Unedited BLM Press Release
“More propaganda and ‘Fake’ statistics utilized by the BLM to destroy the wild horse herds of Wyoming!” ~ R.T.
Past BLM Wyoming Stampede ~ Photo by Carol Walker of Wild Horse Freedom Federation
ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. – Today the Bureau of Land Management released its draft environmental assessment for a proposed wild horse gather in southwest Wyoming and is seeking public input. The proposed gather will reduce wild horse populations in the Salt Wells Creek, Adobe Town and Great Divide Basin Herd Management Areas to their low Appropriate Management Levels in order to maintain healthy wild horses on healthy, productive rangelands.
Currently, public lands are home to 73,000 wild horses and burros across the west. This amounts to nearly triple the 26,715 population target that was established by the Wild-Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, as amended. The extensive overpopulation of wild horses and burros routinely results in their starvation and death from lack of water.
In the three HMAs affected by the proposed gather, the current, overall population of 2,836 wild horses exceeds the cumulative AML of 1,560 animals by about 80 percent. The proposed gather would remove 513 of the 1,123 wild horses present in the Adobe Town HMA, 725 of the 976 in the Salt Wells Creek HMA and 322 of the 737 in the Great Divide Basin HMA. The proposed gather would also allow the BLM to comply with the 2013 Consent Decree of Rock Springs Grazing Association v. Salazar.
The release of the draft environmental assessment launches a 30-day public review of the proposed action. Public input is valuable early in the process and will enable the BLM to develop a well-informed analysis.
Written comments should be received by August 10, 2017. All comments submitted via email should be sent to blm_wy_adobetown_saltwells_hma@blm.gov with “2017 AML Gather EA” included in the subject line. Alternatively, comments may be hand-delivered or mailed to:
BLM Rock Springs Field Office
2017 AML Gather
280 Highway 191 North
Rock Springs, WY 82901
Before including your address, phone number, email address, or other identifying information in your comment, you should be aware that your entire comment – including your identifying information – may be made publicly available at any time. While you may ask us in your comment to withhold your identifying information from public review, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so.
For more information, please contact the BLM at 307-352-0256.
A copy of the project map and additional details can be found at: http://bit.ly/2sL83rI.
Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Reblogged this on Paths I Walk.
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We have been waiting for this to come out. While the BLM is busy trying to “save money” by proposing to kill the 46,000 wild horses in its care in holding facilities, here they go planning a very expensive, massive roundup of over 1,200 wild horses who are living on the range and adding them to the numbers in holding who are in jeopardy of being killed. Who does this benefit? The 24 member Rock Springs Grazing Association.
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I agree Carol. Lori and I just spent time in WYO and drove thru at least half of the State,( didn’t see many wild horses on the range) the one thing we did notice is that WYO is not lacking in grazing material or water, as a matter of fact, they had just finished releasing water from the reservoirs due to heavy snowfall this year. Also when we visited Cody, they tried to sell us on everything but viewing the wild horses; even though we had stated that we were there for that reason.
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I wish we could rout our just who the corrupt politicians and even low-level government employees who are behind this, and shame the crap out of them. And we have the gall to call humanity merciful and humane. If this doesn’t prove otherwise, I don’t know what does. It is so awful I can hardly stomach the brutality to even read some of it, and it all goes on without the public knowing, or probably even caring enough to know!
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What ever happened to the “study” being done with the collared mares in Adobetown? Now they are going to do a roundup? Sort of defeats the purpose – wouldnt you say? All 3 of these HMAs have such beautiful wild horses – and now that the BLM is pushing to “euthanize” the ones in holding they’re going to round up some more? How does this agency continue to get away with this? AND why does the RSGA seem to run the BLM???>
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It’s stomach turning, it truly is – to have read that account from Texas in one of the prior threads, about the brutality and filth that is horse slaughter.
All so that people can eat beef – and as our population continues to grow it will only get worse for any public lands and wildlife. We stink!
