Western Horse Watchers Association
Exposing the Hypocrisy, Lies and Incompetence of the Wild Horse Advocates
On the range
The Craig Press reported today that the BLM will remove approximately 50 wild horses from private property in two areas near the Sand Wash Basin HMA.
The operation will be carried out with bait traps.
The start date and NEPA project by which the actions are authorized were not given.
An announcement has not appeared on the BLM news site as of this evening.
On the Pine Nut Mountains HA, south of the HMA, with Cheryl Broumley.
The incident was set to begin this weekend.
The gather area, based on a map from the 2015 Final EA, includes the Fish Creek Ranch allotment, which is grazed by Borba Land and Cattle LLC, among others, according to a report from the Rangeland Administration System. Borba receives 52% of the active AUMs on the allotment.
The HMA is shown in pink and the gather area, which extends well beyond the HMA, has a light green border. The allotments, four of which intersect the HMA, have dark green borders: Lucky C, Arambel, Ruby Hill and Fish Creek Ranch.
The original piece in The Washington Post begins with a story about Kevin Borba, “a cattle rancher in Nevada.” He appears in the following video by Protect the Harvest, which ties him to the area.
“The horses ain’t ever going to leave,” he says.
Over 500 were removed last year, with another 135 slated for removal this year, so PTH will need to update the video. Less wailing and gnashing of teeth, please.
RELATED: ‘Wild Horse Wars’ Pushback.
Refer to this report, posted this morning by The Record-Courier of Gardnerville, NV.
The gather page says the operation has concluded, with 503 burros removed, but a formal announcement has not appeared on the BLM news site.
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The story does not say when and where the incident occurred, other than it was in Florida, and has been picked up mostly by news outlets in India, such as New Delhi Television and Republic World.
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Some of the horses captured in the December, 2019 roundup were to be fitted with GPS radio transmitters and returned to the HMA, according to NEPA Project DOI-BLM-NV-C010-2020-0004-CX, but the news release announcing the end of the incident doesn’t mention it.
The transmitters were to be braided into their tails, according to Attachment 1 of the Categorical Exclusion approved in November, 2019.
The 127 horses remaining after the roundup have blossomed to 215 in less than a year, according to Section 1.2 of the Draft EA for the new resource enforcement plan.
The FY 2021 Omnibus Appropriations and Coronavirus Relief Package, passed by the House yesterday, increases spending for the wild horse and burro program by $14 million, compared to FY 2020, according to the Division G explanatory statement.
That division covers the Department of the Interior (BLM), Environmental Protection Agency, Forest Service and related agencies.
The funds “are in response to the Bureau’s May 15, 2020 proposal to institute an aggressive, non-lethal population control strategy to address the current unsustainable trajectory of on-range wild horse and burro population growth.”
The other 11 divisions can be accessed in a news release dated December 21 by the House Committee on Appropriations.
At or near the Heber WHT with Friends of the Heber Wild Horses.
The Desatoya HMA covers 157,836 acres of public lands in central Nevada and has an AML of 180. The stocking rate allowed by plan is 1.1 horses per thousand acres, slightly more than the average rate of one animal per thousand acres across all areas managed for wild horses and burros.
The horses allowed by plan require 180 × 12 = 2,160 AUMs per year.
The HMA intersects four grazing allotments. Table 3-2 in the Draft EA for wild horse management actions provides grazing seasons and permitted forage inside the HMA but does not provide the allotment sizes. Those were obtained from the Allotment Master in the Rangeland Administration System.
Three of the allotments are managed by the Stillwater Field Office and one is managed by the Mount Lewis Field Office.
Although cattle and sheep are allowed, the following calculations are based on cow/calf pairs only, for a direct comparison to wild horses. The resource requirements of wild horses and cow/calf pairs are said to be equivalent.
The total allotment acreage inside the HMA is approximately equal to the size of the HMA so the HMA was assumed to be 100% subject to permitted grazing.
The Clan Alpine permittees would have to place 851 cow/calf pairs inside the allotment to graze off 10,210 AUMs in 12 months. The Porter Canyon permittee would have to place 605 cow/calf pairs inside the allotment to consume 7,256 AUMs in 12 months.
Note that the stocking rates (densities) for the allotments are several times larger than that for wild horses, consistent with an observation made earlier that productivity goes up when land is designated for livestock.
The forage available to livestock inside the HMA was provided in Table 3-2, so no calculations are required in that column. The total across the four allotments is 9,608 AUMs per year.
The Porter Canyon permittee would have to place 529 cow/calf pairs inside the HMA to consume 6,352 AUMs in 12 months. The total number of cow/calf pairs allowed by plan inside the HMA is 811 and the weighted average grazing season is 11.8 months per year, almost identical to that of the horses.
The stocking rate allowed by plan is 811 ÷ 157,836 × 1,000 = 5.1 cow/calf pairs per thousand acres.
These figures are compared in the following charts.
The HMA—an area set aside for wild horses—is managed primarily for livestock, with the horses receiving just 18% of the authorized forage, excluding wildlife.
The forage assigned to livestock would support an additional 801 horses, for a true AML of 981.
