Columnist Dan Abernathy.

Courtesy photo

As I sit here in confused wonder watching the season finale of wild horses, I wandered into the playing field of those who don’t understand their role in the greater good of all things. This unannounced flight plan put me in a nosedive towards the Bureau of Land Management,(BLM).

The BLM, now administered by the U.S. Department of Interior, was established in 1946. President Truman merged the General Land Office and the Grazing Service to create the BLM. Today, the BLM manages about 245 million acres of public landscapes in America.

Under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, the BLM carries out a dual mandate of multiple uses. The agency manages a wide range of uses, such as energy development, livestock grazing, mining, timber harvesting and outdoor recreation. The agency supposedly does this while conserving natural, historical and cultural resources, which include wilderness areas and national monuments, wild horse and wildlife habitat, artifacts and dinosaur fossils.

In response to public outcry, Congress unanimously passed the “Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act,” to provide for the necessary management, protection and control of wild horses and burros on public lands. President Richard M. Nixon signed the bill into law on Dec. 18, 1971. Sadly, this public outcry is losing its volume.

The Bureau of Land Management manages and protects wild horses and burros on 26.9 million acres of public lands across 10 Western states as part of its mission to administer public lands for a variety of uses.

What is seen in the final credits of this BLM wild horse eradication is that the BLM has forfeited to the shape-shifting and loudest voice of those who have forgotten the idea of multiple-use lands and free-roaming wild horses.

On Dec. 8, the BLM released its updated and tentative gathering schedule for 2024. The plan calls for the permanent removal of more than 19,000 wild horses and burros by Sept. 30.

It has sparked concerns and criticism across conservation circles and raises questions about the future of America’s iconic wild horses. The sheer number of wild horses and burros to be removed this year is testimony to the BLM's absolute failure to properly manage wild herds and be responsibly steward to our public land.

The wild horses in the North Lander complex in Wyoming are seeing near genocide as 2,766 wild horses are marked for removal. Also targeted for a large-scale roundup is the White Mountain wild horse population near Rock Springs. The BLM plans to remove horses in five additional states – California, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.

The helicopter roundup has already begun at the North Lander Wild Horse Complex, with the largest Wyoming roundups in recent memory, to remove 2,715 horses, 90 percent of the 3,035 horses.

According to the BLM, the reason for all of this liquidation is, if left unchecked, the horses will irreparably damage important resources and fragile ecosystems, putting one of the nation’s largest swaths of priority sage-grouse habitat along with vital mule deer and pronghorn range at risk.

The BLM is saying the hoses disrupt the ecological balance on public lands by overgrazing the vegetation and competing for water sources, especially during a drought. Because they have no natural predators it compounds the overpopulation issue.

However, this is not all about the horses and it seems that they have forgotten to look at the impact of domestic livestock. There are six livestock allotments that overlap with the North Lander Herd Management Area. The BLM currently permits 49,288 head of cattle on these allotments. It seems that the wild horses are not the only cause of land degradation in the West.

The BLM needs to remove their misplaced priorities and fixation with wild horses and look at the cows as well. The BLM needs to include the impact of grazing cattle that are eating the grass for $1.35 per animal unit month (AUM).

We need a balanced approach that addresses land degradation on our public lands and the BLM needs to confront the impact of livestock and even the oil and gas industry. Effective land management must be driven by the data, not the loudest voice, promises or threats. The days of regulators and Tom Horn have long been a thing of the past.

Even though wild horses are on the range year-round, the months used for livestock grazing allotment are months of constantly compounding heavy impact.  

Wild horses are highly social and live in what equine scientists refer to as multi-level societies with complex kinship arrangements and social roles. For the majority of these captured wild horses, being placed in metal pens is their final destination. To see their complex kinship disturbed is not a great sight to see. And for some observers, it’s what makes roundups like these especially hard to allow.

The other question that arrives with awakening impact is why no one can get into these roundups to film and observe. Viewers and the press were not allowed to observe the management activities that take place in the sorting pen. They must stay a half mile away. This is still not far enough to muffle the sounds of what’s happening. What is heard are sounds that are not soon forgotten.

If you’re not doing anything wrong, there should be nothing to worry about. The nothing-to-hide argument is a valid myth. Individuals have no reason to fear or oppose being seen in what they are doing unless they are afraid it will uncover their own prohibited or dishonest activities.

An early instance is in an 1888 novel, The Reverberator, by Henry James, when he made reference to this argument, “If these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn’t pity them, and if they hadn’t done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people knowing.” - dbA

You can find more of the unfiltered insight and the Art of Dan Abernathy at www.contributechaos.com.