“We were about to post the BLM’s latest propoganda and lie-fest when Grandma Gregg sent an email that lit me up. Instead of posting her comment after the article we are using it as a ‘forward’ to the idiot article, it’s just too much…so Grandma, tell us what you think and take it away…!” ~ R.T.
photo by Terry Fitch of Wild Horse Freedom Federation
FYI although BLM has claimed that the 1971 population was about 25,345 they FAIL to include the over 70,229 wild horses and burros that were “claimed” by anyone who wanted to round them up from 1971 to 1979. These would be “mustangers” in the truest form of the word and these WH&B would have gone to slaughter – i.e. sold by the pound. And these over 70 thousand are ONLY the ones that were reported and I don’t think anyone familiar with the wild horse and burro issue would disagree that many many many others would have been captured by mustangers and NOT “reported”.
THE LIE:
BLM seeks to expand initiatives to address problems with new legislative authority
- 46,000 Horses Already Being Cared for Off-Range
- Off-Range Care of Unadopted Horses Would Exceed $1 Billion
- Necessary Horse Gathers Exceed Available Space and Funding
The Bureau of Land Management announced today that as of March 1, 2016, more than 67,000 wild horses and burros are roaming Western public rangelands – a 15 percent increase over the estimated 2015 population.
The updated numbers show more than twice the number of horses on the range than is recommended under BLM land use plans. It is also two and a half times the number of horses and burros that were estimated to be in existence when the Wild and Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act was passed in 1971. To help address the problem, BLM is seeking legislative authority for additional initiatives.
“Over the past seven years we have doubled the amount of funding used for managing our nation’s wild horses and burros,” said BLM Director Neil Kornze. “Despite this, major shifts in the adoption market and the absence of a long-term fertility control drug have driven population levels higher. A number of program reforms are underway, but assistance is needed from our local, state, and federal partners.”
While herds of wild horses consistently double in size every four years, there has also been a dramatic decrease in adoptions in recent years. In the early 2000s, nearly 8,000 horses were being placed with private adopters each year. Due to a number of economic factors, that number is now down to roughly 2,500 animals each year, compounding an already difficult management situation.
The total lifetime cost of caring for an unadopted animal that is removed from the range is substantial. Costs for lifetime care in a corral approaches $50,000 per horse. With 46,000 horses and burros already in off-range corrals and pastures, this means that without new opportunities for placing these animals with responsible owners, the BLM will spend more than a billion dollars to care for and feed these animals over the remainder of their lives. Given this vast financial commitment, the BLM is now severely limited in how many animals it can afford to remove from the range.
To address these issues the BLM is taking a number of steps, including sponsoring a significant research program focused on fertility control; transitioning horses from off-range corrals to more cost-effective pastures; working to increase adoptions with new programs and partnerships; and requesting two new pieces of legislative authority — one to allow for the immediate transfer of horses to other agencies that have a need for work animals and one that would create a congressionally-chartered foundation that could help fund and support adoption efforts. Additional tools and resources are needed to bring this program onto a sustainable path.
The table below shows the 2016 West-wide, on-range population on a state-by-state basis as of March 1, 2016. This year’s 15 percent increase over the 2015 population compares to an 18 percent increase from 2014 to 2015. The BLM plans to remove 3,500 wild horses and burros from Western public rangelands in 2016.
Wild Horse and Burro On-Range Population as of March 1, 2016
| State | Horses | Burros | Total | Maximum AML |
| AZ | 318 | 5,317 | 5,635 | 1,676 |
| CA | 4,925 | 3,391 | 8,316 | 2,200 |
| CO | 1,530 | 0 | 1,530 | 812 |
| ID | 468 | 0 | 468 | 617 |
| MT | 160 | 0 | 160 | 120 |
| NV | 31,979 | 2,552 | 34,531 | 12,811 |
| NM | 171 | 0 | 171 | 83 |
| OR | 3,785 | 56 | 3,841 | 2,715 |
| UT | 5,440 | 400 | 5,840 | 1,956 |
| WY | 6,535 | 0 | 6,535 | 3,725 |
| TOTAL | 55,311 | 11,716 | 67,027 | 26,715 |
Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Such bull crap!! They use enough of our money already!! One can read between the lines…next step slaughter! I say dismantle and fire every last employee unless they work in the the plans the American people have for the horses!!