The current population of 215 horses, according to Section 1.2 of the EA, is well within that range, so there are no excess animals and there is no justification for a roundup or fertility control program.
However, given the current management philosophy, and the absence of any meaningful opposition by the so-called advocacy groups, those will be the preferred methods for enforcing the resource allocations and improving rangeland health.
A BLM public affairs officer told the St. George News that the “nonreproduction component” is still an “if,” but does not say why.
She noted that adoptions have declined this year due to changes in the economy, even though the $1,000 incentive is still available.
The adoption program is now called the private care program, according to the story.
RELATED: Confusion Roundup Over?, Confusion Lawsuits In the News.
The incident will begin on or about December 26, according to a BLM news release.
The capture goal is 195 wild horses, with 60 to be returned to the HMA, including 30 mares treated with contraceptives.
The operation was originally scheduled for November 16.
RELATED: Fish Creek Gather Delayed.
The Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program provides standards for humane treatment of wild horses and burros during roundups, transportation, public events and off-range holding, according to a news release issued today.
The policy statement dated December 18 includes links to the program documents.
BLM announced today that the operation was complete, with 459 horses gathered, compared to a goal of 414. Twenty two deaths were reported over a twelve-day period, putting the death rate at 4.8%.
The number of unaccounted-for animals was 100, based on data at the gather page.
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The relationship between initial and final herd sizes, assuming compound growth, is
Initial herd size × (1 + x) ^ n = Final herd size
where x is the annual growth rate and n is the time interval in years. The caret (^) signifies exponentiation, one plus x raised to the nth power.
Solving for x,
x = 10 ^ [1 ÷ n × log(Final herd size ÷ Initial herd size)] – 1
Multiply the result by 100 to obtain a growth rate in percent per year.
The math is a little tedious to do by hand so let’s set it up in a spreadsheet.
In Excel, the formula in cell B9 is =100*(10^(1/B7*LOG(B5/B3))-1). The other cells are just text and numbers. If you use different cells for the data, the formula won’t work.
You can copy the formula and paste it into your spreadsheet, starting with = but don’t include the period. The number format for cell B9 was set to one decimal place.
The post from December 16 included two examples. In the second case, a herd of 100 wild horses becomes a herd of 201 wild horses in five years if the annual growth rate is 15% per year. Those numbers were used to test the spreadsheet.
AMLs are often specified as a range, with the lower end about half of the upper end, to allow for a doubling of the herd size in four or five years.
The proposed AML for the Heber WHT is 50 – 104. If you start with 50 wild horses and find 104 wild horses in four years, what was the annual growth rate?
The Heber AML is discussed on page 21 of the new management plan.
RELATED: More On Growth Rates.
The incident began on December 6. Gather stats through December 16:
Helicopters were grounded on Day 10 due to weather.
Two horses were put down on Day 9 and three on Day 10 due to pre-existing conditions, bringing the death rate to 5.2%.
Foals accounted for 15.3% of the horses gathered. Roughly 50% of captured adults were males and 50% were females.
Body condition scores are not known.
The number of horses shipped is 287 according to the gather page. No shipments were reported on Day 11.
The number of unaccounted-for animals is 121. The operation will likely conclude in another day or two.
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The story of Velma Johnston, for the colts and fillies in your band.
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No activity has been reported since December 9 and the gather page says Final Totals.
An email inquiry sent yesterday to the BLM rep listed in the original news release has not been answered.
With 304 horses captured, the goal was only 60% achieved.
UPDATE: BLM rep just responded, roundup ended December 9.
RELATED: Confusion Lawsuits In the News.
Table 1 of the Draft EA for resource enforcement in the Pancake Complex shows current wild horse populations in the four areas that make up the Complex.
The paragraph immediately below says the upper end of the population range is based on a 2016 survey, plus four years of compounded 20% annual growth.
If you start off with 100 horses and the growth rate is 20% per year, how large will the herd be after four years?
At the end of the first year, you’ll have 100 × 1.2 = 120 wild horses. At the end of the second year, you’ll have 120 × 1.2 = 144 wild horses. At end of year three, you’ll have 144 × 1.2 = 173 horses.
That is the idea of compounding.
At the end of year four, you’ll have 100 × 1.2 × 1.2 × 1.2 × 1.2 = 207 horses. Herd sizes double in four years at a 20% annual growth rate.
If the growth rate is 15% per year, a herd of 100 wild horses would become a herd of 100 × 1.15 × 1.15 × 1.15 × 1.15 × 1.15 = 201 wild horses in five years.
That’s why the BLM says herd sizes double every four to five years.
RELATED: Wild Horse Growth Rates.
A letter cited yesterday in a report by The Record-Courier of Gardnerville, NV implied that you don’t have a self-sustaining population if you provide water to wild horses.
Giving them water, other than in an emergency, doesn’t meet the definition of minimum feasible management, according to the letter, but at the Confusion HMA, cutting ovaries out of mares does.
The mustangs inhabit the southern portion of the Pine Nut Mountains HA, an area identified for wild horses in 1971 but no longer managed for them due to inadequate resources.
The area can support permitted livestock grazing, however.
Western Horse Watchers Association 