Source: By BETSY SIMON of The Cody Enterprise
Dazzle was no fool.
Ada Inbody (right), a founding member of Friends of a Legacy (FOAL) and a volunteer with the BLM’s wild horse program, demonstrates how she takes aim with an air rifle to administer porcine zona pellucida (PZP), a form of birth control, to the mares in the McCullough Peaks Herd Management Area as BLM range management specialist Tricia Hatle looks on ready to call the shot Aug. 1. photo by RAYMOND HILLEGAS
Sensing an approach by humans Thursday, the chocolate brown mare on the McCullough Peaks Herd Management Area east of Cody slipped past BLM wild horse specialist Tricia Hatle and volunteer Ada Inbody of Cody, avoiding a dose of birth control during a field darting session.
“We’ve been working on her and figured if she was close today, we might be able to get her,” Hatle said, adding that her goal is to get the birth control to Dazzle by September.
In addition to patience, field darting requires Hatle and Inbody to incorporate themselves into a herd and scope out a horse that hasn’t been treated with birth control to help keep down the wild horse population.
All information on the horses is tracked using a photo database and description of each animal.
Once an untreated horse is found, Hatle prepares the shot for Inbody to administer with a dart gun, aiming at the horse’s backside.
“You need to be 20-40 yards away from the horses to get the best shot with the dart gun,” Hatle says. “It’s a little dart that pops in and out of the horse’s rump, but we only take a shot if we know the horse won’t know it was us. They are smart animals and if they know we did it, they won’t let a human near them next time.
“We need them to think it’s a horse nearby or a fly, so that’s why it can take so long to do this. We have to wait for the perfect opportunity – it takes patience.”
There is always a chance a dart could hit a stud or an unintended horse or human. But Inbody, a regular Annie Oakley, makes sure that won’t happen.
“I never miss,” she says.
In cases like Thursday where no shot is taken, the darts must be used within 48 hours.
Tricia Hatle shows the dart used to administer porcine zona pellucida to the mares in the McCullough Peaks Herd Management Area during a demonstration of how BLM is providing PZP, a form of birth control, to the mares to manage the herd. Photo by RAYMOND HILLEGAS
Darts cannot be reused and the birth control, which is made in Billings, is pricey at $24 per dose.
If a shot isn’t going to be a sure thing, as it wasn’t Thursday, Hatle said they simply try later.
The BLM started using field darting in 2011 and it’s a process that seems to be working to administer the birth control and manage the wild horse population.
About 65 mares receive the birth control annually, which is a mixture of shredded pig ovaries that blocks sperm from reaching the horse’s eggs.
And Hatle said it seems to be working.
In 2009, a total of 46 foals were born. That figure dropped to 14 in 2012.
Hatle says she speaks to groups about the BLM’s field darting work to make the public aware of the practice.
“We’ve been reported by people before for shooting the horses, so we just want to make people aware of what we’re doing,” she said.
Where other herds in the state are tracked with helicopter gathering, Sarah Beckwith, public relations specialist for the BLM, said the McCullough Peaks herd is the only one in Wyoming where helicopter gathering is not used with the wild horses.
“When you have a large herd, helicopter gathering is the most humane and safe way to move the horses,” Beckwith says. “But this is an unusual site, where the horses are intimately tracked, and field darting works here.”
An appropriate adult wild horse population that balances public resources and uses is 70-140 horses, according to the BLM.
Hatle said it’s best to keep the McCullough Peaks adult herd at about 100 to maintain the herd, so field darting takes place seven days a week,
Earlier this year the BLM completed a bait trap removal of 20 wild mustangs and seven domestic horses from the McCullough Peaks. The trapped horses were put up for adoption.
Hatle says it’s easier to track the horses in the summer because they congregate near water sources, which are limited later in the year.
Hatle says the shots last 9-12 months, so the BLM can adjust how birth control is delivered in case the herd size needs to grow.
The birth control treatments won’t always stop pregnancies from occurring, though, as shown by the recent birth of a foal named Lansa.
Inbody says the injections don’t harm the fetuses, but give the horses a better quality of life.
“This is the best and most humane form of birth control for the horses,” she says. “The mares are nursing their foals longer now and they aren’t lactating or foaling every year, and it’s amazing how good and healthy they look.”
