On the Salt River with Mark Storto.

The incident occurred last year east of Rawlins and the HMAs affected by the Rock Springs RMP amendments, when the group tried to access public lands interspersed among private parcels of roughly the same size.

Owners of the private areas consider it unneighborly for outsiders to hopscotch through their land by crossing from one public section to another at the corners where they meet, according to a story dated November 10 by The Wall Street Journal.

“Their land” taken to mean all of it.

The case involved the use of a fence ladder to effect the crossing, shown in an August 23 report by WyoFile.

Apparently, at one of the corners, the landowner, or an agent thereof, drove T-posts into the ground and wrapped them in chains to prevent anyone from crossing at that point.

Note the marker between the posts at the bottom of the photo in the WyoFile article.

Here is an example from the Virginia Range.  Lands in this area are privately owned.

The private parcels in Wyoming are owned by Elk Mountain Ranch, indicated by the signs in the WyoFile image.

Elk Mountain Ranch is owned by Iron Bar Holdings, which is controlled by North Carolina pharmaceuticals magnate Fredric Eshelman.

The four men were acquitted of criminal trespass charges in state court earlier this year, but Iron Bar has since filed a civil trespassing complaint against them, which will be heard in federal court in 2023.

The map provided by WSJ suggests the ranch occupies the same space as the Home Ranch Allotment, which can be found in the Western Watersheds map.

Turns out that Iron Bar holds all of the active AUMs in the allotment, making Eshelman a public-lands rancher!

This explains the remark about “their land” above.

Elk Mountain is probably the base property that secures grazing preference on the public parcels.

The allotment is in the Custodial category, probably because most of the acreage and forage are associated with non-BLM lands.

As for the BLM resources, the allotment offers 585 AUMs per year on 7,152 public acres, or 81.8 AUMs per year per thousand acres, enough to support 6.8 wild horses per thousand acres on a twelve-month grazing season.

The BLM maintains that public lands in the western U.S. can only support one wild horse per thousand acres.

The agency also maintains that corner crossings in the Checkerboard or elsewhere are not considered legal public access.

Parachuting might be an option.

Western Horse Watchers does not know if hunters can use fence ladders to haul their trophies out of such areas.

You can order one at Bonfire.  Seven days remaining.

Caps, the best way to signal your support for the Montana Solution, are not available.

You may need a diploma from the Billings School of PZP Darting to get one.

RELATED: Do “Stay Wild” Caps Absolve the Advocates from Wrongdoing?

The advocates, eager to dominate the wild horse removal business, generally don’t support the use of GonaCon Equine, which may act as a sterilant.

As noted by the Wild Beauty Foundation, the product can be irreversible, sterilize wild horses completely and has been proven to shrivel the ovaries of wild mares.

The Montana Solution, favored by most of the advocates, including the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses, its affiliates and offshoots, accomplishes the same thing in as little as four years, but these charlatans have invested so much in its promotion they’ll never admit their errors.

You only have to look at Assateague Island, where the pesticide was applied for over twenty years, to see the destruction.

The advocates are now trying to ruin the herds on the Virginia Range and Salt River, among others.

Meanwhile, the search for a better poison goes on.

These “vaccines” don’t prevent illness, they cause it, and are probably more harmful in the long run than the “cruel and costly” helicopter roundups they seek to replace.

RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, Anathema to the Advocates Edition.

The original solicitation was withdrawn due to unspecified protests, according to today’s news release.

A new request has been posted.

This is a great opportunity for the advocates to advance their anti-horse agenda, build lasting relationships with former adversaries and embrace their heretofore cruel and costly helicopter roundups.

Proposals can be submitted through November 30.

RELATED: Proposals Sought to Catch, Treat, Release Wild Horses and Burros.

If you’re trying to sell the Montana Solution, win the approval of the bureaucrats and ranchers, and dominate the wild horse removal industry, are you going to tell your donors that areas identified for wild horses can support many more animals than the government allows?

RELATED: The Carrying Capacity Puzzle.

