As indicated in the BLM program data, the agency spent $12.186 million in FY 2022 to capture and remove 16,971 horses and 3,222 burros.

That works out to about $600 per animal.

The on-range population as of March 1 was 64,604 horses and 17,780 burros, compared to AMLs of 23,866 horses and 2,919 burros.

Horses were at 2.7X AML while burros were at 6.1X AML.

There were many more burros than allowed by plan, but horses were targeted 5.3:1.

The expenditure liberated 16,971 × 12 + 3,222 × 6 = 222,984 AUMs per year.

Given that the ranchers pay $1.35 per AUM, the simple payback period (zero percent interest) would be 40.5 years.

Would you say this is a wise use of taxpayer funds?

A grazing fee of $55 per AUM would cut the payback period to one year.

RELATED: Forage Demand of Current Herd.

This result appeared today in a Google search, presumably a paid ad for wild horse removal services.

The Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses, its affiliates, offshoots and supporters, want the horses gone as much as the bureaucrats and ranchers, but they want it done with their favorite pesticide.

They’re pointing to the Virginia Range as a model of wild horse management, when in reality the herd is at the brink of destruction unless the darting program, now in its fourth year, is halted immediately.

The Nevada State Director told KUNR Radio that you need to manage the numbers to fit what’s available for the horses, a clear sign of capitulation to the ranching agenda.

Whenever you see a reference to humane management or cherished/beloved/innocent wild horses, you know you’re being swindled.

Keep that in mind on Giving Tuesday.

RELATED: Advocates Know PZP Sterilizes.

They’ve always known, yet they refer to the pesticide as “reversible.”

Refer to these posts from 2019:

• Contraceptives Are a Back-Door Channel to Sterilization
• Goal of New Darting Program Is Sterilization?

“Self-boosting” means the ovaries have been destroyed, darting no longer needed.

Next week, on Giving Tuesday, don’t give them a penny, give them the middle finger.

RELATED: Few Options for Giving Tuesday.

As noted in yesterday’s pie chart extravaganza, the population on BLM-managed lands as of March 1 was 64,604 wild horses and 17,780 wild burros.

These animals require 64,604 × 12 + 17,780 × 6 = 881,992 AUMs per year.

There are more animals than allowed by plan but are there more animals than the land can support?

Most of their food has been assigned to privately owned livestock.

Overpopulation means they’re trying to take it back.

RELATED: The Carrying Capacity Puzzle.

Nothing will put a smile on the face of your favorite advocate like a new darting rifle.

They’re not cheap.

Don’t settle for a “Stay Wild” cap.

Go big or go home.

Anybody know where to buy millstones?

The advocate in this photo, a volunteer with the Salt River Wild Horse Darting Group, may have sourced the rifle from DanInject USA.

Might be one of the JM models, with prices starting at $2,495.

The JM Standard rifles with 11 mm barrels, smooth and rifled bores, are backordered.

RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, Coming to Your Senses Edition.

Best served with a dollop of sour cream.  Figures from the wild horse and burro program data page.

Expenditures

Off-range holding: $83.438 million

Gathers and removals: $12.186 million

Adoptions: $12.308 million

Other: $30.530 million

Off-Range Holding

Corrals (short term): 23,253

Pastures (long term): 41,116

Total (horses and burros): 64,369

Animals in Off-Range Holding

Horses: 61,438

Burros: 2,931

Total: 64,369

Removal History

FY 2018: 11,472

FY 2019: 7,979

FY 2020: 10,824

FY 2021: 13,666

FY 2022: 20,193

On-Range Population

Horses: 64,604

Burros: 17,780

Total: 82,384

Resource Management, the Most Important Data That Aren’t There

This is where the advocates go off the rails.

Horses and burros: Around 320,000 AUMs per year

Cattle and sheep: Not reported, estimated to be 1,280,000 AUMs per year

Wildlife: Ignored

The chart tells you that areas set aside for horses and burros can support many more animals than the government admits and explains why so many of them are are being taken off the range.

With considerable dietary overlap, you can slice the pie just about any way you want, to suit whatever interests you want to suit.

Did you think the Caliente Complex was zeroed-out because the forage was unsuitable for horses?

RELATED: The Carrying Capacity Puzzle.

