He rode into office on a horse, will he be chased from it by a helicopter?

Almost certainly, his replacement will be a defender of the public-lands ranchers, at the continued expense of wild horses and burros.

RELATED: Zinke Leaving Interior?

In 2004, Congress designated December 13th as National Day of the Horse, to recognize the contribution of horses to the economy, history, and character of the United States.

That same year, they amended the WHB Act to allow sale without limitation of wild horses and burros more than 10 years old or those that have been offered unsuccessfully for adoption at least three times, a change that further weakened the protections of these animals, to the benefit of the public-lands ranchers.

The Virginia Range mustangs are not on the agenda for the 12/12/18 meeting but they may be mentioned in the public comments.  For example, concern for the diversionary feeding project and its long-term effects.  Board members cannot respond to questions.

RELATED: NDA OKs Diversionary Feeding of Virginia Range Mustangs?

These folks get it, these folks don’t.  Any questions?

If you want to solve a problem, you have to understand the causes.

Thank you for your attention.

 

Thank you for your attention.

Refer to this report, posted yesterday by the Times of San Diego.  Like most efforts in the wild horse world, it treats the symptoms but does not address the causes of declining wild horse populations on western rangelands, the greatest of which is public-lands ranching.

• Too far downstream in the process
• Focused on the outcomes
• Guarantees more horses will be removed from the range

The director of a national ‘advocacy’ group praised the action, stating that horses should be regarded as “…partners, companions and icons of the American West who must be treated humanely [i.e., darted with PZP], not brutally butchered to supply foreign horsemeat markets.”

She’s fully on board with the overpopulation narrative, a bullshit storyline that draws attention away from the truth.

RELATED: Public-Lands Ranching: How Bad Is It?, Stop the Roundups, Fertility Control is Better!

Refer to this story, posted yesterday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.  Although it acknowledges the presence of livestock on the HMA, it does not question their number and their demand for resources relative to the horses.

“The reduction is needed to maintain wildlife and livestock habitat and reduce wildlife degradation of public lands, according to a BLM advisory.”

The overpopulation narrative prevails: The horses have to go, on lands that belong to them!  Many of the so-called advocates, including the PZP zealots, take this position.

Nobody bothers to look at the data.  If they did, they’d realize that the lion’s share of the forage goes to privately owned cattle and sheep.

This has to stop.  The WHB Act has been inverted.  Nullification is next.  The BLM and USFS need to come clean with the numbers.  Put them out there for all to see.  Let the people decide which species should be removed from western rangelands.

RELATED: Silver King Roundup In the News, Public-Lands Ranching: How Bad Is It?, Stop the Roundups, Fertility Control is Better!

Basically, because it has a wet season and a dry season, not because of climate change.

The wet season, which begins in October, is marked by storms coming in from the west and northwest.  The hills slowly become a velvety green.

Most of the vegetation dies off in the dry season, which begins in May.  The hills become golden brown, dotted in some areas by Oaks, Redwoods and Pines.

Next, consider the fire triangle.  A fire needs fuel, oxygen and an ignition source.

Oxygen is always available, unless you’re living on Mars.  As for the fuel, see the remarks above about the dry season.  Here is Mt. Poop on 05/26/18, barely visible, surrounded by wild oat in its final days, five to six feet tall (for a recent view of the same area, see this video).

The wet season ending in 2017 brought twice the normal amount of rain.  There was a population explosion of everything.  Small animals running all over the ranch that had never been seen before (or since).  The ground was pockmarked with their holes.

Vegetation died off, leaving many seeds.

The wet season ending in 2018 accrued much less precipitation than the previous year until March, which saw rain almost every day.

Here is another photo from 05/26/18.  This is the fuel.

Dead and dying chaparral add to the mix (photo dated 11/24/18).

Ignition sources include, but are not limited to, lightning, camp fires, power lines, cigarettes, off-road vehicles and trailers with safety chains dragging on the road.

Prompted by fires in 2017, Pacific Gas and Electric Company came up will a brilliant idea: shut off power to those at risk.  Rural customers, on private water systems, would lose their ability to fight fires unless they had backup generators.   (This was not done ahead of the Camp Fire.)