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Their lies get more outrageous and implausible every year. The sad thing is so many people are buying this bullcrap. The BLM continues to round up and remove wild horses and burros, but then whine about the financial crisis they are in having to care for them in holding. I am afraid that the BLM is moving again towards doing something drastic to get rid of these mustangs.
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Keep fighting!
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The government doesn’t care what we care about. They laugh at the lies they tell.
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The BLM could never could count or account for wild horses and burros with any accuracy. Historically the agency has ignored illegal roundups of wild horses and the end result of slaughter in killer plants. A friend who worked at the horse killer plant in Redmond, Oregon in the 1980’s saw truckloads of wild horses coming in for slaughter. She worked in the office and was the one who took the cash payments out to the drivers. I knew horse rustlers aka mustangers, who in 1990’s that were getting calls from ranchers to come and round up a bunch for slaughter. And, on their own (rustlers) just went out and rounded up wild horses on public lands for some good side money. I reported one rustler to a wild horse official and the rustler heard about my tip from his local brand inspector. Also, in the 1990’s author & wild horse activist Michael Blake (may he RIP) and others paid for an airplane to count Nevada’s wild horses and the independent numbers came up short several thousand of the BLM’s count. The BLM discounted the independent count when it went public because it wasn’t done with helicopters, but a small plane. One of the horse counters that flew for Michael was an experienced horsewoman with mustangs on the range and in the corral. She was amazed at the relentless and thorough flights of the pilot. Not only are the counts on the range inaccurate, it’s been shown over and over again the BLM cannot track the wild horses in their holding facilities or where the horses end up once sold.
Has the BLM culture and leadership stance changed from 20 years ago? The recent statements in the media by the BLM are worrisome. The BLM announced it’s dropping the fertility control program in northern Nevada due to a threatened lawsuit by wild horse advocates. Fertility control is not my preference as one of the more innovative options to control the so called overpopulation of wild horses. However, to drop the fertility control program is a smart tactic to further splinter and weaken the advocacy community and their credibility with the public. In addition, the media has reported Nevada’s BLM Director said 4,000 wild horses need to be rounded up. Brutal roundups of wild horses are the management method that has failed and is costing the taxpayers millions every year. Finally there is BLM announcement of a billion dollar shortfall in the wild horse and burro program. Could it be that these recent statement to the media are part of a strategic BLM PR plan to make slaughter of wild horses (as they proposed in 2009) more palpable to the taxpaying public?
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Bonnie – you speak the truth. There is a legal term for how the BLM operates. It is “Regulatory Capture”. Regulatory capture is a form of political corruption that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure; it creates an opening for firms to behave in ways injurious to the public (e.g., producing negative externalities). The agencies are called “captured agencies”.
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thank you for the info!
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“Somebody is lying about the numbers of wild horses in America,”
Story copied from “Keith Rogers Articles 1990-94”
Save Our Wild Horses, http://www.saveourwildhorse.com
Census Slashes BLM Wild-Horse Count
By Keith Rogers
Rundate: 10/14/92
`We’re going to wake up one day and the horses are going to be gone,’ says aerial spotter Tim Wilson.
There are 70 percent fewer wild horses roaming U.S. public lands than the Bureau of Land Management has reported, according to an aerial census released by the Public Lands Resource Council, an independent research group.
The total size of Nevada’s herds, which comprise the majority of wild horses and burros in the United States, now stands at 8,231 instead of the 33,434 figure that the federal bureau reported in its most recent survey, completed in September 1991.
“We’re going to wake up one day and the horses are going to be gone,” said Tim Wilson, of Reno, who served as a spotter on one of seven planes the council hired to conduct the survey between Aug. 19 and Oct. 6. The result were released Monday.
Wilson, who said he observed one-third of the wild horse herd areas in Nevada, said the bureau has probably overblown actual herd-size estimates to convince lawmakers to appropriate more money for running the wild horse program.
State Bureau of Land Management Director Billy Templeton discounted the council’s census, saying it was based on observations from fixed-wing aircraft, not helicopters which can “slow down, get lower and allow you to see better.”
“We stand by the figures we have now,” Templeton said, adding that he welcomed a
congressional investigation the council is seeking of the Department of Interior concerning wild horse population discrepancies.