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So the Radio Collar study on the Adobe Town mares is going on as we speak but they were only able to capture 11 of the 16 mares they had planned to capture for the study – now they just figure they will take some of the over 500 they take from the area. Absolutely it makes no sense to break the families apart and then “study” the behavior of the disrupted mares, but all they care about proving in this study is that the horses will go on the private land in the Checkerboard, therefore “proving” the need to remove them all.
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How will they avoid rounding up the collared mares? Or if they do, how will they justify continuing the “natural behavior” study with such a massive disruption and intervention? They should pull the funding for this “research” if they proceed with any roundups, as the value of the study will be ZERO.
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They will inevitably round up collared mares, but they will release them, no release 5 more mares with collars. It is a University of Wyoming study, funded through them. Of course it does not really study behavior in any sort of meaningful way, or they would have had people observing the mares on the ground without collars, leaving them in their original family bands. But the initial study was formulated when they were planning to have had a roundup in 2016 and they wanted to study if the horses “filled the void” created by the roundup, and went onto private lands as the ones that were removed had. In all three areas of the Checkerboard, the range of the horses changes from winter to summer, going from higher colder areas in the summer to lower warmer areas in the fall, so they do naturally go into the Checkerboard. But they do not stay in one place, and the private lands are 1 mile square, and as we know, horses move around. They might be on private land one day, on public the next.
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DECLARATION OF LLOYD EISENHAUER
I, Lloyd Eisenhauer, declare as follows:
1. I live in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I am a former Bureau of Land Management
(“BLM”) official with extensive experience in the Rawlins and Rock Springs Districts in Wyoming and intimate familiarity with the public lands under BLM management in those areas. I have reviewed the consent decree proposed by BLM and the Rock Springs Grazing Association (“RSGA”) in this case and provide this declaration based on my longstanding knowledge of, and management of, wild horses and livestock grazing in the Rock Springs and Rawlins Districts.
2. I grew up in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming with a livestock and farming background, served in the Marines for four years, and then owned a livestock business from 1952-1958. I enrolled in college in 1958, studying range management. From 1960-1961, BLM hired me to assist with collecting field data for vegetation assessments and carrying capacity surveys related to livestock and wild horses. These surveys were conducted in the Lander, Kemmerer, and Rawlins Districts. When I graduated in 1962, BLM hired me full-time to serve in the Rawlins District in Wyoming, where most of my work focused on grazing management involving sheep, cattle, and wild horses. From 1968-1972, I was Area Manager of the Baggs-Great Divide Resource Area in the Rawlins District. In 1971, the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act was enacted, and in the spring of 1972, on behalf of BLM, I conducted the first aerial survey of wild horses in Wyoming, recording the number of horses and designating the Herd Management Areas (“HMAs”) for the Rawlins District. After a stint as an Area Manager with BLM’s Albuquerque, New Mexico office, in 1975 I took over as the Chief of Planning and Environmental Analysis in BLM’s Rock Springs District for three years. I was the lead on all planning and environmental assessments. During that time, I also served as the Acting Area Manager of the Salt Wells Resource Area, which is located in the Rock Springs District. In 1979, BLM transferred me to its Denver Service Center to serve as the Team Leader in creating the agency’s automated process for data collection. I received an excellence of service award from the Secretary of the Interior commending me for my work as a Team Leader. In 1982, I became the Head of Automation in BLM’s Cheyenne office, where I managed and implemented the data collection and processing of various systems related to BLM programs. I retired from BLM in 1986, and have stayed very involved in the issue of wild horse and livestock management on BLM lands in Wyoming, and have written articles about the issue in local and other newspaper outlets. I have won various journalistic awards, including a Presidential award, for my coverage of conservation districts in Wyoming. Along with a partner, I operated a tour business (called Backcountry Tours) for six years, taking various groups into wild places in Wyoming – without a doubt wild horses were the most popular thing to see on a tour, in large part due to their cultural and historical value. I also served six years on the governor’s non-point source water quality task force.