The BLM sells about 12 million AUMs to livestock operators on 155 million acres of public lands in the western U.S. every year.

That resource would support one million wild horses on a twelve-month grazing season, for an equivalent stocking rate of 6.5 wild horses per thousand acres.

The Virginia Range was carrying ten wild horses per thousand acres before the advocates got involved.

Land designated for wild horses, a subset of the acreage above, can only support one wild horse per thousand acres, according to the official narrative (27,000 animals on 27 million acres).

Why the difference?

The management plans assign most of the forage to privately owned livestock.

By how much are the horses being cheated?

The forage assigned to livestock is the missing piece in the carrying capacity puzzle.

Carrying capacity = Horses allowed by plan + Horses displaced by livestock

The number of horses displaced from their lawful homes by permitted grazing is

6.5 × 27,000,000 ÷ 1,000 = 175,500

The True AML, the number of wild horses the land could support if it was managed principally for them, is

27,000 + 175,500 = 202,500

The figure based on the land originally identified for wild horses, around 53 million acres, is

(1.0 + 6.5) × 53,000,000 ÷ 1,000 = 397,500

This is enough to empty all of the off-range corrals and long-term pastures six times over!

You don’t have a wild horse problem on America’s public lands, you have a resource management problem.

Who’s doing the cheating?

The bureaucrats, of course, with the cooperation of the ranchers and advocates.

Concerns about the rising costs of the wild horse and burro program are bullcrap.

More and more horses will be taken off the range and the costs will go wherever they need to go to protect the grazing program and the public-lands ranchers.

RELATED: Livestock Outnumber Horses and Burros on Public Lands?

Refer to this news release on EIN.  Includes a link to a letter contradicting their belief that equine slaughter is a humane form of euthanasia.

Cattle and sheep are not, and never were part of the North American ecosystem.

The thriving ecological balance of the original statute referred to the relationship between wild horses and wildlife, not privately owned livestock.

Fifty mares treated with GonaCon Equine will be returned to the HMA on November 14, along with twelve stallions, according to today’s news release.

The event will be open to public observation.

Smaller herd sizes and lower birth rates keep the resource scales tipped in favor of the public-lands ranchers for longer periods of time.

The advocates have unmatched expertise in that regard.

RELATED: Cedar Mountain Roundup Over.

On the San Rafael Swell with Camp and Ride.

The writer of a column appearing yesterday in Deseret News complained about the removal last year of cherished wild horses at Onaqui Mountain and Sand Wash Basin, noting they were in good condition and forage was adequate.

What he didn’t tell you is that most of the resource was assigned to privately owned livestock, a result of BLM’s planning and decision process.

The roundups enforced resource allocations already on the books.

If you go too fast on the freeway, you get a ticket.  If you eat too much in your lawful home, you’re removed.

The horses are pests, they rob the permittees of their birthright.

The remark about “A top advocacy group” is probably a reference to the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses, purveyor of the Montana Solution and defender of the public-lands ranchers.

With the roundups over, the Onaqui and Sand Wash advocates keep the herds from bouncing back with a pesticide that can sterilize the mares in as little as four years, giving the ranchers unfettered access to cheap feed in areas set aside for the horses, as specified in the land-use plans.

The writer supports these efforts.

File under: Charlatans.

The Virginia Range advocates rely on predators to take out any foals that slip through their safe, proven and reversible darting program.

Could that be the case at the Salt River?

The release of this video will likely be met with resentment in darting circles and may prompt a root cause investigation to understand how the travesty occurred and to identify corrective actions.

One of the most astonishing developments in the wild horse world is the zeal of the advocates to get rid of wild horses.

In the old days they would walk away.

Today, they are full-fledged participants in the destruction.

RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, Brainwashing the Youngsters Edition.

The Oak Creek herd lives on private land in the Tehachapi Mountains north of Los Angeles, now cluttered by man-made bird choppers.

You can stop the spread of eyesores like this on November 8.  Not the horses, the Democrat pinwheels.

The report did not indicate if the advocates had offered to get rid of them with the Montana Solution.

