A new federal assessment of rangelands in the West finds a disturbingly large portion fails to meet range health standards principally due to commercial livestock operations. In the last decade as more land has been assessed, estimates of damaged lands have doubled in the 13-state Western area where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) conducts major livestock leasing.
An American court has rejected a decision of the US Bureau of Land Management to ignore submitted scientific evidence in its decision-making process over plans to castrate wild stallions.
WASHINGTON (CN) – The Bureau of Land Management “may not simply remain studiously ignorant of material scientific evidence” just because an email error delayed its receipt of the evidence, a federal judge has ruled.
It surely cannot be easy these days being Joan Guilfoyle, the (relatively) new director of the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program. On the one hand she works for a federal agency, the Interior Department, which is largely beholden to the powerful industries it is supposed to regulate. And on the other hand, she is responsible, under federal law and policy, for ensuring the survival and management of the nation’s wild horses at a time when relentless political and economic forces threaten to decimate the herds.
To begin with, the National Association of Conservation Districts (the “mother” of all Conservation Districts) is partnering in a way that promotes IUCN and ICLEI USA, thus pushing Agenda 21, the UN’s action plan that will do away with your private property rights and Constitutional rights.
The Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse & Burro Advisory Board meeting (April 2012), was the first meeting including Sec. of Interior Ken Salazar’s new appointee, Callie Hendrickson. Hendrickson has served as an Executive Board member of the National Association of Conservation Districts, and works for the White River and Douglas Creek Conservation District in Colorado.
Officially, anyway, the news that the BLM is finally willing to consider a public-private partnership with wild horse advocate Madeleine Pickens is a good thing. After all — as reported in this space many times — the federal wild horse and burro program is a dismal failure. So any proposal that might reinvigorate the program, do a better job of caring for the mustangs and the public range, while also saving millions of taxpayer dollars, is a step in the right direction, even if it is a small step. In that sense, the BLM deserves a round of applause.
Due to a paying job taking priority over domestic travel Terry and I will not be in Reno, NV, today and tomorrow for the gathering of the BLM’s hand picked grazing, cattle, hunting and slaughter special interest Advisory Board meeting where the end and destruction of our national icons will be discussed and planned. Seasoned advocates are well aware that this bogus board ignores and rejects mass public opinion when it comes to the issue of saving the last few federally protected wild horses and burros on public lands but during this meeting all advocates should do their best to declare with disdain the appointment of self-proclaimed horse-hater and slaughter supporter, Callie Hendrickson.
BILLINGS, Mont. (April 5, 2012)—Yesterday, BLM issued their Decision Record to permanently remove up to 40 young Pryor mustangs from their home in the mountains of southern Montana. The bait-trapping operation would begin no earlier than June 4th and could continue until September 30th.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Billings Field Office today released the Environmental Assessment (EA) and Decision Record for a 2012 non-helicopter gather of wild horses within the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range (PMWHR). A 30-day appeal period will begin today and end on May 3, 2012. The EA analyzed the effects of the decision to conduct a non-helicopter gather to remove excess wild horses within the PMWHR. The field office received about 1,000 individual comment letters and 63 unique comments on the preliminary EA, and considered those in making the final decision.
As part of its responsibility to manage and protect wild horses and burros, the Bureau of Land Management, in collaboration with the USDA Forest Service (FS), is soliciting bids for several contracts that will help manage wild horses and burros located across the western United States. The contracts are for a new bait trapping method that is intended to relieve areas of excess wild horses and burros where helicopter drive trapping is not an effective method. The bids are the first of their kind, in that they involve six zones across the West, with a potential for multiple contractors simultaneously bait trapping animals over an extended period of time.
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