Straight from the Horses Heart
RT Fitch
Call to Action from American Wild Horse Preservation.org
BLM Plans to “ZERO OUT” and Destroy Two Unique Wild Horse Herds
Public Comment Deadline: December 7, 2012
Taking its marching orders from Wyoming’s powerful livestock industry, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is planning the second roundup in less than three years of wild horses living in the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek Herd Management Areas (HMAs) in Wyoming’s pristine Red Desert region. The 1.5 million-acre public land area is managed as a complex due to wild horse movements between the two HMAs. The roundup is proceeding despite the fact that the Adobe Town HMA is substantially below the low end of the Allowable Management Level (AML) of 610 – 800 horses. Even more disturbing, the BLM intends to remove all wild horses on “private land or checkerboard land within the Rock Springs Office portion of the HMA.” Since the majority of the Salt Wells HMA is “checkerboard” (alternating public and private land parcels), and since the wild horses living there cannot tell the difference between public and private land, this raises the alarming possiblity that the entire HMA will be zeroed out!
This stepped-up roundup plan is the result of a lawsuit filed last year by the Rock Springs Grazing Association, which owns or leases the checkerboard lands for livestock grazing. The legal action — which the Interior Department itself advised ranchers to file – seeks to compel the BLM to remove all wild horses from the public and private lands in the checkerboard area. AWHPC and our coalition partners, The Cloud Foundation and the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros, have intervened in this lawsuit in an attempt to prevent the government from simply settling the case by agreeing to wipe out all the horses on the 2 million acres that constitute the Wyoming checkerboard. Yet, deciding not to wait for the outcome of this litigation, the BLM is now proposing this potentially devastating roundup.
The BLM allows the Rock Springs Grazing Association (RSGA) to graze the annual equivalent of 15,000 cows — or 75,000 sheep — in the alltoments that lie within and around the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek HMAs, while restricting the wild horse population in this vast area no more than 1,165. The RSGA members enjoy the privilege of grazing their livestock on our public lands, as well as the benefits of the taxpayer subsidies that underwrite below-market grazing rates. It’s time for our government to demand that, in return for those privileges, the RSGA members be required to tolerate the presence of America’s cherished wild horses on the public and private lands in this area.
Please submit your comments today during this scoping period for the development of an EA on this unnecessary, cynical and egregious wild horse roundup and removal plan.
If you prefer, you can submit your comments no later than December 7, 2012 via email, fax or U.S. postal mail to:
Jay D’Ewart, Wild Horse and Burro Specialist
BLM Rock Springs Field Office
280 Highway 191 North
Rock Springs, Wyoming 82901
Fax: (307) 352-0329
Electronic comments must be sent to the following email address to be considered:
AdobeTown_SaltWells_HMA_WY@blm.gov
(Please include “ATSW Scoping Comment” in the subject line.)
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Background Information
Adobe Town HMA
The Adobe Town HMA is located in south-central Wyoming between Interstate 80 and the Colorado/Wyoming border. It encompasses 472,812 acres of which 444,744 are BLM-administered public lands. The topography of the area is varied with everything from colorful eroded desert badlands to wooded buttes and escarpments. In between are extensive rolling to rough uplands interspersed with some desert playa and vegetated dune areas. Limited, sensitive desert riparian areas are important features of the landscape. Winters are long and severe. Annual precipitation ranges from less than seven inches in the desert basins to more than twelve inches at some of the higher elevations. Elevation ranges from 6600 ft to 7800 ft along Kinney Rim, which forms the western boundary of the HMA. Some of the HMA is in the Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area. Other features in the area include the Cherokee Trail, the Haystacks, and Powder Rim. The Allowable Management Level for wild horses in this HMA is 610-800, with BLM managing for a target population of 700. The current estimated wild horse population in the Adobe Town HMA is BELOW the low end of the AML at 433 horses.
Salt Wells Creek HMA
The Salt Wells HMA encompasses 1,193,283 acres, of which 724,704 acres are BLM-administered public lands. The majority of the herd management area consists primarily of checkerboard land ownership area created by the Union Pacific Railroad grant in the Northern portion. Consolidated public lands with state school sections and small parcels of private land making up the majority of lands in the southern section of the HMA. Topography within the herd area is generally gently rolling hills. There are several small streams passing through the area, and some high ridges. Elevations range roughly from 6,300 to 7,900 feet. Precipitation ranges 7-10 inches in lower elevations and 15-17 inches at higher elevations, predominately in the form of snow. The area is unfenced other than portions of boundary fence and right-of-way boundaries along I-80.
The AML for this HMA is 251-365 horses. The current population is estimated to be 572 wild horses. A full range of colors is present. This herd has a high number of palominos and sorrels with flaxen manes and tails. Other horses’ colors are bay, brown, black, paint, buckskin, or gray.
Livestock Grazing in the Complex
22 livestock grazing allotments lie partially or wholly within the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek Herd Management Areas.
The BLM allocates a total of 177,829 Animal Unit Months (AUMs) for livestock grazing in these 22 allotments. This is the annual equivalent of 14,819 cow/calf pairs or 74,095 sheep. Meanwhile the agency allows a MAXIMUM of 1,165 wild horses in these two HMAs.