3. Based on my longstanding knowledge of wild horse and livestock management in the Rawlins and Rock Springs Districts, and in the Wyoming Checkerboard in particular, I am very concerned about BLM’s agreement with RSGA, embodied in the proposed Consent Decree they have filed in this case, under which BLM would remove all wild horses located on RSGA’s private lands on the Wyoming Checkerboard.
4. The Checkerboard is governed by an exchange of use agreement between the federal government and private parties such as RSGA. However, due to state laws, property lines, and intermingled lands, it is impossible to fence the lands of the Wyoming Checkerboard, which means that both the wild horses and the livestock that graze there roam freely between public and private lands on the Checkerboard without any physical barriers. For this reason, it is illogical for BLM to commit to removing wild horses that are on the “private” lands RSGA owns or leases because those same horses are likely to be on public BLM lands (for example, the Salt Wells, Adobe Town, Great Divide, and White Mountains HMAs) earlier in that same day or later that same evening. Essentially, in contrast to other areas of the country where wild horses still exist, on the Wyoming Checkerborad there is no way to distinguish between horses on “private” lands and those on public lands, and therefore it would be unprecedented, and indeed impossible for BLM to contend that it is removing all horses on RSGA’s “private” lands at any given time of the year, month, or day, considering that those horses would only be on the strictly “private” lands very temporarily and intermittently on any particular day .
5. Another major concern with BLM’s agreement to remove all horses from the private lands of the Wyoming Checkerboard is that BLM is undermining the laws that apply to the Checkerboard, and wild horse management in general, which I implemented during my time as a BLM official. Traditionally, BLM officials (myself included) have understood that, pursuant to the Wild Horse Act, wild horses have a right to use BLM lands, so long as their population numbers do not cause unacceptable damage to vegetation or other resources. In stark contrast, however, livestock (sheep and cattle) have no similar right to use BLM lands; rather, livestock owners may be granted the privilege of using BLM lands for livestock grazing pursuant to a grazing permit that is granted by BLM under the Taylor Grazing Act, but that privilege can be revoked, modified, or amended by BLM for various reasons, including for damage to vegetation or other resources caused by livestock, or due to sparse forage available to sustain livestock after wild horses are accounted for. BLM’s tentative agreement here does the opposite and instead prioritizes livestock over wild horses, by proposing to remove hundreds of wild horses from the Wyoming Checkerboard without reducing livestock numbers – which, in my view, is contrary to the laws governing BLM’s actions as those mandates were explained to me and administered during the decades that I was a BLM official.
6. While I do not agree with every management action taken by BLM over the years in the Rock Springs District, I can attest – based on my longstanding employment with BLM and my active monitoring of the agency’s activities during retirement – that BLM has generally proven capable of removing wild horses in the Rock Springs District, including by responding to emergency situations when needed and removing horses when necessary due to resource damage.
7. Considering that wild horses exhibit different foraging patterns and movement patterns than sheep and cattle, and also than big game such as antelope and elk, no sound biological basis exists for permanently removing wild horses from the Wyoming Checkerboard at this time. In particular, wild horses tend to hang out in the uplands at a greater distance from water sources until they come to briefly drink water every day or two, whereas livestock congregate near water sources and riparian habitat causing concentrated damage to vegetation and soil. For this reason, the impacts of wild horses are far less noticeable on the Checkerboard than impacts from livestock.
8. In addition, because livestock tend to eat somewhat different forage than wild horses (horses tend to eat coarser vegetation such as Canadian wild rye and other bunch grasses, whereas cattle and sheep mostly eat softer grasses), there is no justification to remove wild horses on the basis that insufficient forage exists to support the current population of wild horses. Also, because cattle and sheep have no front teeth on the front part of their upper jaws, they tend to pull and tear grasses or other forage out by the root causing some long-term damage to vegetation, whereas wild horses, which have front teeth on both their front upper and lower jaws, act more like a lawnmower and just clip the grass or forage (leaving the root uninjured), allowing the vegetation to quickly grow back. These differences are extremely significant because if there were a need to reduce the use of these BLM lands by animals to preserve these public lands, it might be cattle and sheep – not wild horses – that should be reduced to gain the most benefit for the lands, and which is why BLM, during my time as an agency official, focused on reducing livestock grazing.