Having spent the summer and fall knocking down dead grass, I can tell you it was very thick and heavy this year.  The effort stalled on 11/22/18, after receiving the first appreciable rainfall of the new wet season.  Photo taken 11/24/18.

If you move the piles aside, you’ll see new sprouts (photo dated 11/24/18).

The 2019 wildfire season is now getting started, whether you’re ready for it or not.

First it was global cooling.  Then it was global warming.  Then they switched to climate change so they could play it both ways.

If you have a wildfire, it’s climate change.  If you don’t have a wildfire, it’s climate change.

If you have a hurricane, it’s climate change.  If you don’t have a hurricane, it’s climate change.

If you have an earthquake, it’s climate change.  If you’re Danny Glover.

See this report posted today by AP News.

There must be a mistake.  One got through.  Not a link to a specific post but to the blog.

“We have spoken to the developers and it won’t happen again.”

Eastbound on I-80, descending from Truckee, CA on 11/16/18.  A chance to get away from the smoke-filled valleys of the west.  On the return trip, haze from the Camp Fire was encountered at Auburn, CA, with a strong odor filling the vehicle at Penryn.

This speech may have been produced for a homework assignment, but it’s a fairly good assessment of the current situation in the wild horse world.  H/T Amanda WH.

Today we honor our veterans.  H/T Heart Of The Homefront for the video.

Wild horses and burros consume one million AUMs per year, cattle and sheep consume nine million AUMs per year.  Ten percent vs. ninety percent.  A ‘thriving ecological balance’ is only a few more roundups away.

RELATED: Population Densities on Western Rangelands.

Looking west around 4:00 PM on 11/09/18, Contra Costa County, CA.  Wildfires about 150 miles to the north.

One of the speakers at the WHB Advisory Board meeting last month presented these statistics on wild horses and burros in 2018:

• 82,000 animals at beginning of the year with over 11,000 removed
• 27 million acres set aside for grazing

Also presented at the meeting were some stats on livestock in 2017.  The BLM livestock page provides the available land.

• 8.8 million AUMs consumed
• 155 million acres available for grazing

The WHB data yield a stocking rate of 2.6 animals per thousand acres (71,000 divided by 27,000,000 times 1000).

The aimed-at stocking rate for WHB is one animal per thousand acres (27,000 divided by 27,000,000 times 1000).  This will be an indicator of a successful program, in the eyes of the public-lands ranchers and their allies at the BLM, along with many of the wild horse advocates.

The livestock data yield 1.5 million cow/calf pairs on western rangelands (per previous post), for a stocking rate of 19.4 animals per thousand acres (3,000,000 divided by 155,000,000 times 1000).

The livestock population target is 2 million cow/calf pairs (per previous post), which yields an aimed-at stocking rate of 25.8 animals per thousand acres (4,000,000 divided by 155,000,000 times 1000).  This is another indicator of a ‘successful’ program.

So, if you’re talking about wild horses, public lands can only support one of them per thousand acres.  If you’re talking about domestic cattle, the range can support 26 of them per thousand acres.  In some cases it’s the same land!

This casts a long shadow over the concept of Appropriate Management Levels (AMLs), which supposedly represent the carrying capacity of the land.  In view of these results, they only denote forage consumption the ranchers are willing to tolerate.  They should be renamed Acceptable Forage Losses (AFLs)—the number of horses for a given area that won’t rob too much of the ranchers’ birthright.

Also keep in mind that many wild horse advocacy groups, large and small, agree with the overpopulation narrative, and that is the basis of their fertility control efforts.

They’re not friends of the horses.

RELATED: They’re All Starving, Public-Lands Ranching: How Bad Is It?

Election’s over, swamp prevailed.  This photo from the Drudge Report tells the story.

Could be subtitled ‘Emasculated Speaker Yields Control to Satan’s Sister.’  Butt sex and baby slaughter are back!

Drain the swamp.  Make western rangelands great again!

A report published yesterday by Santa Cruz Sentinel said 130,000 more residents left California for other states last year than arrived from them, with many fleeing the high cost of living.  The overall population grew, however, due to births and immigration.