More information:
Click (HERE) to fill out Auto-Letter at AWHP
Photographer Carol Walker’s Blog, ”Wild Horses: Only the Complete Destruction of the Red Desert Herds Will Do“
The Atlantic, “On Wyoming’s Range, Water is Scarce, but Welfare is Plenty“
2010 Adobe Town/Salt Wells Creek Roundup Environmental Assessment
Horse Slaughter Sad Facts | Save Animals Today
Dec 10, 2012 @ 08:47:23
Important Links From Straight From The Horses Heart by rtfitchauther | Save Animals Today
Dec 10, 2012 @ 08:42:37
Dec 05, 2012 @ 17:19:02
BLM Set to Release Proposal for 8,950-well Drilling Project in the Red Desert
This week, the Bureau of Land Management is expected to release its Draft Environmental Impact Statement for its 8,950-well Continental Divide – Creston gas drilling project, covering 1.3 million acres in the middle of the Red Desert. The project will primarily involve “infill” drilling in the midst of a gas field where sage grouse have already been virtually eliminated. There are no potential wilderness lands within the area, and the landscape has already been substantially industrialized. BCA will be advocating for a maximum use of directional drilling to cluster multiple wells on each wellpad, so that wellpad densities can be kept below 1 wellpad per square mile and allow wildlife such as pronghorn to continue to use the habitat between the roads and wellpads. Preliminary indications from BLM are that directional drilling adn well clustering have proven more economical for oil and gas companies in this gas field than drilling a greater density of vertical wells.
This is where 2 HMA’s will be practically wiped out too. See action at http://www.wildhorsepreservation.org. Only hve until Dec. 7 to comment
Advocates decry BLM’s wild horse roundups at meeting in SLC | Save Animals Today
Dec 04, 2012 @ 16:10:52
Dec 03, 2012 @ 22:16:29
Dec 03, 2012 @ 04:52:18
Scott, here is the link for the Rock Springs Field Office employee directory and an email address where you can direct your comments. Thank you for commenting and spead the word.
http://www.blm.gov/wy/st/en/info/offices/wrbb/cyfo.html
D’Ewart, Jay C GS0401 – Wild Horse & Burro Specialist (307) 352-0331 jdewart@blm.gov
Dec 01, 2012 @ 03:07:58
Louie, once upon a time accepting bribes was considered a liability and a crime, not a pre-qualification for a job.
Dec 01, 2012 @ 02:53:13
I am trying to send the letter about saving the horses but the part about the email address to “AdobeTown_ …” will not let me copy and past the address. Please work on this because a lot more people would help were it easier to send the email. I do not use Microsoft email so that may be the issue. Thank you. If there is a fix please help me help the horses. Thank you, Scott.
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Dec 01, 2012 @ 01:50:25
PLEASE STOP!! THESE HORSES HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO LIVE FREE AS WE DO .
Nov 30, 2012 @ 22:41:04
Nov 30, 2012 @ 18:03:24
A Poem by Michael Leunig
They’re privatising things we own together. They’re flogging off the people’s common ground.
And though we’re still connected by the weather. They say that sharing things is now unsound.
They’re lonelifying all the public spaces. They’re rationalising swags and billabongs.
They’re awfulising nature’s lovely places, Dismantling the dreaming and the songs.
Their macho fear of flabby soft sensations Makes them pine for all things hard and lean.
They talk of foreign market penetrations And throbbing private sectors. It’s obscene.
They’re basically unloving types of creatures With demons lurking underneath their beds.
You’ll notice that a necktie always features To keep their hearts quite separate from their heads.
So if they steal away the people’s treasure. And bring the jolly swagman to his knees.
They can’t remove the simple common pleasure Of loathing public bastards such as these.
Nov 30, 2012 @ 09:06:30
In these two herd areas, there is a “checkerboard” of public and private land, dating back to when the railroad went through, and in the 80s, an agreement was made between the BLM, the Rock Springs Grazing Association, which represented most of the private land owners, and wild horse advocates that set a number of wild horses for each herd area that would be allowed to use the checkerboard lands so that public and private plots would not have to be individually fenced. Last year, the Rock Springs Grazing Association decided that they wanted all wild horses removed not only from all private lands but also from all public lands as well, since they consider public lands that they lease to be “their” lands anyway. They sued the BLM demanding that all wild horses be removed from the 4 largest herd areas in Wyoming, over 2 million acres. Wild Horse advocates have intervened in this ongoing lawsuit to protect the interests of the wild horses.
Nov 29, 2012 @ 12:35:43
Nov 29, 2012 @ 02:06:31
Nov 28, 2012 @ 21:52:28
Nov 28, 2012 @ 05:15:29
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cabinet-member-guilty-in-teapot-dome-scandal
Oct 25, 1929:
Cabinet member guilty in Teapot Dome scandal
During the Teapot Dome scandal, Albert B. Fall, who served as secretary of the interior in President Warren G. Harding’s cabinet, is found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office. Fall was the first individual to be convicted of a crime committed while a presidential cabinet member.
As a member of President Harding’s corruption-ridden cabinet in the early 1920s, Hall accepted a $100,000 interest-free “loan” from Edward Doheny of the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company, who wanted Fall to grant his firm a valuable oil lease in the Elk Hills naval oil reserve in California. The site, along with the Teapot Dome naval oil reserve in Wyoming, had been previously transferred to the Department of the Interior on the urging of Fall, who evidently realized the personal gains he could achieve by leasing the land to private corporations.
In October 1923, the Senate Public Lands Committee launched an investigation that revealed not only the $100,000 bribe that Fall received from Doheny but also that Harry Sinclair, president of Mammoth Oil, had given him some $300,000 in government bonds and cash in exchange for use of the Teapot Dome oil reserve in Wyoming.
In 1927, the oil fields were restored to the U.S. government by a Supreme Court decision. Two years later, Fall was convicted of bribery and sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of $100,000. Doheny escaped conviction, but Sinclair was imprisoned for contempt of Congress and jury tampering.
Nov 28, 2012 @ 04:20:41
Wild Hoofbeats: America’s Vanishing Wild Horses
ADOBE TOWN WILD HORSES