published by Carol Walker on Wild Hoofbeats
Adobe Town Stallion by Carol Walker
Save Our Wild Horses From an Agency Gone Rogue
The Bureau of Land Management has thrown out their wish list of the latest wild horse herds they want to destroy in their Path to Devastation. The Sand Wash Basin Herd in Colorado. The 5 largest herds in Wyoming in the Checkerboard, the North Lander Complex Herds in Wyoming. They have included their favorite dangerous and deadly experimental tools of sterilization such as spaying and using IUDs in mares in their Scoping and Environmental Assessment Plans.
Sand Wash Basin in Colorado:
https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2012689/510
Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek, Great Divide Basin, White Mountain, Little Colorado in Wyoming:
https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/1501993/510
North Lander Complex in Wyoming:
https://www.blm.gov/press-release/blm-seeks-input-future-wild-horse-gathers-north-lander-complex
The BLM is an out of control rogue agency who must be stopped and stood against by the members of American public who care about our wild horses. What can you do to help? Comment against these horrific plans by the deadline. I will be posting talking points you can use next week. The deadline for comments are April 30, 2021.These three plans will involve removing over 6000 wild horses. The Bureau of Land Management is not even allowing the public to see the over 1200 wild horses at Canon City, Colorado that were removed last fall in the Red Desert Complex Roundup, let alone adopt them. Yet they are eagerly setting up plans to remove thousands more this summer and fall.
ACT NOW – Write, call and contact in any way you can your Senators and Representatives.
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Contact Nada Wolff Culver, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Land Management:
Nada Wolff Culver Deputy Director of Policy and Programs
U.S. Department of the Interior
760 Horizon Drive Grand Junction, CO 81506
202-208-3801
Contact Deb Haaland, the newly confirmed Secretary of the Interior:
Mailing Address:
Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20240
Phone (with employee directory): (202) 208-3100
FedRelay number: (800)877-8339 (TTY)
Contact President Biden:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Get the word out far and wide. This must not stand. We want our wild horses managed humanely on our public lands where they belong.
- Put an immediate PAUSE on roundup plans until new direction can be worked out for managing America’s wild horses. Work on a new plan for the wild horses that includes the American public. Wild horses belong to the American people.
- Humanely manage our wild horses on our public lands, in their homes where they belong.
- Stop the dangerous experimental sterilization procedures and plans.
- Retire livestock grazing leases in Wild Horse Management Areas. Livestock grazing is the number one cause of range degradation on our public lands.
- Set up a new Agency/organization to manage wild horses on our public lands who has the best interests of our wild horses at its core – remove the BLM from control over them. The agency’s own origin and mandates set up a conflict of interest that is insurmountable.
Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Leave these horses alone, they aren’t hurting anyone and they don’t deserve to be abused!!! They and their ancestors have been out there for years and they have a right to life too!! So go home and leave the horses alone!!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
They need to leave these beautiful animals alone they were here first before the automobile they used them n the civil war who knows we might need them again someday for help
LikeLiked by 1 person
We have to help our wild horses. They are not only being tortured and illegally sent to slaughter, but they are also constantly being rounded up by local helicopters ( another way to take our hard earned dollars ), and if it continues much longer, they will be gone. 400 years in North America, but they may be pushed out of their existence to make place for private herds of sheep and cattle (yet another way our taxes are used) and more fracking. We have to help the horses in as many ways as possible.
LikeLiked by 2 people
A brief scan of the documents for the Sand Wash HMA brings up some predictable patterns. This is a high desert area which was the epicenter of the cattle and sheep wars in the 1800s.
Pg. 32 shows the AML set by the BLM:
“…the current AML that is set for the area is 163-362 wild horses. Between 1988 and the present, the BLM has conducted approximately seven (7) gathers of wild horses within the Sand Wash Basin HMA in order to remove excess animals to manage the population size within the established AML range. Most recent was a private land gather in 2020. Twenty-one wild horses were gathered and removed in 2020. Also, in 2021 the LSFO was approved to gather and remove 50 horses consisting of 30 from near Highway 318 for public safety, and 20 from private land to address landowner requests to remove wild horses.”
On page 43 it states the following, pointing a finger at horses being a problem since they live there year round (as is required by law):
“The HMA contains all or part of four grazing allotments. Overlap between wild horses and livestock occurs on an annual basis causing competition for forage and water resources. Wild horses, wildlife, and livestock compete directly for the same water and forage resources. Yearlong wild horse grazing reduces forage availability for wildlife and livestock. Grazing by excess wild horses can reduce forage production, vigor, reproduction, and availability.
Wild horses often drive away livestock and wildlife from watering and feeding areas (Miller, 1981). When these resources become depleted, wildlife and wild horses move to a new location, while livestock must be removed. Overlap between horses and cattle have been shown to increase at higher stocking density. Large numbers of any two species (sheep, cattle or horses) would increase the negative interactions (Smith, 1986).
Livestock in the allotment depend on reservoirs, springs, riparian areas and seeps during the period they are on the allotment. However, during winter grazing seasons snow provides much of the water resources used by authorized sheep. Reservoirs, springs, riparian areas and seeps are scattered throughout the allotments and HMA. During normal precipitation years this may facilitate dispersal and forage utilization to some extent. But with excessive horse numbers above appropriate AML the competition between horses, wildlife, and livestock remains constant and is detrimental to all faunae. During drought years, these sources may dry up and wild horses must move to other water sources which exacerbates the problem to levels that may take years to recover. It is possible that some areas within the HMA have been so depleted of natural vegetation diversity and density that a threshold may have been crossed and natural recovery to pre-horse conditions may not be possible.”
Pg. 44 shows the AUMs for livestock, which are allowed in the THOUSANDS from Sept. 1 through June 30 of each year (10 months!).
Pg. 45 shows one area where 363 livestock AUMS have not been used by them since prior to 2000 “due to wild horse use.”
So it seems fewer than 400 wild horses (who by law are to be allocated PRINCIPAL forage and water access) are an “overpopulation” and harmful by being alive there 365 days a year, yet for 10 whole months — including the typically dormant winter season for forbs and grasses — these same areas must also feed approx. 15,000 sheep and a few hundred cattle (and cattle numbers don’t reflect their calves, who also are grazing).
Pg. 47 blames wild horses for decreasing sage grouse populations (when in this same area of the state the BLM just granted a power transmission line access through several identified sensitive areas, evidently unconcerned about a few hundred miles of new roads to be cut there), then suppose that removing horses would decrease the risks of wildfires — and these removals would:
“…add to the beneficial effects of habitat restoration and rehabilitation projects, while countervailing the negative effects of rights-of-way, mineral development, and other anthropogenic disturbances within the HMA. The proposed action would countervail the reduction in water availability due to drought, although the cumulative effects of drought and wildfire on vegetation could overwhelm any contribution from the proposed action in portions of the HMA.”
So horses are responsible for: sagegrouse habitat loss (though these species coevolved together here in N. America), increased risk of wildfires, degrading resources that thousands of cattle and sheep would otherwise gain from, offsetting the effects of mineral development, roads, and rights-of-way imposed on supposedly protected wild areas, and then the widespread and lasting drought in this already desertified area is also largely the fault of wild horses?
I bet if I keep reading the kitchen sink is in there somewhere. Does anyone believe if all the wild horses vanished from the HMA these managment problems would, too? Or would they be blamed for the next fifty years of mismanagement even after they are gone?
LikeLiked by 1 person