Eleven submittals, consisting of one or more comments, have been received as of this morning.

The only document copied to the project folder was the Draft EA.

This chart tells you that the Stone Cabin HMA can support many more horses than the government allows and also explains why it’s eager to get rid of them.

The forage assigned to wildlife was estimated.  The Allotment Master Report provides active AUMs for livestock.

How can the HMA be overpopulated with 651 wild horses, as stated in Table 1, when the BLM authorizes privately owned livestock equivalent to 1,192 wild horses in the same area, on top of the 364 allowed by plan?

Pay no attention to the advocates.  They will only try to convince you that everything can be fixed with an HMAP and darting program.

Actually, the BLM tells you how to solve the problem in Section 2.6.7: “Changes to livestock grazing cannot be made through a wild horse gather decision and are only possible if BLM first revises the LUPs [land-use plans] to allocate livestock forage to wild horses and to eliminate or reduce livestock grazing.”

RELATED: Stone Cabin Pest Control Plan Out for Public Review.

A trailer has been released on Vimeo, but the owners do not allow embedding, even in their own news release!

A quote at the Saving America’s Horses home page says the film tells the story of how one of America’s most treasured and iconic species struggles to survive in a world where two camps claim to be saving them; one that actually does, and the other that is instead found to be brutally eliminating them and driving them to extinction.

If they’re referring to wild horses, Western Horse Watchers is unable to determine who’s in the first camp.

The bureaucrats, ranchers and advocates are in the second camp.

The film appears to have a downstream focus (things that happen after they’re taken off the range), which can only prolong their misery.

An upstream focus is needed—policies and plans that lead to the removals—to bring lasting solutions.

UPDATE: If the trailer looks dated, it’s because the film was originally released in 2012, during the Obama administration.  The producers may now be working on an update or tenth-year anniversary edition.

On the Salt River with Mark Storto.

May be disturbing to viewers wearing “Stay Wild” caps.

The BLM off-range corrals at Hines don’t have room for horses removed from the WHT, according to a story posted yesterday by The Bulletin of Bend, OR, so the Forest Service will build one at the former headquarters of the Crooked River National Grassland.

The facility will have a capacity of 35 animals and is expected to cost $3 million.

The NEPA review will likely consist of a categorical exclusion, which minimizes public involvement and avoids an environmental assessment.

The article said that feed costs are expected to be $7 per horse per day, which means the government will collect $16.20 per year in grazing fees from ranching activity inside the WHT, while it spends $2,555 per year to care for every wild horse displaced thereby,

Would you say that’s a wise use of the public lands?

The WHT lies mostly within the Reservoir Allotment, which has been designated for privately owned sheep.

RELATED: Big Summit Roundup Delayed Until Fall.

The incident will begin on or about December 1, according to a BLM news release.

A roundup last year took 46 horses off the HMA.

Horses will be drawn into the traps with bait and operations will not be open to public observation.

The capture goal is 50 and the removal goal is 25.

The HMA covers 437,120 acres in southern Oregon and the 250 horses allowed by plan require 3,000 AUMs per year.

The stocking rate allowed by plan is 0.6 wild horses per thousand acres, compared to a target rate of one wild horse per thousand acres across all HMAs.

The current population is thought to be 463.

The allotment lies within the Beaty Butte Common Allotment, which offers 26,121 AUMs per year on 506,985 public acres, or 51.5 AUMs per year per thousand acres.

That resource would support 4.3 wild horses per thousand acres.

The stocking rate at the True AML would be 0.6 + 4.3 = 4.9 wild horses per thousand acres, eight times higher than the government allows!

You don’t have a wild horse problem, you have a resource management problem.

Don’t ask the advocates to explain it, they are clueless.

Captured animals will be taken to the off-range corrals in Hines.

A link to the gather stats and daily reports was not provided.

The FY23 roundup schedule has not been posted to the customary location.

RELATED: Beatys Butte Wild Horses Get Short End of Stick.

A story dated November 16 by Fox News includes a photo from the early days of the roundup when gather activity took place at the Dugway Proving Ground.

The gather page does not mention the capture of a domesticated horse.

The operation gave ranchers unfettered access to cheap feed on America’s public lands.

