by Debbie Coffey
The BLM wants to remove 4,000 wild horses from four Herd Management Areas in Wyoming, which would mean removing 40% of all of the wild horses in Wyoming.
Please comment on a new Wyoming Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Resource Management Plan Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for proposed changes to the management of four wild horse Herd Management Areas (HMAs) in Wyoming: Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek, Great Divide Basin and White Mountain.
Please urge the BLM to select Alternative A, which would manage wild horses in their respective 4 herds at the current Appropriate Management Levels (AMLs) for each herd with a total AML 1481-2065. As you can see on the graphs below, wild horses are already currently far outnumbered by privately owned livestock on public lands on these Herd Management Areas.
The BLM certainly seems to be violating the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) by favoring some “uses” (livestock grazing) over other “uses” (wild horses). FLPMA stipulates that the BLM take into account the “coordinated management of the various resources without permanent impairment of the productivity of the land and the quality of the environment with consideration being given to the relative values of the resources and not necessarily to the combination of uses that will give the greatest economic return or the greatest unit output.”
If the BLM even took this into account, they ignored it.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) issued “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” a report that is an in-depth assessment of the various significant impacts of the world’s livestock sector on the environment.
The Center for Biological Diversity has noted that “Cattle destroy native vegetation, damage soils and stream banks, and contaminate waterways with fecal waste. After decades of livestock grazing, once-lush streams and riparian forests have been reduced to flat, dry wastelands; once-rich topsoil has been turned to dust, causing soil erosion, stream sedimentation and wholesale elimination of some aquatic habitats; overgrazing of native fire-carrying grasses has starved some western forests of fire, making them overly dense and prone to unnaturally severe fires.”
The BLM’s “Preferred Alternative” would be to remove 4000 wild horses from the four Herd Management Areas, and to reduce the AML for Adobe Town HMA to only 259 – 536 wild horses (while allowing over 13,000 privately owned sheep to graze many months of the year), and then to use barbaric and archaic procedures for the spaying of wild mares, gelding of stallions, skewing of sex ratios, helicopter roundups and other methods on the remaining horses.
Apparently, the BLM is good with the high numbers of privately owned livestock grazing on these public lands, and plans to continue to let cattle and sheep run rampant.
The BLM counts a cow/calf pair (2 animals) as only 1 animal, so when looking at the graphs below, be aware that the numbers of cattle on public lands are actually double the numbers indicated on the brown lines on the graphs below.
Source for numbers of livestock: BLM Rangeland Administration System
Source of high AML numbers of wild horses: Salt Wells Creek HMA
Source of grazing allotments on Salt Wells HMA: BLM Rock Springs RMP Revision
Source for numbers of livestock: BLM Rangeland Administration System
Source of high AML numbers of wild horses: Adobe Town HMA
Source of grazing allotments on Adobe Town HMA: BLM Rock Springs RMP Revision
Source for numbers of livestock: BLM Rangeland Administration System
Source of high AML numbers of wild horses: Divide Basin HMA
Source of Grazing Allotments on Divide Basin HMA: BLM Rock Springs RMP Revision
Source for numbers of livestock: BLM Rangeland Administration System
Source of high AML numbers of wild horses: White Mountain HMA
Source of Grazing Allotments on White Mountain HMA: BLM Rock Springs RMP Revision
The numbers of livestock and the percentage of the allotment on public lands are from the Authorization Use By Allotment Reports on the BLM Rangeland Administration System. The numbers of animals were reduced based on the percentage of each grazing allotment on public lands. The numbers of animals were again reduced by the percentage of each grazing allotment on the wild horse Herd Management Area (HMA). The percentage of allotments on each HMA was from BLM Rock Springs RMP Revision. Numbers of animals were rounded down. For grazing periods that were 10 days or 20 days, the numbers of animals were reduced to reflect the shorter grazing period. Grazing periods of 5 days or less were not included in the numbers in the graphs above.
As it is, the BLM can’t find enough good homes for the wild horses that it has already removed public lands and holds in captivity, so many of these Wyoming wild horses will likely eventually end up in the slaughter pipeline.
Please request that the BLM select Alternative A. Use your own words. You might suggest that the BLM prepare an EIS to reduce livestock grazing on Wyoming HMAs. If you sign onto a comment form instead of commenting yourself, 2000 comments just get read as only 1 comment. It only takes a few minutes to get onto the BLM site and submit comments online. Your comments will make a difference. Thank you for caring about our wild horses.
Here is the link to submit your comments by April 30th, 2020:
Click on the link above, and look down to the first line that says “Wild Horse Amendment” – on the right there is a button that says “Comment on Document.” Press this and you will go to the online comment form.
The PPJ Gazette 
May 07, 2020 @ 22:29:41
Leave the horses alone. Administrative officials are elected officials and should not be allowed to contravene the express wishes of the American public.
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Apr 30, 2020 @ 13:55:23
“MOLVAR: A SOLUTION FOR RED DESERT WILD HORSES”
On Wyoming’s Red Desert, a legal battle is raging, pitting wild horses against livestock
grazing on public lands, particularly the “checkerboard” lands on either side of the Union
Pacific railway.
Apparently, some ranchers can’t stand wild horses on the open range, especially on
private checkerboard lands, and wild horse advocates don’t want to see the horses taken
off the range and slaughtered or shipped off to distant private lands.