9. BLM’s agreement with RSGA states that RSGA’s conservation plan limited livestock grazing, primarily by sheep, to the winter months to provide sufficient winter forage. This is a good example of “multiple use” management, since wild horses and sheep have very little competition for the forage they consume and the seasons during which they use parts of the Checkerboard. During winter, sheep use the high deserts and horses utilize the uplands and breaks (i.e., different locations) for forage and protection. During the summer, when sheep are not present, wild horses use various landscapes on the Checkerboard. This multiple use should continue for the benefit of the livestock, the wild horses, and the public and private lands involved.
10. I am also very concerned about BLM’s agreement with RSGA to permanently zero out the Salt Wells HMA and the Divide Basin HMA, leaving no wild horses in those areas that have long contained wild horses. I have been to fifteen of the sixteen HMAs in Wyoming, and to my knowledge none has ever been zeroed out by BLM. It is my view, based on everything I know about these areas and the way these public lands are used by wild horses and livestock, that BLM has no biological or ecological basis for zeroing out a herd of wild horses in an HMA that existed at the time the wild horse statute was passed in 1971, as is the case with both the Salt Wells and Divide Basin HMAs. And, again, because the wild horses have a statutory right to be there, whereas livestock only have a privilege that can be revoked at any time by BLM, there also is no authority or precedent, to my knowledge, for the agency to zero out these two longstanding wild horse herds simply to appease private livestock grazers.
11. The zeroing out of wild horses in the Salt Wells and Divide Basin HMAs is also concerning because it would mean that, in those two longstanding HMAs, there would no longer be the “multiple use” of these public lands as required by both the Wild Horse Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Currently, while there are other uses of this public land, such as by wildlife, hunters, and recreational users, the two primary uses in those HMAs are by wild horses and livestock. If BLM proceeds with its agreement with RSGA to zero out wild horses in those HMAs, the only major use remaining would be livestock use, meaning that there would be no multiple use of those BLM lands. Not only will that potentially undermine the laws that BLM officials must implement here, but it has practical adverse effects on the resources – multiple use is very beneficial for the environment, and particularly for sensitive vegetation, because different users (e.g., livestock, wild horses) use the lands and vegetation in different ways. When that is eliminated, the resources are subjected to an unnatural use of the lands which can cause severe long-term damage to the vegetation. As a result, zeroing out these herds would likely bedevastating for the vegetation in these two HMAs, because livestock would be by far the predominant use in this area.
12. Turning the White Mountain HMA into a non-reproducing herd, as the agreement between BLM and RSGA proposes to do, is also a farce, and violates the meaning of a wild and free-roaming animal. This is essentially a slow-motion zeroing out of this HMA, and is inconsistent with any wild horse management approach I am familiar with that BLM has implemented on public lands.
Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1746, I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.
Lloyd Eisenhauer
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Why aren’t there more people like him?
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Where is Lloyd now? This testimony from a few years ago is compelling but was ignored, it would be helpful to hear from him with more current information. Please post if you find any.
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IcySpots, Lloyd commented on this blog a while back. I don’t think that many here saw it.
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Wild horses & burros being removed for Richfield Tar Sands plan
“The document goes so far as to say, ‘the management of wild horse and burro herds is not compatible within those portions of commercial tar sands lease areas.’”
by Grandma Gregg
The document goes so far as to say, “the management of wild horse and burro herds is not compatible within those portions of commercial tar sands lease areas”. How much clearer can it be. They want the wild ones GONE.