The wild horse and burro program has been a drag on the grazing program for 50 years.

RELATED: Escaped Trail Horse Captured in Cedar Mountain Roundup?

The decision earlier this year by the Corolla Wild Horse Fund to stop darting the Currituck mares, due to an aging population and questions about the long-term effects of PZP on their reproductive systems, shows that one group, at least, may be rejecting the propaganda of the big-name advocacy groups.

Did they cut ties completely?

Doesn’t look like it.  Their herd management page, which describes the darting program, still has links to other organizations, including two of the signatories to the ill-advised Path Forward, and American Wild Horse Preservation, which many know today as the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses.

Volunteers with CAAWH have been pummeling the Virginia Range mares with their favorite pesticide for four years and some may be nearing sterility.  All in a day’s work for the monster in Davis.

They treat their cherished horses the way you treat your cherished ants and roaches.

As for the Path Forward, the advocates have picked through the plan and pulled out the best part—the Montana Solution—which they now claim is the path forward for America’s wild horses.

RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, Choosing Your Own Poison Edition.

A BLM news release dated November 15 describes the hand-thinning of pinyon pine and juniper trees on 539 acres of the public lands in the Kern Mountains, about 50 miles northeast of Ely, NV.

Workers lop the targeted trees and scatter the debris across the treatment area.

Non-targeted species, brush, grasses and forbs are not impacted, according to the announcement.

The effort is part of the Kern Mountains Landscape Restoration Project that will treat up to 12,580 acres of a 15,725-acre project area over several years.

A news release dated December 14 said the trees displace shrubs, grasses and forbs important for wildlife and removing them, combined with seed application, increases food for such animals while reducing the potential for hazardous crown fires.

The Western Watersheds map shows the area is covered by grazing allotments.

The remarks about wildlife may be a cover story for a concerted effort to boost forage production and further enrich the public-lands ranchers, with taxpayers footing the bill.

The ranchers pay five cents on the dollar for the resource, compared to market rates, and fifty percent of grazing receipts, or $10 million, whichever is greater, is plowed back into the program every year in the form of range improvements.  But it’s not enough.

The nearest HMAs are Triple B, Antelope and Confusion.

They don’t like helicopters.

Can’t stand the wild horse shooters.

They’re not thrilled with motorists, tourists and campers.

Don’t care much for the hunters either.

They hate drillers and miners, even though they’re not much of a threat to wild horses.

Why?  They want to dominate the wild horse removal business, so their ranching allies can dominate America’s public lands.

They, and they alone, shall get rid of the horses with safe, proven and reversible fertility control, as explained by the writer of this op-ed in the Arizona Daily Sun.

File under: Charlatans.

Thirty five mares will be returned to the HMA on November 16, according to a BLM news release.

The announcement said they were treated with a fertility control drug but did not specify the type.

The gather page said they would receive GonaCon Equine, which may act as a sterilant with a single dose.

The advocates generally oppose the use of the substance but they strongly support the Montana Solution, which can achieve the same results in as little as five doses (primer plus four boosters).

Mares thus treated, no longer able to conceive, are described as “self-boosting.”

RELATED: Twin Peaks Roundup Ends.

Story provided by NBC affiliate in Green Bay, WI.

Video on YouTube (embedding not allowed).

The immigration status of the wrangler was not given.

The Animal Industry reports presented at the quarterly Board of Agriculture meetings include updates from the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses on its safe, proven and reversible fertility control program.

Here are some figures from the past year:

• December 2021 – The database includes 3,245 individually identified horses
• March 2022 – The database contains 3,077 wild horses
• June 2022 – The database has 3,070 horses
• September 2022 – The database has 3,037 pests

The herd appears to be shrinking, as advertised.

The advocates are doing what they do best—getting rid of wild horses—but will they win the approval of the bureaucrats and ranchers?

The June report said they pumped 1,255 rounds of their favorite pesticide into the herd in FY22.

An aerial survey put the population at 3,567 according to the September report but did not indicate if the area inspected coincided with the area hunted by the advocates.

The same report indicated that five vehicle collisions with horses have occurred to date, compared to 27 in 2021 and 46 in 2020.

RELATED: Virginia Range Darting Program a Model for Herd Management?

On the Salt River with Mark Storto.