The government shutdown filled the public-lands ranchers with anxiety, according to a report by Tri-State Livestock News, causing undue stress about turnout dates and grazing fees.  One thing they won’t have to worry about is the price escalating into a range that brings it in line with the cost of private-sector ranching.

The current fee, which expires at the end of the month, is 4.7¢ per cow/calf pair per day, or $1.41 per AUM.

Try feeding your horse for that.  Or your parakeet.

Wild horse critics like to point at the expense of animals in long-term holding, for which the government spends around $50 million per year.  The cost of feed is about $2 per day, or $60 per AUM.

Given nine million AUMs allocated to livestock annually, with room for three million more, the government receives about $13 million each year from the ranchers.

Add the costs of roundups, adoptions, transport and the like and you have the government spending around $60 million each year so it can collect $13 million from the ranchers.

If you restrict the revenue to lands subject to the roundups, you’d have the government spending at least ten times as much as it hopes to collect in grazing fees.

Those nine million AUMs would support 750,000 wild horses and burros, enough to empty all the off-range corrals and long-term pastures fifteen times over.

Their position is untenable and they know it.  That’s why they spew all the BS about wild horse overpopulation and damage to western rangelands.

If it was really about the money, the government would leave the horses on the range and tell the ranchers to go pound sand.

RELATED: Dire Condition of Wild Horses and Burros in Western U.S.

Except they rob forage from the public-lands ranchers—so we force them out, because cattle and sheep are more amazing.  Film posted today by the Forest Service.

RELATED: Devil’s Garden Adoption Starts Next Week, Devil’s Garden Horses Get Short End of Stick.

True or false?

___ a. Wild horses and burros are starving to death.

___ b. The land can no longer sustain the basic needs of these animals.

___ c. They are displacing cattle, sheep, elk, mule deer and sage grouse.

___ d. They graze vegetation close to the surface, stunting regrowth.

___ e. If livestock were removed, they would still die.

All are true, according to this opinion piece posted today in HJ News of Logan, UT.

No evidence, no citations, no supporting documentation.  Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Given that roughly nine million AUMs are allocated to livestock each year on public lands in the western U.S., 750,000 wild horses and burros could be returned to the range if the cattle and sheep were removed.

That’s fifteen times the number of animals currently in long-term holding!

RELATED: Infamous Fence Experiment, Vegetation Control on the Virginia Range, Wild Horses on the Edge (of the Road), Population Densities on Western Rangelands.

It’s tough being a government dependent.

You’re convicted of arson in 2012 (to hide the deer you killed, probably because they were robbing forage from your livestock), and when you tried to renew your grazing permit in 2014, the government said no.

In 2016, you returned to prison (because the original sentence was too light), sparking the Malheur Incident that ended with the death of another public-lands rancher.

In 2018, your hero (and wild horse hater) pulled some strings in the Trump Administration to get your sentence commuted.

Then, in early 2019, your grazing permit is restored, at the direction of outgoing DOI Secretary Ryan Zinke, according to a report that appeared Friday in Tri-State Livestock News.

Your cattle can once again enjoy the hills near South Steens HMA.  The next wild horse roundup can’t come soon enough.

“The people that are losing their permits from the wild horses, I feel terrible about that.  We’ve regained our ground.  I don’t see that they are going to get the horse deal understood before those people are totally out of business.  What in the world is America thinking about?”

There is nothing admirable in the story.  It’s not about rugged individualism and self reliance, it’s about victimhood and dependency.  Long-term access to cheap feed and periodic removal of other animals that get in your way.  Courtesy of the federal government and the American taxpayer.

The occupation of Malheur was in protest to the Obama administration, nothing more.

The ringleaders were public-lands ranchers from Bunkerville, NV.

Meanwhile, a few miles to the north in Elko County, NV, Madeleine Pickens waits patiently for the BLM to fulfill its end of the deal reached ten years ago to graze former wild horses on 600,000 acres of public land, access to which she obtained legally and with their blessing.

Moreover, the individual(s) who shot several wild horses there last August still haven’t been brought to justice.

Draft legislation, introduced in the U.S. Senate, would require the Fish and Wildlife Service, along with other stakeholders, to create a new plan for ‘managing’ the Corolla wild horses, according to a report posted yesterday in Coastal Review Online.

The move was endorsed by the Humane Society and ASPCA, groups that favor the use of contraceptives on wild horses.

