Wild horses need to stop ruling the range

LakePowellChronicle.com - Full Article

By: Ted Williams
Posted Sep 27, 2022

They are icons of America’s past, symbols of our pioneering spirit. Eyes flashing, nostrils flaring, tails obscured by a cloud of dust, they tear across the landscape. I am, of course, referring to feral hogs.

More on feral hogs directly. But first some background on another feral ungulate. Few issues in the West are more incendiary than management of “wild horses.” Advocates proclaim them “natives” that should be “wild and free.”

Opponents submit that these proliferating aliens are harming land and wildlife belonging to all Americans.

The federal management goal for these horses on public lands is 27,000. Yet the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency charged with tending them, estimates the current population at 64,604. The Journal of Wildlife Management reports 300,000 on all lands – public, private and tribal. Federal law precludes effective feral-horse management. Unmanaged populations increase by 20% annually...

Read more here:
https://lakepowellchronicle.com/article/wild-horses-need-to-stop-ruling-the-range

Wild horses deserve a home in the West

LakePowellChronicle.com - Full Article

By: Scott Beckstead
Posted Sep 20, 2022

I live in a rural county heavily dependent on ranching and agriculture, and though I often hear people talk about threats from large predators like bears or lions, I never hear complaints about wild horses living on our public lands.

Instead, I hear that these animals are living symbols of the American West. From Portland urbanites to Idaho ranchers, and also from the many Indigenous peoples whose forebears called the horse their brother, no one can imagine this region without herds of mustangs and burros running free.

From the federal government it’s a different story. Hewing to a strong pro-livestock bias, the Bureau of Land Management has for decades spun a false narrative about an “overpopulation” of equines that, the agency claims, are in danger of starving and destroying their habitat. The agency would have us dismiss what photographers, tourists and advocates document every day: thriving, robust families of horses living peacefully on vast stretches of federal lands...

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https://lakepowellchronicle.com/article/wild-horses-deserve-a-home-in-the-west

Wild horse activists focus on fertility control as BLM pulls horses from Western rangelands

BoiseStatePublicRadio.org - full story

KUNR Public Radio | By Kaleb Roedel
Published September 15, 2022 at 5:22 PM MDT

In a sun-baked desert east of Reno, Nev., Tracy Wilson and Rae Hanna stood 70 yards from a band of wild horses quietly munching on sagebrush.

Hanna held an air rifle loaded with a dart containing a fertility-control vaccine booster called Porcine Zona Pellucida (PZP)

While Hanna crept closer to the horses, Wilson split off to the right and slowly walked in a semi-circle around them.

“There are times when I’ll just pick at the bushes like I’m another animal grazing," Wilson said. "If you’re just staring them down and going right for them, they’re going to leave.”

Hanna raised her air rifle and aimed at a female horse they call “Bangs.” She pulled the trigger, and the dart struck the black mare in the rump...

Read more and listen here:
https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/science-research/2022-09-15/wild-horse-activists-focus-on-fertility-control-as-blm-pulls-horses-from-western-rangelands

Wild horse gather to take place this year on Wind River Reservation, Wyoming

County10.com - Full Article

Katie Roenigk
September 16, 2022

Tribal, state and federal officials hope to conduct a wild horse gather operation on the Wind River Reservation by the end of this year.

The goal is to remove about 1,200 horses using a “helicopter procedure” and a “standard gathering technique,” state staffers told the legislature’s Select Committee on Tribal Relations during a meeting last month in Riverton.

Once the gather is complete, Tribal officials “have the ability to sell those horses or get them back to (their) owners – or they have an administrative process if people have dumped their horses on the reservation illegally,” said Kit Wendtland, special counsel to Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon...

Read more here:
https://county10.com/wild-horse-gather-to-take-place-this-year-on-wind-river-reservation/

Wild horse gather planned along Utah-Nevada border; public invited to observe

TheSpectrum.com - Full Article

David DeMille
St. George Spectrum & Daily News
Sept 13, 2022

Federal wildlife managers say they plan to gather approximately 700 wild horses later this week as part of an ongoing effort to tamp down the horses' populations along the Utah-Nevada border.

The gathering operation is slated to start Saturday and last for two weeks, starting in the proximity of the Cedar Mountain Herd Management Area, located west of Tooele, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

BLM officials say the herd management area should have between 190 and 390 horses but has a current population of 920. Horses removed from the range will be transported to the BLM-contracted Axtell off-range corrals in Axtell...

Read more here:
https://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2022/09/13/blm-700-wild-horses-rounded-up-along-utah-nevada-border-cedar-mountain-herd-management-toole/10365393002/