At the Currituck Outer Banks with Come With Us.
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Chincoteague Mares Taking a Break?
No new foals have been reported in the past week.
The herd has been producing about one a day, on average.
What’s the probability that you get none when you expect seven?
The herd, known for an abnormal sex ratio and elevated birth rate, operates like a puppy mill for wild horses on land managed by FWS.
PREVIOUS: Chincoteague Foal Crop Growing Steadily.
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Forest Service Seeks Bids for Montgomery Pass Roundup
The scope of work, according to the solicitation, is to capture and remove 450 wild horses in and around the Montgomery Pass WHT.
You must sign in to access the attachments.
Proposals are due by May 28.
The BLM was the lead agency for the environmental assessment and the Inyo National Forest is the lead agency coordinating the roundup.
RELATED: BLM Issues Montgomery Pass Final Planning Documents.
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Planning Documents for North Complex Out for Review
The scoping phase was skipped and the process moved directly to the environmental assessment, which was copied to the project folder today.
Comments will be accepted through June 22.
The Complex consists of the Granite Peak, Dogskin Mountains and Flanigan HMAs according to the news release.
Alternative A, the Proposed Action, features removal of excess animals to low AML and application of fertility control pesticides.
The impact on permitted grazing is discussed in section 3.5.
PREVIOUS: Wild Horse Management Plan for North Complex?
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Foal-Free Friday, Suspension of Disbelief Edition
The Salt River advocates have thrown their support behind SB1199, a bill that would place a moratorium on wild horse removals while researchers conduct a genetic viability study to determine how many animals are needed for a healthy breeding population.
As if the herd was still viable.
To give your assent, you must disavow all knowledge of their actions, especially the fertility control program that has morphed into a mass sterilization program because it has outlived the window of reversibility.
There’s still time to act!
If the legislature formed a truth commission, here’s what they’d find:
- The herd is toast
- The advocates have been lying about PZP
- The only way to restore genetic diversity is to introduce mares from other areas
The advocates want you to think they’re the good guys.
They shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near wild horses.
RELATED: Foal-Free Friday, Slow But Certain Demise Edition.
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Seven of Ten Iredell Mustangs Captured, Suspects Identified
The owners have been charged for allowing livestock to run at large and for failing to cooperate with recovery efforts according to an update from WSOC News.
Western Horse Watchers was unable to find a statement about the incident at the Iredell County Sheriff’s Office news page.
PREVIOUS: Sale Authority Horses Running at Large in Iredell County.
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Wild Horse Management Plan for North Complex?
A new project has been opened in ePlanning but no documents have been uploaded.
The HMAs covered by the plan were not identified.
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Would Little Desert Make a Good Wild Horse Preserve?
The parcel doesn’t overlap any areas identified for wild horses but it’s close to the Hill Creek HA and the vacant allotments in Uintah County.
The BLM recently approved the installation of an underground water storage tank and associated trough according to yesterday’s news release.
The CX and DR were copied to the project folder in ePlanning.
The allotment master report puts it in the Improve category, suggesting that your stewards of the public lands are not taking their responsibilities seriously.
On the bright side, approximately 33% of the permitted use has been moved to the suspended column to help the land recover.
The allotment offers 2,003 active AUMs on 43,370 public acres, equivalent to 3.8 wild horses per thousand public acres.
Your faithful public servants claim that public lands in the western U.S. can only support one wild horse per thousand acres, and that rangeland health will suffer if the stocking rate exceeds that value.
Yet in Little Desert, the authorized stocking rate is almost four times higher, even after changes were made to reduce grazing pressure.
If all of the AUMs were in the active column, the equivalent stocking rate would be 5.7 wild horses per thousand acres.
RELATED: The Allotments Tell the Story: They’re Lying, All of Them.
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SB26-1306 One Signature Away from Becoming Law
The bill was signed today by the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate and sent to the Governor for approval.
RELATED: Colorado House Approves Senate Version of HB26-1306.
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SB1199: A Day Late and a Dollar Short
A story by Phoenix New Times says a strike-everything amendment would place a three-year moratorium on wild horse removals from the Lower Salt River while researchers conduct a genetic viability study examining how many animals are needed to maintain a healthy breeding population.
The bill cleared the Arizona Senate in February and has been taken up by the House, where legislators have proposed several amendments.
The House engrossed version states that the population was 273 as of March 28, with a negative growth rate due to a successful fertility control program—which has evolved into a mass sterilization program because it has exceeded the window of reversibility.
Simone Netherlands, instigator of the program, thinks the state is pushing the herd toward long-term genetic collapse.
But it’s a fait accompli—she and her field workers have already done it.
You cannot maintain genetic diversity when the birth rate and breeding population are essentially zero and will stay at zero because the mares have been ruined by fertility control pesticides.
The article noted that the bill, if approved by the House, will have to go back to the Senate for ratification of amendments.
RELATED: Salt River Advocates Hitting Mares in the Back?
