Refer to this opinion piece in the Pagosa Daily Post of Pagosa Springs, CO.

Apparently the writer has subscribed to the overpopulation narrative, in that he agrees with the use of contraceptives not to slow wild horse population growth but to reverse it, yet somehow he arrives at the right conclusion:

“The reality is, there are far more cattle and sheep on our public lands than wild horses and burros.  This is an attempt to further imbalance the ratio by liquidating populations of wild horses and burros, so that beef can may graze on more federal lands.”

The nine million AUMs allocated each year to privately owned livestock on public lands managed by the BLM in the western U.S. would support at least 750,000 wild horses and burros, enough to empty all of the off-range corrals and long-term pastures fifteen times over.  The current wild horse population is about ten percent of that.

There is no wild horse population crisis.

The proposed wild horse management plan is not about saving money or protecting western rangelands.  It’s about deceit and greed on the part of the public-lands ranchers, their overlords, cheerleaders and political allies.

RELATED: Wild Horse Overpopulation?

It’s not true but it’s an indication of what the headlines might look like if a proposed wild horse management plan, announced yesterday, can be defeated in the court of public opinion.  Details of the plan can be found in this policy statement by the ASPCA.

The proposal was endorsed by organizations that represent public-lands ranchers, so you know it’s bad for the horses.  The Public Lands Council, one of its supporters, makes its anti-horse agenda clear:

Note how well it aligns with the ASPCA recommendations, almost as if it was copied and pasted into their proposal.

The goal of this cabal, this newly formed alliance between ranching interests and animal protection groups, is to reduce wild horse and burro populations on public lands in the western U.S. by 70%.

Are you going to join them or will you push back?

Range-fed beef is not good for you and it’s not good for the environment if it’s produced at the expense of America’s wild horses and burros.

If the ranchers won’t back down, don’t buy their product.

RELATED: Financial Incentive Will Reduce Wild Horse Population?

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Public Lands Council and Society for Range Management expressed their support today for a proposal to reduce wild horse and burro populations on public lands in the western U.S, according to a news release from the American Farm Bureau Federation.

A report by YubaNet of Nevada City, CA said the management plan was drafted by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation, the Humane Society of the United States, and the Humane Society Legislative Fund, with input from other rangeland management stakeholders.

It employs four management techniques, all currently in use:

• Contraceptives
• Roundups
• Rehoming
• Adoptions

A link to the plan document was not provided.

As usual, the proposal puts the crosshairs on horses and burros, while privately owned livestock are omitted from the analysis.

It is capitulation to the ranching agenda, assent to the overpopulation narrative and a failure in wild horse preservation.

The problem is not free-roaming horses and burros, it is public-lands ranching.

He is not here, but is risen.

You jackals!  How many of them did you reject because they wouldn’t comply with your thirty day timeframe?

The only thing these horses did ‘wrong’ was to rob too much forage from your livestock.

Note the reference at 0:12 to the ‘Beaty Butte Allotment,’ not the Beatys Butte HMA.

These people have never accepted the WHB Act and never will.

RELATED: Rangelands in Southeast Oregon, Solving Problems That Don’t Exist.

Thought for the day: Lands set aside for wild horses and burros must accommodate privately owned cattle and sheep, but lands set aside for privately owned cattle and sheep need not accept wild horses and burros.

Lest you get the impression that this blog is managed principally but not necessarily exclusively for wild horses and burros.

Today we share in our Lord’s suffering through fasting and abstinence from meat.

Known by many as ‘Wild Horse Monument,’ it sits on a ridge above the Columbia River near Vantage, WA.  Fifteen life-sized horses made from steel were installed before the money ran out in 1990.  Fundraising has resumed and the designer visited the job site recently with the goal of completing the project as originally intended.

RELATED: Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies.

Video from the Onaqui Rally on 04/05/19.  Note the poster at 0:19 and the remarks beginning at 0:50.  These so-called advocates have bought into the overpopulation narrative and now seek to “manage horses to a lower population.”

They’re not friends of the Onaqui horses, they are enemies.  They do the bidding of the public-lands ranchers.  Don’t give them a penny.

So say the writers of a guest column published last week by Deseret News of Salt Lake City.  The original piece was commissioned by the Property and Environment Research Center of Bozeman, MT.

There are too many wild horses and burros struggling to scrape out an existence on limited rangeland, according to the writers, the premise of the article.  (‘Axiomatic basis’ might be a better term—as if the idea was already established, accepted as true, self-evident.)