You only have to look at western rangelands to see how this will turn out.

There will be claims of overpopulation, lack of predators and destruction of habitat.

Managers will be forced to achieve a ‘thriving ecological balance’ with ‘other mandated uses’ of the land.  This will come through amendments to the original statute, at the behest of one or more special interests.

Finally, actions will be taken to reduce the number horses, or better yet, replace them with other ‘ventures’ that are more ‘productive.’

Keep the feds out of it.

She’ll go down like a sack of wheat.  H/T KPIX CBS SF Bay Area for the video.

The loss of dozens of wild horses in Australia has been in the news for several days, but was passed over by this writer because the circumstances were not understood and the location was beyond the scope of this blog.

But when liberals use the incident to push their Marxist agenda, well, that’s fair game.

The kook who wrote the piece said the horses “died a horrific, cruel death,” blaming them on “people who drive gas-guzzling trucks, luxury cars, SUVs, and so on.”

Omitted from his worldly concerns are the cruel and horrific deaths experienced by pre-born kids as they are hacked to pieces in their mother’s wombs and sucked out by vacuum cleaners in women’s ‘health clinics.’  (Also missing are the acts committed by the sodomites—so vile they cannot be put into words.)

Nope, he’s worried about carbon emissions and global warming.

Worst of all, he’s not getting the help he needs.

An example of those ‘immoral’ vehicles, which should be outlawed, can be found on the masthead of the WHW YouTube channel.

RELATED: The Most Pressing Medical Issue of Our Time.

Manda Kalimian, founder of the non-profit organization that aims to ‘re-wild’ horses removed from western rangelands, made the following statement in an article posted 01/22/19 by the Navajo-Hopi Observer:

“I think we need to be looking at horse slaughter in the U.S. because we’re still exporting these horses (to Canada and Mexico), but we’re not saving them from being slaughtered.  Humane horse slaughter is an option that needs to be revisited and seriously revisited.”

Enough said.  The mask has come off.

RELATED: CANA Foundation Sponsors Panel on Wild Horse Protection.

No surprise, really.  She appears in this film about the wild horses of Oregon (initially at 06:30), which was reviewed in this post.  She did not impress this writer as a wild horse advocate then, sure doesn’t now.

Refer to this story, published today by The Creswell Chronicle of Creswell, OR.

In keeping with ‘other mandated uses’ of this blog, here is a video of wildlife impacted by (former) wild horses, in particular, their poop.  Filmed 12/30/18.

Politics follows morality.  Contraception is the root of abortion.  Can’t get rid of one without getting rid of the other.

RELATED: Humanae Vitae at 50.

There would be ten to twenty posts about cattle and sheep for every post about horses and burros, even though it’s dedicated to horses and burros.

Reports about wild horses and burros would be removed from time to time, because there are too many of them, and stories about privately owned livestock would be allowed on these pages for just pennies per day.

If you think AMLs represent the carrying capacity of the land, or are somehow related to it, read this press release about livestock grazing that appeared in Wyoming Livestock Roundup in 2011.  Here’s the money quote:

Appropriate Management Levels should be renamed Acceptable Forage Losses, the number of wild horses (or burros) the ranchers are willing to tolerate.

After all, the land was set aside for cattle and sheep, right?

RELATED: Livestock Grazing in Wyoming.

The syndicated report cited in this post earlier today, which has been picked up by news outlets across the country, suggests that the Forest Service built a short-term holding facility (known as the Double Devil Wild Horse Corrals), to circumvent protections afforded by the WHB Act of 1971.

The article, carried by AP News, said “The U.S. Forest Service has built a new corral for wild horses in Northern California, which could allow it to bypass federal restrictions and sell the animals for slaughter.”

It is the belief of this writer that

• The Devil’s Garden horses enjoy all protections of the WHB Act
• The Forest Service has no intent of bypassing the law

The problem is the WHB Act has been amended several times by ranching interests and no longer works to the benefit of the horses.  The sale of these animals without limitation was established in 2004 by the Burns Amendment.

The case is an indication of the amount of work that lies ahead in pushing back against the ranchers, along with their allies in government and media.

Refer to this article by The Wall Street Journal.  As of today the video has five times as many thumbs down as thumbs up.  The fundamental transformation will be easier to complete when men have been subdued by effeminacy and cowardice.  H/T Drudge.