Proof: http://www.riversimulator.org/Resources/BLM/OSTSdeis/OSTSfinal.pdf
TABLE 3.1.3-1 Wild Horse Herd Management Areas within the Oil Shale and Tar Sands Study Area (page 3-167)
Wyoming
Little Colorado
White Mountain
Salt Wells
Adobe Town
Colorado
Piceance-East Douglas
Utah
Canyonlands
Muddy Creek
Range Creek
Sinbad
[PLUS Herd Areas which are not discussed in this report – such as the West Douglas HA]
https://rtfitchauthor.com/2016/01/07/wild-horses-burros-being-removed-for-richfield-tar-sands-plan/
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Massive deposit of lithium found in Wyoming could meet all U.S. demand
Currently, the U.S. imports more than 80% of the lithium it uses
The latest development that supports that thesis comes from researchers at the University of Wyoming.
They’ve found lithium – a lot of it – in Rock Springs Uplift, a geological feature in southwest Wyoming
https://www.treehugger.com/cars/vast-reserves-lithium-found-wyoming-could-meet-all-us-demand.html
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what this all cones down to is “land” . They want to manage the land and keep the numbers of wild horses / wild life down by killing them. Why dont ya all work on keeping the numbers down on human life, why cause than that would be ” murder” ! You are murdering our wild horses no matter how you look at it , it is just that! You do it to so call manage the land , when actually its cause the human population is running out of space ! When all is said and done you will have whipped out all animal life/ plant life with your so called ” progress” and there will be nothing , not even water! Hence what then people eating people to survive ? Thats where this world is headed! People are selfish , greedy and are never satisfied with what is , always have to have more , and more is killing everything !!! You want the world to end , keep doing the selfish stuff your doing and you will do just that! Horses are living breathing and have just as much right to live as we all do, I am not in any organization , Im just one person with one passion and that is to speak
up
for those who cant speak for themselves and I will continue to . I will not hide how I feel or think and will say it how I see fit. I will not in any way threaten or speak in anyway where it will be held
against me but I will speak
about my passion in saving as many animals as deserve to live
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Folks need to lean on their elected representatives. Or adopt…get involved.
The BLM is NOT slaughtering 46,000 horses BTW. Not sure about the BLM in other states, but the folks here in Colorado are super folks, and bust their hides taking care of the THOUSANDS of horses stuck up at Canyon City.
Oh yeah.
You want to save the millions of open land for the wild horses?
Quit eating so much damn meat.
And if you do have to have a burger, stake etc at least get it from your local rancher.
Beef industray is who your real..beef is with. And the 300Million Americans who DEMAND CHEAP beef. 99 cent burgers. Disgusting
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You said it!!!!!
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Have heard from other wild horse advocates that BLM employees in Colorado are good people. I hope nothing happens to change that – seems the bureaucracy sometimes gets rid of people who care about the horses. I agree – beef industry? Disgusting!
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As a point of fact .99 cent burgers are made from old dairy cows not beef cows. I have friends in the dairy industry that educated me on that fact.
However I have spent hours trying figure out the real agenda with the BLM and I am of the opinion that once the wild horses and burros are gone, that the next move will be to begin restricting the cattle and sheep with the plan to rescind any remaining grazing rights that exist at that time. The cattlemen are in for a rude awakening. The ultimate goal of the BLM is top make the land available for mining mostly to foreign interests, an example is the mining going on in Nevada on BLM land by a Chinese corporation. There are kickbacks involved with this, lots of money to be made for those involved in this nasty and devious plan. I had to learn to see the big picture which is implemented over years and not months or even a single year. The long term plan always plays out in a senseless (looks senseless to the rest of us, who do not know what is going on) and chaotic manner but is actually moving along right on point as far as those who are and those who will benefit. I honestly think we should rescue and adopt out as many wild horses and burros as humanely possible and also create a registry for them to preserve the bloodline. I do think we should continue to fight for them to remain on the land as well. But my main concern is to protect their health, wellbeing and bloodline. I read the awful things they are doing to them and am appalled.