That these animals have lost over 40% of the public lands originally set aside for them seems to have been overlooked by the writers.  That they are being forced off the remaining land to accommodate privately owned livestock was not mentioned.

The words ‘cattle’ and ‘sheep’ appear nowhere in the article, as though it’s possible to discuss the ‘problem’ of wild horses and burros independently of public-lands ranching.

Consider these points made by the authors:

1. The new $1,000 incentive will benefit wild horses and burros.  It may stimulate adoptions, at least in the short term, but how many of these animals will end up at auctions because the owner’s motivation was a cash reward (extrinsic), not a concern for the horses (intrinsic).

2. Wild horses and burros have no natural predators.  Yeah, they’re the same predators that take down privately owned cattle and sheep.

3. Wild horse and burro populations are three times higher than their Appropriate Management Level.  So what?  AMLs have nothing to do with the carrying capacity of the land.  Rather, they represent the forage loss the ranchers are willing to tolerate.  How can you say there are too many horses and burros on public lands when they are far outnumbered by cattle and sheep?

4. Wild horses and burros have consumed so much forage on public lands that they’re literally on the brink of starvation.  These are free-roaming animals, they do not stand around on dry lots and starve to death.  Why can’t they move to greener pastures?  Because of fences installed by the ranchers?

5. The government spends $50 million annually to care for horses and burros in long-term holding.  Yep, the BLM spends two dollars per day to feed a horse on private land so it can collect 4.5 cents per day from the public-lands rancher to whom the forage is sold.  If it was really about the money, the government would leave the horses on the range and tell the ranchers to go pound sand.

6. Finding ‘good homes’ for wild horses and burros is clearly a better outcome than starving on the range.  The best home for these animals is the territory set aside for them by the WHB Act of 1971.  True, there are some areas where livestock grazing is not allowed but they are the exception not the rule (three for horses and one for burros).  What’s so good about being locked in a stall and having a big pain bit shoved in your mouth?

Folks, there is no wild horse problem, only greed and deceit on the part of the ranchers, their overlords, cheerleaders and political allies.  If they achieve their goals, this is what the charts will look like:

The nine million AUMs per year currently allocated to privately owned cattle and sheep on public lands in the western U.S. would support 750,000 wild horses and burros, enough to empty all of the off-range corrals and long-term pastures fifteen times over.

RELATED: Wild Horse Overpopulation?, Economics of Wild Horse Gathers.

The image at 0:34 is the perfect symbol for public lands in western U.S. set aside for wild horses.  Privately owned livestock far outnumber the horses and overgrazing is fixed by removing the horses.  Did I mention the land was set aside for the horses?

Video by Rick Gore of Think Like A Horse.

What is the Public Lands Council?  The description for the following video says the organization represents 22,000 public lands ranchers in the Western United States.

Given its location in Washington DC, most of its resources are probably devoted to public relations and political influence.

One thing is clear: Its anti-horse agenda.

Curiously, the first goal has been accepted by most of the so-called advocacy groups, with some of them involved in the second item as well.

The fourth item is perhaps the most troubling—elimination of HMAs and WHTs so forage consumed by wild horses and burros can be allocated to privately owned cattle and sheep.

Consider this definition regarding public lands from Section 103 of FLPMA:

Go ahead and find a trade group representing oil companies, mining companies, timber companies or outdoor recreation companies that’s as hostile to WHB as these guys.

This was in the news last week but didn’t involve wild horses.  Rick Gore posted this video with his comments.  Based on an article dated 03/12/19 in the Daily Mail.

Video posted in 2016 by the Michigan Farm Bureau about wild horse and burro adoptions at non-BLM facilities.  A list of these events for 2019 can be found here.

Roundups drive the adoptions and ‘multiple use’ drives the roundups.

Which of these ‘other mandated uses,’ mentioned at 2:26, interferes most directly with the health and welfare of wild horses and burros?

a. Recreation

b. Oil and gas development

c. Livestock grazing

d. Wildlife

How many reports have you read about

• Wild horses being attacked by hikers and campers?
• Wild horses being slaughtered by oil companies?
• Wild horse herds being wiped out by wildlife?

The great destroyer is public-lands ranching, which explains the remark at 2:20 about no natural predators.

Refer to the data and remarks in this post and this post.

