Category: Commentary

Opinion

Foal-Free Friday, Wave of the Future Edition

This year’s update to the Colorado Wild Horse Eradication Plan provides the clearest indication yet of what the advocates think about wild horses and who they’re really trying to protect.

Strategic Darting as the Cornerstone of Wild Horse Management

Who will turn this vision into reality?  The largest consumers of abortion, contraception and sterilization in the nation.

As they destroy the herds, they’ll tell you they’re living wild and free as nature intends.

Lying is good for business.

PREVIOUS: Foal-Free Friday, Good News, Bad News Edition.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Living as Nature Planned?

The advocates have discovered that lying is the best way to keep their coffers filled.

Sorry, but barren mares, confused stallions, shrinking herds, injuries and infections, abnormal sex ratios, increasing death rates, tiny breeding populations, loss of genetic diversity and acclimation to people do not qualify as living as nature intended.

RELATED: Virus or No Virus, Salt River Herd Is Toast.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Colorado Wild Horse Working Group Updates Eradication Plan

What happens when you put ranchers and ranching sympathizers in a room and ask them what to do about wild horses?

You get another set of recommendations that will destroy them.

The executive summary argues that strategic darting must be the cornerstone of sustainable wild horse management, and that the group expects the Colorado BLM to champion the method, along with other findings, conveying them forcefully to the national office.

These are the same lunatics who put a couple of sodomites in the governor’s mansion.

A keyword search of the document yielded these results:

  • Adoption – 125 occurrences
  • Darting – 53
  • Fertility control – 10
  • Immunocontraceptive – 7
  • Treatable mares – 7
  • Cattle – 2
  • Sheep – 0
  • AUM – 0
  • Allotment – 0
  • Permit – 0
  • Rancher – 0
  • Pesticide – 0
  • Reversible – 0
  • Sterility – 0
  • Sterilization – 0
  • Breeding population – 0
  • Genetic diversity – 1
  • Principal use – 0
  • Management at the minimum feasible level – 0
  • Nature’s way – 0

The group claims on page 33 that large tracts of private land, suitable for wild horse preserves, are scarce, which is nonsense.

There are hundreds of such parcels in the state, known as base properties, that could be repurposed for wild horses, with the added benefit that they have grazing preference on public lands—and therefore provide the best value to taxpayers and/or donors.

But the idea was not supported by some members, who were concerned about removing land from agricultural production.

And that’s the point of the entire exercise: To charter a group that would do what’s best for the ranchers, not the horses.

RELATED: Colorado Wild Horse Working Group Releases Year One Report.

Dedicated conservationist or wretch with darting rifle?  Breeding, not mass sterilization, assures long-term viability.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

The Progeny of Kings

Rehoboam, son of Solomon, son of David, fathered 28 sons and 60 daughters according to 2 Chronicles 11:21.

Elsewhere, but not at the Salt River or Virginia Range, a herd of wild horses produced 28 colts and 60 fillies.

Do those results look like they came from a random process centered at 50% males / 50% females?

The expected range of variation is given by this formula, where p-bar = .5 and n = 88.

The calculated limits are .34 and .66.

The observed proportion of colts, .318, falls outside this range along with the observed proportion of fillies, .681.

Therefore, the results don’t look like they came from a random process centered at 50% males / 50% females.

Although Rehoboam was in the Messianic Line (see Matthew chapter 1), he did not do what was pleasing to the Lord and was responsible for the division of Israel into the Northern and Southern kingdoms.

Abnormal sex ratios, such as 28 stallions and 60 mares, are common in herds treated with PZP.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Velma Would Be Horrified by Today’s Advocates

They’re phonies.

They’re obsessed with pesticides.

They protect ranchers, not wild horses.

They reject foundational principles such as management at the minimum feasible level and principal use.

They want you to think that the herds will vanish without they’re involvement when in reality the herds are vanishing because of their involvement.

Why are you still giving them money?

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

TRNP Wild Horse Protection Act Cannot Achieve Stated Goals

Instead of prohibiting advocate involvement, the bill requires it.

