Western Horse Watchers Association
Exposing the Hypocrisy, Lies and Incompetence of the Wild Horse Advocates
Opinion
Refer to this 13-minute interview posted today by Nevada Public Radio. The segment about wild horses ends at 8:35.
The amendment is turning out to be a cousin of the glorious ‘Path Forward,’ another opportunity for ‘advocacy’ groups to throw in with the public-lands ranchers.
How exactly does the legislation fix the resource management plans that divert most of the forage on public lands to privately owned livestock?
RELATED: If the PZP Amendment Carries, How Will the Money Be Used?
Get rid of the horses.
The FY 2021 spending bill approved by the House last week includes the $11 million PZP Amendment, an idea so good that even the Rolling Stones would support it.
Anybody who reads these pages knows that overpopulation is not the problem, but the big-name ‘advocacy’ groups are trying to convince you otherwise.
This article by Nevada Current, published yesterday, is just one example.
What you’re getting from these groups is capitulation to the ranching agenda, as seen in the disastrous ‘Path Forward.’
They’re trying to ensure that livestock operators receive seventy, eighty, ninety percent or more of the authorized forage on land set aside for wild horses.
Don’t give them a penny!
RELATED: House Passes PZP Amendment to FY 2021 Spending Bill.
Why not take them on darting expeditions or travel to HMAs during grazing season to see all the privately owned livestock? The two experiences would fit together perfectly.
Will it be spent on automatic darting machines or will it just line the pockets of those in the PZP supply chain?
The $11 million authorization still has to clear several legislative hurdles.
RELATED: Ties Between PZP Zealots and Public-Lands Ranchers Revealed.
There are four million permitted cattle and sheep on public lands in the western U.S., according to the writer of a letter to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, compared to 81,000 wild horses, but the horses need to be managed with PZP.
After all, it’s been used for 30 years.
Where? Assateague Island. Many wild horse ‘advocates’ point to the area as a paragon of wild horse management but the results have been disastrous.
RELATED: BLM Opinion Piece Acclaims ‘Path Forward,’ Ignores Livestock.
The current population at Saylor Creek is 131 wild horses. The AML is 50. How many excess horses are present? The herd is 2.6 times over AML.
There are 81 excess horses on the HMA, per current wisdom. It’s overpopulated.
The herd requires 13% of the authorized forage on the HMA but you’re not supposed to know that. When the roundup ends, the horses will only need about 5%.
RELATED: Comments on Saylor Creek Wild Horse Roundup.
Exhibit A
16 USC 1332, Definitions, WHB Act, a duly enacted statute.
Paragraph (c) defines “range” as “the amount of land necessary to sustain an existing herd or herds of wild free-roaming horses and burros” that’s “devoted principally but not necessarily exclusively to their welfare.” It stands as it did in 1971.
Paragraph (f), which defined “excess animals” as those “which must be removed from an area in order to preserve and maintain a thriving natural ecological balance and multiple-use relationship” did not appear in the original Act. It was added by PRIA.
Exhibit B
CFR 4710.3-2, Wild horse and burro ranges, Part 4700, Subpart 4710, a federal regulation.
Accordingly, herd management areas, a term that did not appear in the original Act, “may also be designated as wild horse or burro ranges to be managed principally, but not necessarily exclusively, for wild horse or burro herds.”
Exhibit A lays down the law. Exhibit B makes it tentative.
Which one prevails? Can a regulation override a statue?
A project appears in BLM’s NEPA register (sometimes referred to as ‘ePlanning’) but no documents have been posted.
There are three levels of analysis in the NEPA process: Categorical Exclusion (CX), Environmental Assessment (EA) and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Wild horse management actions often fall into the middle category but major changes, such as the Rock Springs RMP Amendments, require an EIS.
A project involving wild horses and burros may begin with a scoping request, to receive input from the public, followed by staff work to formulate an action plan and draft an environmental assessment. The EA looks at the consequences of a preferred action and one or more alternatives.
The preliminary plan and EA are posted for public review and may be revised in light of substantive comments.
If there are no major issues, a decision record and finding of no significant impact may be is issued, allowing the plan to go forward. This does not mean the roundup starts the following week! There are priorities and funding is not unlimited. The plan may face legal challenges.
The process can take several years to complete although it may be shortened or bypassed altogether in the case of emergencies.
The Sulphur HMA is in western Utah on the Nevada border.
A spokesman for the Public Lands Council said earlier this week before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that “There may be a need for access to additional forage, including vacant allotments or other available allotments that were not grazed during the summer season.”
His testimony concerned the effects of COVID-19 on public-lands ranchers, according to a news release dated July 23.
He did not indicate where those underutilized allotments would be found but almost certainly could offer a few suggestions.
Western Horse Watchers was unable to find a statement in the organization’s news releases condemning the recent PZP Amendment to H.R. 7608, a spending bill for FY 2021 now under consideration in the House.
The amendment has the full support of AWHC.
RELATED: PLC Wants to Change Image of Public-Lands Ranching.
Refer to this news release issued today by Animal Wellness Action. The full bill will be considered by the House tomorrow.
The amendment requires the BLM to use $11 million from the FY 2021 WHB budget to apply PZP to wild horse herds. It does nothing to stop the misappropriation of resources that’s forcing them off western rangelands.
The Senate will take up its own spending bill in the coming weeks or months.
RELATED: Swasey Wild Horse Fatality Justifies Contraceptives?