You can’t discuss wild horses and burros without discussing livestock and public-lands ranching.  That did not happen in an opinion piece posted yesterday by Carson Now.

Omission of the topic, common in articles about wild horses, is a sure sign of bias.  This one by Northern Ag of Billings, MT is typical.  No ties to the ranching industry there.

Back to the original piece in Carson Now.

1. They’re a non-native species.  The fossil record shows that horses existed in North America until they, and other large mammals, were wiped out 10,000 years ago.  They were reintroduced by Spanish explorers 500 years ago, as stated in the article.

2. Humans were here a lot longer before any horses.  The fossil record shows that horses pre-date the appearance of humans by tens of millions of years.

3. Free-roaming horses are feral, not wild.  Horses that have been gelded or wear shoes are occasionally noted in BLM gather reports.  They are the exceptions.  Most of the domesticated horses died off decades ago.  Their offspring have never known anything other than wild.  The anti-horse crowd will often apply the feral and estray labels to diminish the importance of these animals and cast doubt on their protected status.

4. Don’t feed them.  Carrots, apples and bits of hay may seem like innocent treats, but giving them to wild horses can make them pushy and disrespectful, jeopardizing their free-roaming status.  Besides, it’s illegal in Nevada.  Providing water is not illegal, but should be done away from populated areas, a practice known as diversionary watering.

5. Horses rob forage from deer, elk, antelope and bighorn sheep.  You forgot livestock.

6. Horses reduce the risk of wildfires by consuming excess vegetation.  Good point.

7. There are not enough predators to keep the horses numbers in check.  That’s because of the livestock grazing in the next valley.

8. Fertility control has not been very effective, allow hunting of wild horses.  The idea is sickening.  And you can’t eat meat that’s been tainted with contraceptives (and dewormers in the case of freed or escaped ranch horses).

Why not start by retiring the grazing permits and giving back the territory that’s been allocated primarily to the public-lands ranchers?

RELATED: Livestock Grazing in Nevada.

Getting rid of wild horses and burros apparently is a top priority of our precious government, but rounding up the criminal invaders—and keeping them out—is not.

Are there other options for protecting the American people?  Consider these data:

• 2,000 miles of border to defend
• $10,000 for a gas operated, belt fed, automatic rifle

Five billion dollars would buy 500,000 rifles (5,000,000,000 divided by 10,000), enough to put one every 21 feet on the border (2,000 times 5,280 divided by 500,000).

That’s way too many.  One every 300 feet would be adequate, which means 35,200 rifles should be ordered immediately (2,000 times 5,280 divided by 300).  Cost would be $352 million (35,200 times 10,000).

Liberals have offered $1.3 billion for border security so this is well within their budget.

Roughly one billion dollars would remain after they cut the PO.

The fence would be six to eight feet high, just enough to slow down the undocumented Democrats and increase the hit probability of the flying lead.  Chain link would be ideal.

Assuming a cost of $50 per foot, the price for the ‘wall’ would be $528 million (2,000 times 5,280 times 50).  Approximately $500 million remaining in the leftist budget.

Ammo consumption would be minimal, a few hundred rounds, enough to convince the murderers, rapists, drug runners, terrorists and socialist voters they’re not welcome here.  Cost impact would be insignificant, not even the magnitude of a rounding error.

The final $500 million could be allocated to technology, just as the Progressives have insisted (for automation and surveillance).  If a soldier sitting in a bunker on U.S. soil can take out an enemy in a foreign nation, these rifles can operated by remote control.

The inflow of Marxist supporters, some unwitting, some not, has to be stopped.  Pay no attention to the national news coverage and imagery of poor, oppressed women and children confronted by racists at the border.  It’s all theater.

Don’t worry, though, these measures will never be put into practice.  The individuals charged with the safety of America are in favor of its fundamental transformation.

They become bolder as more illegals enter the country, and the veil is slowly coming off their plan.

The task for normal, God-fearing Americans is not to save the planet, but to save the republic, and its constitutionally limited government.

To learn more about the instruments of self defense referenced above, which are illegal in many states, watch this video by Iraqveteran8888.

What goes wrong with a person’s brain to turn him into a liberal?

Because of the federal government shutdown.

Oil companies aren’t complaining, mining companies aren’t protesting, the timber companies have been silent.

The PZP zealots never target livestock.

A darted mare still eats.

Wake up people!

RELATED: Ranchers Protest Malheur Horse Transfer.