Allow us to present a modest proposal to protect both of these interests, and the broader
public interest as well. Our proposal would enhance private landowners’ ability to
enforce their own property rights, improve land health and enhance wildlife habitats on
public lands and resolve thorny public access issues that plague Red Desert
checkerboard lands. Here’s our solution:
First, use acre-for-acre land swaps to consolidate checkerboard lands into large,
contiguous public and private blocks. The federal government should acquire high-value
habitats like sage grouse priority habitats and the Hoback-to-Red Desert mule deer
migration corridor, plus crucial big game winter ranges and potential wilderness like
those found in northern Adobe Town. Private land and mineral owners could trade into
large tracts of rangeland with lower wildlife habitat values and greater mineral resources
.
Second, wild horses could be removed from the large blocks of private land, so that
livestock wouldn’t compete with wild horses. Wyoming is a fence-out state, and once
wild horses are shifted to public lands, federal agencies could assist with the cost of
creating fences to divide the private and public blocks, while allowing for big-game
migration between both types of land.
Third, for remaining public lands throughout the Red Desert, livestock would be
removed and those rangelands could be managed for the benefit of wildlife and wild
horses. The general public values native wildlife by large majorities, as well as the
opportunity to view wild horses, while domestic livestock primarily benefit their private
owners and there is little interest from the American public as a whole in having
livestock on public lands
.
Without domestic livestock, agencies can remove fences that obstruct big game
migrations and kill low-flying sage grouse. Without domestic calves and lambs to worry
about, wolves and other native carnivores would have the freedom to roam their original
homelands in the Red Desert, at least on public lands.
With the Red Desert’s scant rainfall, inability to support livestock over the winter and
expense of providing water supplies, this desert has always been marginal for raising
livestock to start with. That’s why almost all the ranches within its bounds went belly-up
decades ago.
In contrast to its marginal value to the agriculture industry, the Red Desert represents a
world-class high desert ecosystem, a biological stronghold that supports populations of
rare wildlife ranging from sage grouse to pygmy rabbits to burrowing owls. Its
breathtaking scenery rivals our national parks in places like Adobe Town, the
Honeycomb Buttes and the dunefields bordering the Boars Tusk. Its recreational value is
important today, and will only increase as a growing population of Americans looks
increasingly to its public lands as a recreational sanctuary. Wild horses are a significant
part of that recreational value; a Sweetwater County Tourism Bureau official once told
me that the No. 1 question asked by travelers stopping in was, “Where can I go to see
wild horses?”
Let’s be clear. Wild horses don’t pose an ecological problem in the Red Desert so much as
an annoyance to private agribusiness. The rangelands of the Red Desert are in good
condition relative to other parts of the West, featuring native grasses and shrubs without
widespread infestations of invasive weeds like cheatgrass.
We find no evidence that today’s wild horse numbers are causing problems for land
health or for native wildlife. If wild horses do overpopulate some day and cause damage,
temporary birth-control drugs offer a workable solution.
Untangling private and public ownership in the heart of the Red Desert would give
private landowners the opportunity to pursue their private profits on their own lands. It
would give the landowners of federal public lands – all Americans – the opportunity for
better public access and enhanced lands management that maximizes public values
rather than private profits.
Without cattle and sheep to compete with native wildlife, the land will be healthier and
support more abundant and secure populations of native species so that we can all take
pride in implementing the land ethic that gets so much lip service here in Wyoming. Aldo
Leopold, the father of wildlife management, would be proud.
Erik Molvar is the executive director of Western Watersheds Project, a nonprofit organization
that works to protect western watersheds and wildlife, particularly on public lands.
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Apr 28, 2020 @ 14:59:49
Something that has never been answered to my satisfaction..
This legal document states that federal law prohibits fencing on public lands
WHY, then, do we see so much of public land fenced?
ROCK SPRINGS GRAZING ASS…LEGAL DOCUMENT…LAWSUIT TO FORCE BLM TO REMOVE WILD HORSES
Read #28 pg 10 “…Federal Law expressly prohibits fencing on Public Lands….”
https://docs.google.com/file/d/1-GHpM2A1bwTXOOQVP122bFCOHXOw1p2-ecdRIcGJLjW5Hrx8I6BqcxjzZWZJ/edit?pli=1
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Apr 28, 2020 @ 11:06:31
The law clearly states The United States of America Code of Federal Regulations states: § 4710.5 Closure to livestock grazing.
(a) If necessary to provide habitat for wild horses or burros, to implement herd management actions, or to protect wild horses or burros, to implement herd management actions, or to protect wild horses or burros from disease, harassment or injury, the authorized officer may close appropriate areas of the public lands to grazing use by all or a particular kind of livestock.
If the BLM were truly striving for a thriving natural ecological balance, this would be the very first and foremost alternative in the RMP amendment proposal and the logical, legal and fair decision to promote a thriving natural ecological balance on these public lands.
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Apr 27, 2020 @ 10:53:47
These are not “state lands” and not “federal lands” and not even “government lands”. They are public lands. The American people own the public lands in the West and they are to be administered on our behalf by the national government under laws and regulations. This land and resources belong to all citizens of the United States.
Unfortunately, the BLM has an awfully prejudice interpretation of the terms of their responsibility and have done everything in their power to reduce the numbers of horses in the wild and find as many ways as possible to contravene not only the spirit of the law, but the letter of the law as well. The BLM has become the biggest co-conspirator in this effort to defraud the American public.
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