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Even the folks in Canon City will have to comply if the order comes down to sell off or kill all those in holding. The staff on the ground do not make the rules, only follow them.
Have to argue about the “eat less meat” argument, since the amount of grazing of livestock on public lands amounts to something less than around 3% of our national beef supply, and the lamb industry is mostly for export. If all Americans quit eating beef or lamb, the meat would hardly be missed and more would be exported. Basic economics — the demand here isn’t for meat, it’s for cheap grazing which allows livestock producers an unfair advantage in the “free” market.
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Only 3% of the beef produced in the US is from cattle on our public lands. We could easily do away with all the grazing leases on public land and have virtually no impact on beef prices.
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The BANK$
From AMERICAN HERDS
At The Root
Whether you’re passion is wild horses and burros, wildlife or just someone who loves to go hiking around in nature, eventually we all run into the same issue; the degradation of public lands by poorly managed livestock grazing and our government authorizing unsustainable numbers for decades.
The question becomes why…..
Why does public lands ranching have such a death grip on our natural resources? How is it that after all these years, little has changed despite overwhelming evidence of the damage? Why, despite all the laws and many, many good dedicated people in the government agencies themselves that have tried to effect change, nothing substantial can be done? Why is it that report after report submitted to Congress clearly outlining the mismanagement and malfeasance of livestock grazing to our resources, including wild horses and burros, is met with indifference as they not only continue to support livestock grazing but will viciously fight for the rights of ranchers time and time again? And how is it possible that just a handful of ranchers who produce less than 3% of America’s beef on public lands continue to wield so much power over our Nation?
Well, the answer is, they don’t. The BANKS do, just like everything else these days and it’s the BANKS that continue to dictate American policy and cause Congress to ask “How high?” when they ask them to jump.
http://americanherds.blogspot.com/2008/05/at-root.html
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The full report contains 20 pages of valuable information for those who are passionate about our public lands and wildlife.
Mortgaging Our Natural Heritage (2006)
An Analysis of the Use of Bureau of Land Management Grazing Permits as Collateral for Private Loans
What has only recently come to light is how individual grazing permittees, with the aid of lending institutions and the tacit complicity of the BLM, collateralize their federal grazing permits to finance their public lands grazing operations. Both the Forest Service and the BLM sanction the use of publicly owned federal grazing permits and leases as collateral for private bank loans.4
Not surprisingly, since the finance industry has loaned out hundreds of millions of dollars on grazing permits, they use their considerable clout in Washington, D.C. to oppose any public land grazing reforms that may threaten their investment. Banks have even become involved in agency decision making on individual grazing allotments where the value of a collateralized grazing permit was in jeopardy from an agency decision to reduce livestock grazing on the associated grazing allotment.
CURRENT LOANS BASED ON BLM PERMITS
Information obtained by Forest Guardians following a long legal battle documents that the total amount of loans secured by federal grazing permittees/lessees using BLM grazing permits/leases as (partial) collateral in the eleven western states is $1,142,015,153.56. States with the highest values for permit-based loans are Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming (Figure 1).
http://www.wildearthguardians.org/site/DocServer/Report_Mortgaging_Our_Natural_Heritage.pdf?docID=962
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Thank-you for posting this piece of the puzzle.
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Have to ask here how horses can be removed from the Checkerboard areas as this was declared illegal in early 2015 after the last mass removals. The Consent Decree is only enforceable on private lands, not public lands, so any removals from public lands in the WY Checkerboard (which includes parts of all three HMAs mentioned above) based only on the Consent Decree will be illegal. Trouble is, once the horses are removed they are never returned, and now may face a direct one-way ticket to the slaughter house.
Oh, and we all pay for this, at every step, too.
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What we won in 2016 was that the 2014 Checkerboard Roundup’s EA was using Section 4, removing horses from private land as a justification for the roundup with nothing addressed in Section 3 of the WH and B Act which addresses removing wild horses from public lands – where you need to prove they are over AML. But this time the EA addresses both Section 3 and Section 4 so we cannot stop it on those grounds this time.