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Sale Authority Horses Running at Large in Iredell County
Two persons face misdemeanor charges according to this report by WSOC News.
The reporter did not indicate if the suspects had been holding the animals temporarily before shipping them to another location.
RELATED: More Wild Horses Land in Kill Pens as Sales Rise Sharply.
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Pesticide Caucus Losing One of Its Members
Steve Cohen, who represented Tennessee’s ninth congressional district for almost 20 years, will retire at the end of the term according to a report by The Hill.
Here he speaks about the PZP amendment, an attachment to a FY21 spending bill.
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Chincoteague Foal Crop Growing Steadily
The total reached 56 on May 17, up from 44 on May 10.
Last year’s record was 103.
There was a four-way tie for top producer, with Hoppy, Prince, Thunderbolt and Twist responsible for six foals each.
Gender was evenly split, with 27 fillies, 27 colts and two undetermined.
Refer to this spreadsheet for a ranking of sires.
The herd, engineered for maximum production and revenues, consisted of 23 males and 126 females last August.
FWS allows a maximum of 150 horses in the refuge.
It’s not clear if the advocates, who hate foals, motherhood and genetic diversity, are taking more anti-depressants to cope.
PREVIOUS: Chincoteague Foal Count Blossoms on Mother’s Day.
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Mustang Monday
At the Currituck Outer Banks with Joshua Stauffer.
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Reading the Jackson Mountain Tea Leaves
The advocates point to the number of horses in off-range holding to justify their fertility control programs.
They won’t look at resource availability because those figures would show the darting programs aren’t necessary.
Remember, they’re pesticide salesman, not conservationists.
These data, from the Jackson Mountains EA, tell you why the off-range corrals are flooded with wild horses, that many animals can go back on the range, and that the bureaucrats are lying about rangeland health and the carrying capacity of public lands.
Ask the advocates to explain it.
Here’s a hint from section 3.13 in the EA regarding the Jackson Mountain allotment:
If analysis of monitoring data were to show that the carrying capacity of the Allotment differs from the carrying capacity listed in the Decision, the available forage would be apportioned in the same proportions used in the decision (18% of available forage to wild horses, and 82% to livestock).
RELATED: Jackson Mountains Planning Documents Out for Review.
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Dirty Jobs: Taking CAAWH from Collapse to Strength
The new executive director, who replaced Roy last year on November 1, discusses her plans for salvaging the nonprofit (which is still held in high regard by most advocates).
At 10:40 she mentions a seven-page document with individuals whose material they would not post to socialist media.
At 20:35 she says “We need to be focused on who is the real problem” but omits the cattlemen and sheepherders from her list of culprits.
How are you supposed to win the battle when you won’t even acknowledge the enemy?
The Stockdale Paradox comes to mind:
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
Filmed at the SOWH Conference in Park City.
RELATED: CAAWH Overhaul Not Complete.
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Governor Commutes Sentence of Colorado Elections Clerk
It’s not a pardon but a response to an unfair sentence according to a story by The Hill.
The case may have been a factor in the decision to close the wild horse training program at Cañon City.
RELATED: Was Cañon City Closure Political?
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Jackson Mountains Planning Documents Out for Review
A Draft Environmental Assessment has been copied to the project folder with comments due by June 15.
Alternative A, the Proposed Action, features removal of excess animals to low AML, application of fertility control pesticides, sex ratio skewing and selective return of sterilized animals.
Table 11 provides data for livestock grazing.
The new HMAP is discussed in Appendix XIII.
The news release said the HMAP will set objectives for managing wild horses to maintain a thriving ecological balance within the HMA.
RELATED: Scoping Begins for Jackson Mountains HMAP.
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Stone Cabin Planning Documents Out for Review
A Draft Environmental Assessment has been copied to the project folder with comments due on June 15.
Alternative A, the Proposed Action, features removal of excess animals to low AML, application of fertility control pesticides, sex ratio skewing and castration of stallions.
The footnote on page 6 (10 in the pdf) says that up to 1/4 of the population would be managed as permanently nonreproducing (roughly half of the stallions), on top of the mares sterilized by the pesticides.
The HMAP is discussed in section 2.2.
Table 8 has data for livestock grazing in the Complex.
The news release said that comments, including your identifying information, may be made publicly available at any time.
RELATED: Scoping Begins for Stone Cabin HMAP.
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BLM Issues CX for Warm Springs Burro Removal
The project targets animals on private land according to the news release.
There were no opportunities for public comment.
The method of removal would be in-house bait trap.
A roundup has not been announced and the incident does not appear on the schedule.
The CX said the burros have damaged the landowner’s fences but did not indicate if Oregon was a fence-out state and if the barriers met the requirements of a legal fence.
The ArcGIS Viewer puts the project area in the West Warm Springs Allotment.
Note that it has a green boundary but no orange boundary, suggesting that it’s part of the HMA but not part of the allotment.
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Western Horse Watchers Association 