The folks at Dictionary.com announced this week that the word of the year for 2019 is ‘existential,’ as in existential threat—something that puts the nation at great risk, such as, you know, wild horses and burros.

Actually, the subject was not included in the list of examples, but climate change, gun violence and the Trump administration were, suggesting that the site is run not by wild horse enthusiasts, but by left-wing ideologues.  Butt sex, baby murder and open borders didn’t make the cut.

Oh wait…the runner-up word was ‘nonbinary.’  That removes all doubt.

More suggestions for the new year.

Consent of the governed, it’s so medieval.

You don’t build an 80-acre facility with a capacity of 5,000 animals on the chance that the BLM might want to use it in their wild horse outplacement program.

There must be a Memorandum of Understanding, at minimum, between the BLM and Equine Elite, the LLC that would build it.

Earlier this year, BLM requested bids for long-term care of wild horses and burros in Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas (panhandle only), Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Contracts would be awarded for 200 to 5,000 animals, with four-year and nine-year renewal options.

The company pitching the project was established on 03-08-19, according to this profile, four days after the solicitation went public.

That the BLM is awarding contracts to private parties for large-scale corrals, or at least signaling its intent to do so, may mean that a wink and a nod have come out of Washington and that funding of the ruinous Path Forward is imminent.

If the proles won’t go along with the glorious plan, silence them or sweep them aside.

Better yet, make an example out of them.

RELATED: Residents Say No to Hi-Cap Adoption Center.

Property owners within three miles of a proposed wild horse adoption center did not approve the project, but Laramie County Commissioners have a solution: Change the radius to one mile, cutting those stakeholders out of the process!

Refer to this story, posted today by the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

Construction of the facility, a possible stepping stone to mass removals of wild horses and burros from public lands, per the disastrous Path Forward, must be blocked.

RELATED: High Capacity Adoption Center Coming to Wyoming?

Launching a distillation column several hundred feet into the air, that is the definition of a bad day in the petrochemical industry.

Many refineries and chemical plants dot the Gulf coast in Texas and Louisiana.

The incident began early Wednesday at the old Neches Butane plant in Port Neches, TX, a facility built by the government during WWII to produce synthetic rubber.

Back in those days it was guarded by machine guns.

No one was killed in the explosions and fires but the plant will be down for many months—if it is not a total loss.

Let 2020 be the year you did something for the horses, not to the horses.

1. The United States does not receive fair market value for livestock grazing on public lands.  Raise the fee to $40 per AUM, in line with market rates.  Better yet, raise it to $60 per AUM, to bring it in line with the cost of warehousing wild horses (that were removed from those lands at the behest of the ranchers).

2. Your government gave itself the power to manage HMAs principally for domestic livestock.  Other areas, where horses were found when the WHB Act became law, have been zeroed out altogether, no longer designated for wild horses.  Manage these areas principally for wild horses and burros per the statute.  Balance the needs of WHB with those of wildlife, not domestic livestock, per the statute.

3. Consumers do not know where beef is produced.  Require labels on the product if it is RANGE FED or PRODUCED ON PUBLIC LANDS and let the market sort out the winners and losers.  Cattle raised on private property or at the expense of America’s wild horses and burros.  You decide, not the special interests in Washington.

The PZP zealots and big-name advocacy groups have lost their way.  They are on the same side of the debate as the public-lands ranchers.  Don’t give them a penny.

Voris explains the situation with Orange Man and the soon-to-be Late Justice.

RELATED: The Finest Health Care Money Can Buy.

Here are the figures from Section 3.7 in the EA.  Too many unknowns.

The AML for Porter Canyon is 67 according to Section 3.8 in the EA.  Roughly 80% of that allotment coincides with the HMA (see Map 2).  The management plan therefore allows only 67 wild horses on a parcel that can support 484 cow/calf pairs (605 × .8).

Yep, 12% of the forage to horses and 88% to livestock—on land set aside for the horses.

RELATED: Desatoya Herd to Be Rightsized Starting Next Week.

Can Justice Ginsburg survive Trump’s second term?  Almost certainly not.

Here’s the latest from AP News.

RELATED: It’s Not About the President, It’s About the Supreme Court.

A Forest Service ranger says he’s hopeful that cattle can return to their allotments in 2020, according to a report posted yesterday by the Elko Daily Free Press.  The fire began August 17 last year and burned over 233,000 acres.

An interesting and valuable follow-up to the story would be to find out if livestock displaced from public lands had to be moved to (gasp) private pastures and if the owners had to pay (OMG) market rates to feed them.

From whom do you suppose these horses flee?

(a) Drillers

(b) Miners

(c) Loggers

(d) Campers

(e) Ranchers

Darters would be a correct answer but they were not a problem in Velma’s day.

In Section 3 of the original WHB Act, Congress ordered the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture to balance the needs of horses and burros with those of wildlife, especially endangered species.  There was no provision for domestic livestock.

Overpopulation was to be determined relative to wildlife in the affected area, not privately owned cattle and sheep.

The ranchers, realizing they had been cut out of the will, demanded changes from their political toadies, who gave them FLPMA, PRIA and a watered-down WHB Act.

Today, the ranchers have endorsed a plan that will reduce the number of free-roaming horses and burros to an ‘acceptable’ level, unrelated to the carrying capacity of the land.

Eighty percent of those animals will end up in off-range facilities and the remaining herds will be managed to extinction.

The Marr Plan is a step in the right direction but its scope is too small.

