, Throwing in with Your Adversaries Edition.
A bill introduced last week would amend Chapter 77 of the New Mexico statutes to allow free-roaming horse experts to control the population of free-roaming horses and allow the state livestock board to make rules regarding the qualifications of said experts.
Western Horse Watchers has been unable to find a news report covering the legislation.
An individual may be eligible if he or she has (1) expertise in conducting free-roaming horse herd surveys, (2) an understanding of land carrying capacity analyses, land status and property ownership, and (3) an understanding of free-roaming horse habitat, biology, behavior and management strategies, according to Section 2 of the measure.
A diploma from the Billings School of PZP Darting and Public Deception was not included in the requirements.
Failure to understand forage production, carrying capacity and resource management will rule out most advocates anyway.
RELATED: Pew Looks at New Mexico Plan to Manage Wild Horses.