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The section 4 segment of their justification still remains illegal on public lands.
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All they need for section 4 is a landowner’s request for removal from private lands. Section 3 they need the horses to be over AML. They are working to satisfy both here.
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Carol, nothing is different here than in 2014, there is no way they won’t be removing horses from public lands at the behest of private landowners if they do this, which was found illegal (as you know).
Maybe we need to put up signs for the horses to read so they will know where they can exist and where they can’t. Might need some for the sheep, too.
I thought there was an effort underway to consolidated areas of the Checkerboard to avoid this manmade problem? It makes more sense to delineate reasonable separate horse and sheep areas, or use the BLMs legal authority to rescind or modify grazing permits for livestock in some areas.
It seems the 24 RSGA members will each be responsible for removing at least 200 horses each from public lands in just this round on the Checkerboard. Captured animals are heading into holding – where only a few will be adopted and the others face near-certain sale for slaughter. This disruption also completely erases any value of the ongoing radio collar study, which makes me wonder (as some have suggested) if the collaring was intended more as a way to locate horses for removals, rather than provide any valuable data on “natural” horse migrations.
1 RSGA member, 200 horses. How many sheep? The NAS (and others) point to a substantial decline in the sheep industry, and most lamb is exported.
Click to access SheepFinal.pdf
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It is not illegal to remove wild horses from private lands at the behest of landowners. What was found illegal was the removal of wild horses from public lands using that Artcile 4 that covers the private lands without the removal from public lands as well being part of the EA – and they needed to have the horses over AML to do that – they did not do that in 2014 and that was why we won. They do now have horses over AML in all three Herd Management Areas according to their ridiculous double count census. Of course doing land swaps in the Checkerboard and consolidating land for the horses is exactly what needs to be done BUT it is NOT in the interests of RSGA – why would they agree with that when now they have control of all the land in theCheckerboard with their private land and their grazing leases combined? No motivation whatsoever.
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ROCK SPRINGS GRAZING ASS
From AWHPC website
RSGA controls the rangeland in the Wyoming checkerboard, an area 40 miles wide by 70 miles long that runs along the historic transcontinental railway corridor. RSGA owns 550,000 acres outright and leases an additional 450,000 acres from the Anadarko Land Company, a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. RSGA also holds permits to graze livestock on a large portion of the public lands in the checkerboard. RSGA owns members graze approximately 50,000 to 70,000 sheep and about 5,000 cattle on deeded private lands and leased public lands. By contrast, just 1,100- 1,600 wild horses are allowed to roam the area.
Thanks to taxpayer subsidies, RSGA members graze livestock on public lands for approximately one-twelfth (1/12) of the going market rate. The RSGA complaint, filed on July 27, 2011, seeks a court order that will (a) result in removing all wild horses from private lands in the Wyoming Checkerboard area, and (b) declare that the BLM “must remove all of the wild horses that have strayed onto the RSGA lands and the adjacent public lands within the Wyoming Checkerboard.”
JOHN HAY, President
Rock Springs National Bank
P.O. Box 880
Rock Springs, WY 82902
http://treasurer.state.wy.us/advisory.asp
JOHN HAY of the Rock Springs Grazing Association discusses land used for wind farms. He supports Tasco Engineering’s Wyoming Wind Energy Project.
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John Hays of the RSGA is also President of “Rock Springs National Bank”? So hes not only a rancher, & a member of this Assn., but has an interest in the Bank’s holdings pertaining to the allotment users collateral in the bank. Interesting!
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“Using Science to Improve the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program: A Way Forward”
National Academy of Science
This report reviews the science that underpins the Bureau of Land Management’s oversight of free-ranging horses and burros on federal public lands in the western United States.
The social impacts on the American public of destroying these Wild Horse Herd populations is overwhelmingly given the strong support the American public has to protect, preserve and view Wild Horses living naturally on protected public lands.
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