Paragraph 5(b)(1) directs the Secretary of the Interior to maintain a genetically diverse herd in the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park with a population of at least 150 wild horses.

Paragraph 5(b)(2)(B) requires cost-effective management of the herd while ensuring that natural resources not adversely impacted.

Those are codewords for a fertility control program—that could be provided by the advocates at no cost to the Park Service.

Was that language suggested by Christine Kman, who has allowed the tentacles of the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses to reach into her nonprofit?

Where are the safeguards that prevent it from morphing into a mass sterilization program?

In their zeal to spread the gospel of immunocontraceptives and win the approval of the bureaucrats and ranchers, the advocates will drive the breeding population into the single digits and the goal of genetic diversity will lost forever.

RELATED: Who’s Advising Hoeven on TRNP Wild Horses?

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Virus or No Virus, Salt River Herd Is Toast

You cannot use PZP to take a herd from 450 to 280 without sterilizing the mares.

If the death rate was 6% per year, typical for wild horses, you’d need eight years of nonstop darting.

If any foals were born the death rate would need to be higher.

If the death rate was 8% per year, unusual for wild horses, you could do it in six years.

Sterility sets in after five years.

Given that the program has been active for six years, maybe closer to seven, the death rate must be at the higher end of the range.

Are they spiking their darts with some other toxin?

It’s not about the horses.  It’s about pesticides and convincing the bureaucrats and ranchers that the helicopters can be grounded in favor of mass sterilization.

RELATED: Salt River Herd Cannot Recover from a Deadly Disease.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Salt River Herd Cannot Recover from a Deadly Disease

Because the advocates have ruined the mares with PZP.

They may even view the loss of a few dozen horses favorably, as it would move them closer to their population reduction goal.

The advocates, along with their overlords at the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses, are far more interested in demonstrating that mass sterilization is a practical alternative to motorized removal than actually protecting the herd.

RELATED: Salt River Stallion First Victim of Virus?

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Foal-Free Friday, Humane Conservation Edition

Ater WWII, bald eagles were nearly wiped out in the U.S. by widespread use of DDT.

In a process known as bioaccumulation, the pesticide weakened the shells of their eggs, turning reproductive success into reproductive failure.

The advocates use pesticides to cause reproductive failure in wild horses, selling the practice as humane conservation.

What would you say about women who hiked into the wilderness and climbed to the mountaintops to smash the eggs of bald eagles?

PREVIOUS: Foal-Free Friday, Envy and Jealousy Edition.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Foal-Free Friday, Envy and Jealousy Edition

How many wild horse advocates are depressed because they can’t participate in the mass sterilization programs at the Salt River and Virginia Range?

How many field workers would reject their assistance because they want all the glory for themselves?

PREVIOUS: Foal-Free Friday, Uh-Oh Edition.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Will Missoula Look to Billings for Answer to Wild Horse Problem?

The task force will likely identify the Montana Solution as one option for keeping the Miller Creek herd in check—or getting rid of it altogether.

It’s only a half-day drive to the Science and Conservation Center, where volunteers could become certified in mass sterilization with PZP.

Another option would be to solicit proposals from the advocates, who, if given the opportunity to promote the strategy, may do it for free.

RELATED: Blue Ribbon Panel to Study Miller Creek Horses.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.

Would the Advocates Get Along with the Saltwater Cowboys?

The advocates hate foals.  Like the bureaucrats, they view wild horses as pests, an impediment to rancher prosperity.

That’s why they’re beating the populations down with ovary-killing pesticides.

The saltwater cowboys love foals.  They see them as moneymakers, a growing source of income for the Chincoteague Fire Company.

That’s why they turned the wildlife refuge into a puppy mill for wild horses, known for its highly abnormal sex ratio and unprecedented birth rate.

To say that they have conflicting views would be a gross understatement.

Advocates clash with cowboys at their first meeting.

RELATED: Chincoteague Stallions Produce 103rd Foal of 2025.

► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.