The updated Decision Record and Environmental Assessment were posted to the project folder on October 21.

The active AUMs in the Alvord Allotment would increase to 8,992, as shown in Table 1 of the DR, compared to 7,355 in the previous authorization.

Of the 1,892 previously suspended AUMs, 255 would remain off limits, putting 1,637 in play, for a new total of 8,992.

New authorization = 1,892 – 255 + 7,355 = 8,992 AUMs per year

The resource increment would support an additional 136 wild horses.

Instead, those animals will remain in off-range holding at a cost of $248,200 per year, to be laid at the feet of American taxpayers, while the BLM collects an additional $2,210 per year in grazing fees from ranching activity inside the HMA.

Would you say the change qualifies as a wise use of the public lands?

Taxpayers and wild horses have been rooked by the bureaucrats, with the cooperation of the advocates (yes, the HMA has a fertility control program), to prop up a failed industry on America’s public lands.

RELATED: Two Days Left to Comment on Alvord Sleight of Hand.

These horses are a national treasure.  They’ve survived on their own for 500 years.

Today, they are threatened not by man-made climate change, which is a hoax, not by visitors, motorists, development or swamp cancer, but by Meg Puckett and her ruinous darting program, carefully omitted from this story by PBS North Carolina.

Another exmple of managing the numbers to fit what’s available for the horses, a guiding principle of the advocates.

RELATED: Currituck County Commissioners Should Study Assateague Island.

The decision was announced yesterday, according to a story by The Oregonian, despite the prosecutor’s recommendation of seven more years behind bars.

The defendant pleaded guilty to arson at a meatpacking plant in Redmond, Oregon and to conspiracy to commit arson at the wild horse corrals near Litchfield, California.

The fire in Oregon was intended to stop the slaughter of wild horses at the facility.

The goal at Litchfield was to destroy the corrals and set the horses free.

RELATED: Litchfield Arsonist Pleads Guilty.

The project folders have been populated with maps and documents.

Comments on the Draft EA will be accepted through November 30.

The Proposed Action features removal of excess burros through one or more roundups, population suppression using PZP or GonaCon-Equine and IUDs, and GPS tracking of animals over a ten-year period, as discussed in Section 2.2.1 of the EA.

The HMA covers 89,392 acres in eastern Utah and the 100 burros allowed by plan require 600 AUMs per year,

The equivalent stocking rate is 0.6 wild horses per thousand acres, slightly more than half of the target rate across all HMAs.

The current population is thought to be 151, as shown in Table 2.1.

The HMA intersects two grazing allotments, not mentioned in the BLM news release.

About 70% of the HMA falls within Robbers Roost, with a tiny fraction in Saucer Basin, according to the Western Watersheds map.

Table 3.1 does not provide the percentages of the allotments inside the HMA, so the forage assigned to livestock and the number of burros displaced from their lawful home by permitted grazing are not known at this time.

RELATED: Resource Enforcement Actions Coming to Canyonlands HMA?

On the Virginia Range with Western Horse Watchers.

As noted previously, privately owned livestock in the Stone Cabin HMA, the lawful home of wild horses, receive 3.3 times more forage than the horses.

A statement at the end of Section 1.1 in the Draft EA for resource enforcement actions in the Stone Cabin Complex says the AML of 364 must not be exceeded to achieve progress toward standards for rangeland health established by the Mojave-Southern Great Basin RAC.

The current horse population is 651.

Permitted grazing is equivalent to 1,192 wild horses.

Reducing livestock would take more pressure off the land and have a greater effect in achieving the stangards.

Perhaps the statement is a ploy to protect ranching interests at the expense of wild horses?

If you put the question to the advocates, they will defend the bureaucrats and ranchers, arguing that excess animals (of which there are none) should be removed with the Montana Solution, not helicopters.

“We’re changing the way wild horse herds are managed, not their land.”

Seems like they’re not playing for the home team.

Ever notice that?

RELATED: Too Many Wild Horses at Stone Cabin HMA?