Click (HERE) to comment directly at the Cody Enterprise
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Categories: Horse News, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Manage them right into extinction but i guess it’s better than the holding facilities that more resemble Nazi interment camps minus shelter.
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How about the part where Beckwith says helicopter gathering is the most humane method when large herds are involved. Since when did helicopter gathering ever become humane? NEVER. These volunteers with BLM may have their hearts in the right place , but it seems as if BLM has taken their minds., in other words, brainwashed. This is the only herd in Wyoming that is not subjected to the helicopter torture. Sad, really!
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It never ceases to amaze me that MAN has decided he has a better plan than the one originally designed by mother nature. You know the one that worked for eons before MAN even took his first breath in the eco-system.
I hear the justification “it’s better than the roundups”. This mental midget mindset is stupid at best. We just paid the NAS $2,000,000.00 to tell us that leaving them alone and allowing them to let their numbers adjust to the forage available is best.
“The primary way that equid populations self-limit is through increased
competition for forage at higher densities, which results in smaller quantities of forage available per animal, poorer body condition, and decreased natality and survival.”
This is mother nature’s way. Survival of the fittest. She has never used DRUGS!
Of course this requires the BLM to stand down…stop the roundups so the numbers can increase and the forage become thin as the population grows. We can artificially increase the population by releasing the 50,000 currently held in captivity, relieving the American Taxpayer an $80 million a year operational cost.
The NAS report mentioned the way in which the BLM established AML’s. You’ve probably noticed when you speak with BLM folks they tell you the AML’s were set a long time ago according to some Land Usage Policy and cannot be changed unless a new study is done.
The NAS had this to say…
“Environmental variability and change, changes in social values, and the discovery of new information require that AMLs be adaptable. Adaptive management, an iterative decision making process, can incorporate development of management objectives, actions to address these objectives, monitoring of results, and repeated adaptation of management to achieve desired results. A key tenet of adaptive management is treating management actions as testable
hypotheses.”
The AML in this article is 100 animals yet we’ve all read the reports from the BLM’s own geneticist Dr. Gus Cothran that to maintain genetic viability a herd must have between 120 and 150 breeding age animals.
The shooter in this article also mentioned the shots last 9 to 12 months but research has found that permanent effects are also possible. This part of PZP is still a question mark.
I guess bottom line in my mind is Man’s micro-managing is destructive and if we have to resort to the use of artificial drug induced infertility we have failed as stewards. You remember stewardship don’t you? It’s the command from God.
“For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.”
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You know i would have better about this if those doses of birth control were aimed at the BLM…….. I think their the only ones needing Control !!!!!!!! To bad they dont have doses of Understanding and Brains plus birth control !!!!!!! How can so many remain so darn unaware of what they are doing so long ????????? isnt there anyone there who knows the consequences of all this??????
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Along with the widespread and continuing capture and removal of wild horses from their legally designated land, making decisions to apply a fertility drug to wild horse herd mares puts wild horse herds in danger of a die-off if/when any natural or manmade disaster strikes the herd management area – be it wild fire or an extreme winter or mass predation or other. If a majority of the mares are non-reproducing and thus zero or even just a few births, then it is easy to see that the entire herd would be in jeopardy – both genetically and physically – and would diminish their ability to survive into the future. We then have a herd that is not safe on its own range. The horses must be protected as the United States law states they shall be and as the laws of nature demand.
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Are any of you aware that The Cloud Foundation has asked for an INCREASE in the PZP program in the Pryors? That proposal has now gone on to another comment period. With the new PZP plan, every mare on the Pryor Range will be given PZP. Comments can be submitted until September 6, 2013.
While I am not completely opposed to the use of PZP, I am opposed to the over use of it, which I feel this new plan will be doing.
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In 1971, when Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, Wild Horses and Burros were found roaming across 53.8 million acres known as Herd Areas, of which 42.4 million acres were under the BLM’s jurisdiction which (using the questionable theory that it could take up to 240 acres per horse in some of the arid public lands) would mean that the wild horses and burros should and could have a population of about 224,166 on their legally designated land. When their land is actually provided to them PRINCIPALLY as the law states and their wild population gets close to 224,166 on their land then I will be more than pleased to re-evaluate my position about any type of artificial fertility control for our wild ones. Until then, to discover the reason for the momentum of artificial fertility control and capture and removal of thousands of wild horses and burros … just follow the money.