• Cost to remove a horse from his home range, $400
• Cost to place him in long-term holding, $2 per day
• Revenue from selling his food to a public-lands rancher, $16 per year

Assumptions:

• Costs of transport and short-term holding ($5 per day) can be neglected
• Most horses removed from public lands won’t be adopted
• Fee for livestock grazing is $1.35 per AUM

The adoption assumption is based on a removal rate of 12,000 or more wild horses per year, which floods the program, as in 2018 (lands managed by BLM and USFS).

A wild horse consumes 12 AUMs annually, yielding payments to the government of $16 per year from the rancher to whom the unused forage is sold (12 times 1.35).

The annual cost of holding him in off-range pastures is $730 per year (2 times 365).

Note that $2 per day equals $60 per AUM.  Are you seeing a problem here?

You’re spending $730 per year so you can collect $16 per year.  This is how the mortgage deduction works on federal income taxes.  Ditto for property taxes.

This is what the situation looks like on a cash flow diagram.  There is no payout, no rate of return.

The BLM removed 846 wild horses last fall from the Warm Springs HMA.  The diagram for that would look the same but the figures would be different.

The initial outlay would be -$338,000 (846 times 400), the annual expenditure for long-term holding would be -$617,000 per year (846 times 730) and the revenue from grazing would be +$13,000 per year (846 times 16).

The grazing fee would have to be raised to at least $65 per AUM to make the program economically viable (internal rate of return greater than zero), a 4,700 percent increase from the current amount.

Good grief, people are shocked when horses act like horses.  An incident described as a ‘vicious brawl’ was captured on film and reported yesterday in The News & Observer of Raleigh, NC.  The story was also picked up by other news outlets.

“It’s completely natural and a behavior that we like to see,” said one person interviewed for the story, suggesting that the fertility control program hasn’t totally screwed up the herd, at least not yet.

Last month, the same individual blamed the occurrence of ‘swamp cancer’ at the OBX on climate change.

Congress tells the BLM to fix the wild horse ‘problem.’  Let’s look at the numbers.

Data from this post and this post, rounded, lands managed by the BLM:

• 9 million AUMs per year currently used by livestock
• 12 million AUMs per year available to livestock
• 155 million acres of public lands available to livestock
• 71,000 wild horses and burros currently on public lands
• 27,000 wild horses and burros allowed on public lands
• 27 million acres of public lands available to wild horses and burros

Assumptions:

• Livestock graze 6 months per year
• Horses and burros graze 12 months per year

AUM consumption, current conditions:

• 9 million AUMs per year allocated to livestock
• 0.85 million AUMs per year allocated to wild horses and burros

Animal population, current conditions:

• 1.5 million cow/calf pairs
• 0.071 million horses and burros

Population density, current conditions:

• 9.7 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres
• 2.6 horses and burros per thousand acres

Graphical summary:

AUM consumption, planned:

• 12 million AUMs per year allocated to livestock
• 0.32 million AUMs per year allocated to wild horses and burros

Animal population, planned:

• 2 million cow/calf pairs
• 0.027 million horses and burros

Population density, planned:

• 12.9 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres
• 1 horse or burro per thousand acres

Graphical summary:

There is no wild horse problem, only a livestock problem.  Thanks to the public-lands ranchers, the contractors, the trade groups, their cheerleaders and political allies—all working together to eradicate wild horses and burros—on land that belongs to you.

Tribal leaders have great plans for the future, so they rewrite the law to suit their agenda and the horses are gone.  Sound familiar?

Where are they getting the money to pay the contractor?  Did they receive a ‘donation’ from the federal government?

Refer to the letter titled ‘Amendment to horse capture law: Horses being slaughtered for damage caused by cattle, logging, pollution’ in yesterday’s edition of The Safety Valve in The Wenatchee World.

RELATED: Colville Gather Underway.

BLM reported today that its alliance with Friends of a Legacy provided ‘healthy wild horses and healthy rangeland in 2018.’  As suggested last week, those terms are euphemisms for ‘getting rid of the horses and giving their food and water to livestock.’

The volunteers, who convinced the state legislature to rename a highway east of Cody, are also known for their use of contraceptives to keep the size of the herd in check.

Birth rates have been reduced 70% according to the announcement.

This is not wild horse advocacy and certainly not wild horse preservation.

It is assent to the overpopulation narrative and capitulation to the anti-horse agenda.

RELATED: Livestock Grazing in Wyoming.