The stocking rate allowed by plan is 0.5 wild horses per thousand acres. That should raise an eyebrow. The plan assigns 95% of the authorized forage on the HMA, omitting wildlife, to livestock, with the balance to horses.
It’s one of the best examples of mismanagement in the WHB program.
The pre-gather population of 131 horses is 2.6 times above AML, yet it represents just 13% of the carrying capacity of the land.
Unlike Swasey, which reached its capacity, the HMA is not overpopulated, at least not with horses, so what’s driving the roundup? What’s the rationale for contraceptives?
Could it be that the herd was approaching the minimum recommended size for genetic viability? Or might it be the attitudes, loyalties and beliefs of those who wrote and approved the management plan?
RELATED: Saylor Creek Roundup Pending.
A press release issued today by AWA and AWHC, in the wake of a death yesterday during the Swasey wild horse roundup, calls for an $11 million expenditure in 2021 to dart wild horses with PZP.
They need better protection, according to the writers.
Contraceptives mean they won’t even be born—never to be harmed by roundups—a strategy that dovetails perfectly with approved plans to divert most of their food to privately owned livestock.
The announcement suggests that AWHC was the client behind the opinion piece that appeared in several publications on Friday. Whose side are they on?
RELATED: Swasey Progress Report Day 4.
“Now is the time to chart a bold new course for the management and protection of the horses and burros and prevent unnecessary degradation to their habitat,” according to the writer of a guest column appearing this evening in the Las Vegas Review Journal.
The current population of 95,000 wild horses and burros on BLM-managed public lands is more than three and a half times what the land can support [given the amount of resources we’ve diverted to privately owned livestock].
He forgot that part.
Animal Wellness Action, a lobbying group in Washington D.C., said yesterday in an opinion piece published by the Pagosa Daily Post that “lawmakers have the opportunity to land on the right side of history – and the American taxpayer – by requiring BLM to implement PZP contraceptive in 2021.”
Never mind that the EPA was ordered to reconsider the registration of the pesticide earlier this year.
And you should ignore the Assateague census results that show its long-term effects on wild horse herds.
Lobbyists do as their clients require. In this case, a photo of a wild horse roundup, provided by AWHC, was included. Might they be the client?
That group has thrown in with the public-lands ranchers. They’re using your hard earned donations to do the rancher’s dirty work, which is to ensure that seventy, eighty, ninety percent or more of authorized forage on lands set aside for wild horses goes to privately owned livestock.
Don’t pay attention to their words, pay attention to their deeds.
You can’t make this stuff up! Segment begins at 13:38.
The daily reports indicate 253 wild horses captured as of July 16, with none returned to their home range and no deaths.
Body condition scores ranged from three to five(!) with a few twos.
Not exactly what you’d expect for an area that’s grossly overpopulated.
The fives tell the story: The horses are robbing too much forage from the poor ranchers.
The management plan for the HMA assigns six times more forage to privately owned livestock than horses.
Only 100 remain on the barrier island and “every single one lost is devastating to the genetic health and diversity,” said the herd manager in a report following last week’s choking incident.
She continued, “It’s hard enough to lose one to natural causes … but to lose one to something caused by humans and so easily avoided is just … I don’t even have a word for how bad that is.”
The greatest threat to these animals is not the tourists but the so-called advocates who stalk them with clipboards and darting rifles.
It’s bad when one dies but it’s okay if they’re never born.
You only need to look at Assateague Island (Maryland side) to see where this is going.
The PZP zealots have run that herd into the ground and they know it.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the BLM in its analysis of the effects of releasing a limited number of geldings onto public lands as part of its wild horse management efforts, according to a news release issued today.
In another case, the Court reaffirmed the use of wild horse and burro management plans that cover ten-year periods.
The terms ‘livestock’ and ‘multiple use’ appear nowhere in the announcement, as if the horses and burros have full use of the resources in their home range and are now far beyond its ability to support them.
The problem is most of the resources have been diverted to privately owned livestock.
Roundups may be necessary when the capacity limit of an area is reached, as seen earlier today in the Sheepshead HMA, but they can’t be justified when the forage assigned to livestock could support all of the ‘excess’ horses in an area, and more, as seen last week at the Coyote Lake HMA.
One day the QC manager at a manufacturing plant said “Starting tomorrow we shall have no more defects.”
Nonsense!
You can’t achieve a desired result by exhorting the workers.
You have to study the system that produces the defects and fix those causes. Off-spec materials, worn out machinery, inadequate training, outdated procedures, etc.
Workers can do nothing about those things.
Defects are downstream, the system is upstream. The behavior of a system as a function of time is called a ‘process.’ A process takes certain inputs and delivers certain outputs, days, weeks or months later.
A major-league hitter gets paid millions of dollars to turn out 70% defective work.
A stable process can turn out 100% defective results, day in and day out.
To solve problems, you have to look upstream and improve the process.
Free-roaming horses on western rangelands. Then the helicopters come. Many people already know this.
What will be the point of the new film? To break new ground by looking upstream in the wild horse management process? Or will it be a rehash of the same old propaganda about overpopulation, no natural predators, etc?
Will it treat symptoms or identify causes?
Will it promote contraceptives, sanctuaries, adoption and training? Who’s behind it?
Links in the video description point to socialist media except this one. Comments are not allowed.
RELATED: Stop the [Causes of] Roundups!
Western Horse Watchers Association 