It’s time to get all the livestock off public lands and restore the Wild Horse and Burro Act to its original form.

Is the end drawing near for Justice Ginsburg?

If she dies while he’s in office, the entire liberal program—and one hundred years of ‘progress’—will be put at risk.

Therefore, he has to go.  Either by outright removal or failure to win re-election in 2020.

He cannot be given the opportunity to nominate another justice, because liberals use the institution to drive their ruinous agenda.  Roe and Obergefell are just two examples.

Now that the roundup is over and the horses are gone, the ranchers can enjoy more of what their allotments have to offer.

In just a few short months, thousands of cattle will be turned loose on an HMA that can only support 253 wild horses.  You see, the numbers won’t work with just hundreds of cow/calf pairs—which is what you might guess for an area that recently achieved a thriving ecological balance.

Refer to Tables 2 and 3 in Appendix G of the Environmental Assessment for the HMA management plan.

In the Bradbury Flat allotment, which covers 15,706 acres and is 100% inside in the HMA, 2,490 AUMs have been authorized on six pastures in a 2.5 month grazing season.

Livestock operators would have to place 996 cow/calf pairs on that parcel to consume that much forage in that amount of time.  The animal density would be 63.4 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres!

The density allowed by plan for wild horses is 1.5 animals per thousand acres.

On Bradshaw Basin, also 100% inside the HMA, ranchers have access to 850 AUMs on 8,184 acres for 2.5 months.  That translates to 340 cow/calf pairs on the allotment with a density of 41.5 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres.

The number of cow/calf pairs on the other allotments and the cow/calf densities can be found in the following table.  The permitted forage for the Mountain Springs allotment was computed by difference, so the column total matched the figure given in Section 4.2.2 in the EA.  The grazing season was not given so it was estimated.

The chart below shows the forage allowed by plan for horses and livestock on the HMA.

The map showing the allotment locations on the HMA could not be found (mentioned in Section 4.2.2 in the EA) so all of the acreage in the HMA was used in the livestock density calculation.  If some of the land is not subject to livestock grazing, the overall cow/calf density would be higher.

Now you know why over half the horses on the HMA had to be removed.  By the time the ranchers get though, there’s almost nothing left for them.

Never mind that land was set aside for the horses.  That was a long time ago.

UPDATE: If you add the numbers in the ‘Acres in HMA’ column, you get 168,240, which is very close to the size of the HMA stated in the EA (168,720 acres).  Thus, all of the HMA is subject to livestock grazing, except for areas described as ‘Frail Lands.’

RELATED: Challis Roundup Ends.

If no mining companies signed on to the proposed WHB management plan, what other users of public lands endorsed it?

(a) Ranchers

(b) Loggers

(c) Hikers

(d) Campers

(e) All of the above

Answer: A

BONUS QUESTION: The WHB Act of 1971 was prompted by the killing and slaughter of wild horses on western rangelands by _______________.

RELATED: ‘Path Forward’ Quiz.

How many oil companies signed on to the ill-conceived management plan for wild horses and burros?

(a) One

(b) Four

(c) Seven

(d) Eleven

(e) None

Answer: E.

BONUS QUESTION: How many mining companies?

RELATED: ‘Path Forward’ Discussed.

The number of wild horses and burros in off-range corrals and long-term pastures (around 50,000) can be explained by the misappropriation of forage on just a few dozen HMAs.

The forage allocated to privately owned cattle and sheep on public lands in the western U.S., about nine million AUMs per year, would support at least 750,000 wild horses and burros, enough to empty all of those corrals and pastures fifteen times over.

You don’t have a horse problem on western rangelands, you have a ranching problem.

RELATED: Hypothesis, Subject to the Test of Future Experience.

Refer to the comments from 40:52 to 42:44 in this radio segment on the ‘Path Forward’ by KNPR of Las Vegas.  The program host asks if there is a perfect model for managing wild horse populations.

The guest, a member of the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board and science advisor for Return to Freedom, pointed to Assateague as the gold standard (Maryland side of the island, ponies on the Virginia side are managed by the annual swim).

Seriously?

The size of the herd declined from 78 in November 2018 to 75 in November 2019, there is clear evidence of a problem with its sex ratio and genetic diversity may be inadequate.

And you’re holding that up as an example of success?

The only non-lethal option for on-range management of wild horses and burros in the American west is to end public-lands ranching and restore the WHB Act to its original form.

RELATED: ‘Path Forward’ Discussed.

Listen to the remarks from 42:45 to 43:51 in this radio segment on the ‘Path Forward’ by KNPR of Las Vegas.  Yep, reduce horses to allow more vegetation [for the ranchers].

The ill-conceived management plan, which will remove 70% of America’s wild horses and burros from their home range and slow the growth of the remaining herds, was not created by two opposing groups—it was written by comrades in arms!

Wild horse advocates were barred from the process because they’re on the fringe and might try to undo four years of ‘progress.’

RELATED: PZP Zealots Take Pro-Ranching Message to WHBAB.

A few months ago the PZP zealots said darted mares become ‘self-boosting’ after five years.  Now, they refer to mares ‘reactivating’ after five years.  Listen to the remarks from 18:38 to 20:33 in this radio segment on the ‘Path Forward’ by KNPR of Las Vegas.

Folks, these are code words for sterilization.

The PZP zealots are on the same side of the debate as the public-lands ranchers, differing only in methodology.

Don’t give them a penny.