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If you go to page 192 in this section of Resolving Human-Wildlife conflicts~~it states the major problem with using fertility drugs is they suppress sexual and social behavior and can change the social structure of a population- therefore fertility drugs should not be a solution.http://books.google.com/books?id=82L3HD6lCeQC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=PZP+fertility+drug&source=bl&ots=rqjRN3Vnci&sig=Kn-JSnorT_WrIvDuJOfgqxlwSns&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3toDUr_cA6nYyQH3tYHAAg&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=PZP%20fertility%20drug&f=false
And if some of the organizations who claim to be on the side of the wild horses are wanting fertility drugs-I would say that they have forgotten what their founding goal was and are now in it for the money.
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Uh oh, them sounds like fighting words! It does not make sense for horse advocates to be fighting amongst themselves, they have enough enemies out there in the KILLING ARENA.
You need to stick together my friends!
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Not fighting words-but have been here long enough to know that this is the real world and money will sway people – it would not be the first time.
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We certainly don’t hear the truth about these drugs, do we? But then think back a few years when human birth control drugs were first prescribed!! Noone EVER mentioned anything about blood clots or any other side effect until women had died! Doesn’t give me much confidence in the equine PZP. Nobody really knows what actual side effects there are from even just one dart – and some of these mares are being darted more than once. The BLM is already changing the social structures of these herds – and to add to that – the darting of mares? The money is what matters to them. I still feel the Cloud Foundation & AWHPC are really trying to do the best they can – and joining with the Humane Society frankly brings more money and makes more people aware of whats being done to the horses & burros. And we all know the more people educated to care about the horses & burros – the better.
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From what I have been told…..The Cloud Foundation has joined forces with AWHPC which has joined forces with HSUS which makes a shit load of money from the use of PZP. So once again it boils down to money….. Horses be damned…..
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You may want to look through some of the HSUS income tax report – BIG money!
Click to access 2011_hsus_form_990.pdf
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So we humans are darting the underpopulated wild horses now! Shouldn’t we rather be darting ourselves?!
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Now were talking !!!!!
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It is alot more humane than slaughtering them needlessly and makes alot of sense at keeping their numbers at bay
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Knowing that your heart is in the right place for our wild ones … also remember that two wrongs don’t make a right and we cannot justify doing something wrong or bad just because it is less wrong.
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I would have to agree with the idea of “mother nature” taking care of itself. If left alone then the wild horses would adjust their own selves according to how much forage is available. This is the way of nature and it may not be pretty, but the strong will survive to carry on the species. As it is now, man is making the decisions which ones will reproduce…are they the best judge of this? NO…and for all of this management we will see an end to the wild horse populations unless this needless control stops. Just leave the horses alone and they will survive just as they have for hundreds of years.
This is a sad situation and another example of our wonderful government wanting to “manage” everything….they want to manage humans and what we eat, what we do, etc. Interesting comment on darting humans….lets ask for that?? HA HA Starting with the government. We do not need anymore greedy and stupid people reproducing more of the same!
Now they are heading on a path of destruction. I am absolutely so disappointed with TCF for asking for this change to the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustangs. Is the goal for no more round-ups, or is the goal for a healthy herd of WILD horses???????? Well they should be ashamed, because there will be no need for anymore round-ups when there are no more wild horses!! HELLO…wake up people, this is just what they all want…..government greed and more land for others to make money on……
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aka Annie Oakley, Ada Inbody needs a shot in her ass. A big waste of taxpayer’s money. Leave the wild horses alone, No more killing round-ups, no 50,000 wildhorses in pens with no shade at taxpaye’s cost $120,000.00 a day. This has to stop now !!!!!
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Corruption and greed seems to be the real story here and sadly,we all will pay the price if action isn’t taken to protect these magnificent creatures from extinction, NOW! They are so much a part of who we are, as Americans and I believe it’s our obligation to do everything in our power to protect them from harm.
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Dear Jean, a Huge AMEN !!!!!!
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