Templeton said he still believes the wild horse population in Nevada, which the federal government estimates is 33,000 out of 50,000 nationwide, needs to be reduced by 14,000 to bring the herd into “an appropriate management level.”
The Nevada herds graze on 16.2 million acres. Nationwide, the wild horse and burro ranges consist of 42.7 million acres.
The Western drought, now in its sixth year, is taking its toll on wild horses, which compete with cattle for water from springs that are primarily maintained by ranchers, who pay fees so their cattle can graze on public lands, according Templeton.
Dr. Richard McClellan, a spokesman for the Public Lands Resource Council, said in a prepared statement that the difference between the council’s census figure and the bureau’s “can only be explained by ineptness, mismanagement and collusion at the highest levels between large ranching interests, the BLM and Nevada politicians.”
“Somebody is lying about the numbers of wild horses in America,” according to McClellan, whose statement goes on to say, “The group saw evidence of private fencing on the range (and) blocking off water sources to all animals but cattle.”
“There was also hundreds of horse remains, not all of them explainable from the drought,” the council’s statement says.
Wilson defended the council’s use of fixed-wing aircraft to conduct the census because airplanes can follow grid patterns more carefully than helicopters, eliminating double counts attributable to the roaming nature of herds. Airplanes also stay well above the horses and do not panic them, he said.
Wilson said one flight over a herd area near Reno, where the bureau estimates there are 414 wild horses only turned up 29, a figure that other pilots in the area confirmed.
“There just not out there,” he said. “We’re not missing 1,000 from certain herd areas. There are no trees, and there is no brush, except for sage brush, just rocks. If they were there we would have seen them.”
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Louie- thank you! This is what I (and many others) have been saying for years but I have never read this before. Thank you.
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Thanks Louie…..this is the count I was referencing. I remember Tim Wilson. Another friend whom I referred to in my comment was out there counting too. This has been going on for years. I remember an informal conversation with one BLM field rep in NV complaining to me about the wild horses getting into their water troughs because they were for cattle only. I keep asking why the livestock industry that rents public lands cheap for grazing in the West dominates public lands policy when they produce less than 5% of the total U.S. beef production.
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What are they doing counting the one’s they have in holding Pin’s ?
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What are they talking about all the mustangs in holding Pin’s ?
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And they want $1B more
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/tech/science/environment/2016/05/12/blm-boss-wild-horse-program-facing-future-1b-budget-crisis/84273734
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http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/13/future-of-wild-horses-uncertain-after-blm-admits-1-billion-budget-crisis
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I think a lot of the money that the BLM has been getting from the government is going into the pockets of the BLM officials in DC along with pay offs to their field operatives to keep their mouths shut as to what is really going on about the horses. Now they want more claiming that it’s costing two or three times more than it actually does. The politicians are also getting a cut of the money they will go to congress and get for the BLM. That includes the politicians in each of the western states that still have a few horse left. None of these people care what damage the cattle and sheep are doing to the range. I think too that the ranchers had been told that they can sneak around and shoot any horse that they think may be drinking from their cattle watering troughs. Who would know unless someone stumbled onto the bodies. I still believe that the only horses left are the few still on the range and the ones kept on the private ranches that are there only to fool the public.
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Barbara – I think you just hit a bunch of nails on the head with what you said.
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We subsidize the use of our land. Why? The $2.00 grazing fee should be $12.99 per animal. I have to pay that for grass fed beef per pound, I should get at least the cost of a pound back. (I doubt it is grass fed cause the fat is white instead of the yellow it should be.)
I pay BLM salaries so they can torture wild horses and burros. I pay abusive BLM contractors who abuse animals, break animals legs, one even stated that foal was good eating and according to his words he grabbed one, broke its neck and had a barbeque. Then I paid for the BLM contractor, the BLM with malice and forethought, paid to illegally haul 1700+ wild horses to slaughter in Mexico.
The BLM doesn’t solicit wild horse and burro advocate cooperation, but where it is in place it works well. Why don’t they? They would probably get more help doing their jobs than could be accommodated. On top of that they would get considered and educated help in selecting animals for removal and help in placing those animals. Why wouldn’t they want that?
As for our land and our horses, large mammals need large populations otherwise you end up with inbreeding and you ultimately end up with all males and lots of genetic problems. You think BLM is driving towards this end? Without connectivity between herds you destroy the herds through loss of diversity and breeding opportunities. Also, I think the BLM has more than doubled the numbers of horses in the wild in stating their statistics. Meanwhile they pander to armed insurrectionists who threaten BLM officers with weapons and even a hit man. I refer to the above paragraph for possible solutions that don’t involve slaughter of our National Treasure.
Don’t blame all ranchers, most are conservationists. But they are using public land and they should be respectful of the public’s property, which includes wild horses and burros. Now the Oregon State University is going to participate in sterilization experiments on pregnant mares and weanlings that have been done BEFORE with the effect that they died from massive systemic infection, kind of hard to have a sterile facility and decent after care on the range in holding pens full of manure just so that the BLM won’t lose the $11M from their next budget. I wonder how much the university is going to lose? Forget that at $5.00/meal 2,200,000 of America’s, 1 out of 5 kids, who go to sleep every night hungry could be fed. Or, maybe St. Judes or Fred Hutch could use it for cancer research. Or, maybe it could provide veteran services. What about the leased land that corporations have they don’t pay for unless they put a hole in the ground.
What kind of people choose killing animals, torturing them, infecting them and that allows armed insurrectionists to come onto public land and threaten them with weapons, instead of feeding kids and helping veterans. I call them domestic terrorists.
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67,000? Is that number for our benefit or for appropriations committee? ~ for the sole purpose of sucking more cash from the taxpayers teat for the final death nail to our last remaining national treasures? There is NO question that the blm’s goal is total eradication just as surely as the Bureau of Indian Affairs goal was to eradicate the native Americans. It’s just another version of land heist. People who truly care about this species need to understand that in reality, this species is on the verge of extinction and each and every foal must be allowed to be born and protcted.
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Sure. I’m sure they haven’t kept accurate records of those they have sent to the slaughterhouse for years.
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Yes and no.
Of course BLM is not going to keep track of how many wild horses and burros they send and/or facilitate being sent to slaughter or eventually end up being sent to slaughter. On the other hand, they do keep records of our wild horses and burros that are captured/removed – although any that are shipped directly from the range to slaughter via questionable “arrangements” are not accounted for, of course.
Per FOIA documents, 1799 WH&B were captured at Twin Peaks in 2010 and about 75 were returned to the range (PZP’d mares and mules and some stallions). Out of the remaining 1724 WH&B, 269 are reported as “dead” five years after capture. Of those 269 WH&B, 101 were over the age of ten when captured but 159 were ten years old or YOUNGER plus there were 9 that died before they even had a chance to be processed.
Of the 159 young WH&B who died, many died because of “Fracture/Brain Injury: Head Acute/Sudden” and “Fracture/Spinal Cord: Neck or Back Acute/Sudden” and “Fracture: Leg or Pelvis Acute/Sudden” and some from gelding and most are just noted as “Undiagnosed/Unknown”. 40 of these young WH&B are noted as “euthanized” due to lameness or fractures or other reasons.
Of the 1724 WH&B 127 were sold and of those 127 WH&B, 88 were sold to “colorado” in large shipments… and we know who that was … right?
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There were a lot more wild horses and burros in 1971 at the passage of the act and the protected lands should have been their year-round habitat. There was and remains a lot of outright maliciousness that occurred against these wonderful animals who had achieved legal protection, but then those of wrong-motivation jumped into the picture to thwart this noble act. See Chapter III Injustice Toward America’s Wild Horses and Burros and What Must Happen of my book The Wild Horse Conspiracy available on amazon or through my website of the same name.
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WHAT FEDERAL AGENCIES ARE NEEDING “WORK ANIMALS” AND HOW THE HE** ARE WILD ANIMALS IN ANY WAY “WORK ANIMALS???”
There is no way they can substantiate this outrageous claim unless they intend to export wild animals into other countries for “work” which will most likely take the form of providing subsidized protein for other people’s plates. If they have some proof of this claimed agency “need” they should daylight it. I doubt they can.
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NEVER GIVE UP! WE ARE THE VOICE FOR THESE PROTECTED WILD EQUINE. THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU DO!
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