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Cloud’s Pryor Mountain herd in danger of extinction by BLM roundup 2015

Posted by on June 7, 2015

Friends of Animals’ comments on potential wild horse gather on the Pryor Mountain Range

Friends of Animals’ comments on a preliminary environmental assessment for a wild horse gather on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range

http://friendsofanimals.org/friends-animals%E2%80%99-comments-potential-wild-horse-gather-pryor-mountain-range

Along with these comments on the proposed wild horse gather on the Pryor Mountain Range, Friends of Animals is here to deliver the “Worst Government Agency” award to the Bureau of Land Management in Billings, Montana, because there are only a measly 170 wild horses left in the entire state of Montana and the BLM Billings Field Office thinks that’s too many!

The Billings office is proposing to roundup and remove 25 “adoptable” excess horses between the ages of 1 and 3—nearly all of the youth of the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Herd—this summer. The Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Herd includes Cloud, a pale palomino wild stallion and his family, made famous by the Cloud Foundation and its Emmy award-winning documentaries. This latest crime comes after years of forcibly drugging the Pryor Mountain mares with the fertility control pesticide PZP, which unfortunately the Cloud Foundation has participated in despite its director saying at the 2010 March for Mustangs that “Freedom and family is everything to wild horses.”

FoA is here to let the public know that the red warning flags of extinction are flying on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range—years of PZP plus yanking the youngest from the rangeland equals extinction! If the Billings office is allowed to eviscerate the beloved Cloud and his family and strip them of their legal rights despite ferocious opposition, then what hope is there for any of America’s wild horses? To set this precedent is a nightmare for what are left of America’s wild horses. 

If the Bureau of Land Management continues to ignore science and continues its crimes against the Pryor Mountain herd, they will be wiped out completely just like all the other wild horse herds in Montana. Montana’s BLM has already zeroed out six of seven wild horse Herd Areas in the state.

What exactly does that mean? Following the passage of the Wild Horses and Burros Act in 1971, The BLM was directed to identify areas where wild horses and burros were located. Seven Herd Areas of Montana were designated as places where wild horses lived. Unfortunately for wild horses, the BLM was charged with determining whether or not there was enough food, water, cover and space to support healthy diverse populations of wild horses over the longterm…as well as thousands of cattle and sheep allowed to graze on public lands. Areas which met their criteria were then designated Herd Management Areas. Sadly, the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range is the only place wild horses currently exist in the entire state of Montana.

BLM, here are some better alternatives to your mismanagement—return to Montana’s wild horses the land in the original Herd Areas that they once roamed or initiate cooperative agreements with Custer National Forest and McCullough National Recreation Area under Section 6 of the Wild Horse and Burro Act to increase the habitat of the wild horses.

The BLM seems proud of its mounting crimes against wild horses. In a recent article on the agency’s website, “Fewer Foals—“That’s the Goal,” the BLM brags about how fertility control has been used since 2001 on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range. Since 2011, the number of mares treated annually has risen from 25 percent to nearly 80 percent, and the recruitment rate has been reduced from 17.5 percent to 8 percent. With potential adjustments in place by 2017, the recruitment rate is projected to be between zero and five percent annually. “This will result in fewer wild horses needing to be removed and work towards our prime mission, which is protection of the range from an overpopulation of wild horses.”

We thought the BLM’s mission was to protect wild horses under the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971!

The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) claim that there are excess wild horses ignores science and instead represents its resentment of wild horses because it is wedded to corporate ranchers, who like to scapegoat wild horses even though it’s their cattle and sheep who are responsible for range degradation. Likewise, the BLM’s claim that the adoption program means a happy ending for wild horses who have already been ripped from their families and the only homes they know also ignores the fact that the adoption program often means a lifetime of abuse.

We want the Billings Field Office, which manages approximately 434,000 acres of public surface lands in southcentral Montana and in Big Horn County, Wyoming, to explain why only 24,641 acres of all that land is allotted for the Pryor Mountain Wild Horses. And we want the Billings Office to reveal the current science that says that 24, 641 acres can only sustain 90-120 wild horses. We demand the Billings Field Office explain why it can administer 378 cattle and sheep grazing allotments—allowing thousands of cattle and sheep to graze in areas adjacent to the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range—yet the range there doesn’t seem to need protection from an overpopulation of cattle and sheep.

Wild horses have a caecal digestive system, meaning they do not decompose the vegetation they ingest as thoroughly as ruminant grazers, such as cattle or sheep. This allows the seeds of many plant species to pass through their digestive tract intact into the soil, which in turn gradually releases nutrients into the soil over all seasons to the benefit of the soil, plants, animals, and entire food web. Unlike ruminant grazers, which often rip up plants from their roots exposing soil to destructive wind and rain erosion, wild horses have upper and lower incisors that permit them to selectively nip pieces of vegetation without tearing out the root of the plant. Additionally, wild horses are able to consume dry, parched and flammable vegetation, and thus may help prevent catastrophic wildfires.

We are here to challenge the preliminary Environmental Assessment that states the purpose of the proposed roundup is to help meet the goals and objectives of the 2009 Pryor Mountain Herd Management Area Plan (HMAP) by helping to maintain the wild horse appropriate management level of 120. The HMAP identified the AML at 90-120 wild horses as the carrying capacity to maintain ecological stability of the range, and protect the range from deterioration. It is unacceptable the BLM is using an outdated AML from 2009. All roundups and the use of the fertility control pesticide PZP should be stopped until this AML is reevaluated by a non-biased party who does not resent wild horses.

The Environmental Assessment also conveniently ignores recommendations from the “Genetic Analysis of the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range” by Dr. Gus Cothran in 2013—to increase population size to maintain genetic variability levels. His research also suggested the very beginning of evidence of inbreeding.

His recommendation clearly states: There has been a general trend for a decline in genetic variation levels of this herd. If the trend continues, the variability levels of the herd could drop below the feral average within the next five to 10 years. The best way to maintain current levels would be to increase population size if range conditions allow.

The Environmental Assessment also ignores crucial information provided in the 2013 National Research Council Report “Using Science to Improve the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program,” which reveals that wild horse populations on America’s public lands may already be too small to ensure survival for future generations. The study suggests that population size of 5,000 in a connected area may be necessary to ensure maintenance of fitness The Equid Specialist Group of IUCN Species Survival Commission recommends minimum populations of 2,500 individuals in a connected area for the conservation of genetic diversity.

Scientist have warned that “populations managed with a target size of fewer than 500 horses were at some risk of losing more than 90% of selective neutral genetic variation over a long period.

The 2009 PMWHR HMAP does not take into consideration more recent scientific evidence that PZP has negative side effects on wild horses. When the Humane Society obtained ESA registration for PZP in 2012, the organization never provided evidence that PZP doesn’t have negative side effects…it just provided information about the efficacy of PZP and actually requested waivers for most of the studies ordinarily required from an applicant seeking pesticide registration—including a toxicity study, ecological effects and environmental fate guideline study. The majority of research submitted by HSUS was published by Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick, a veterinarian who manufactures PZP, and did not consider the biological, social and behavioral effects the drug can have on wild horses.

More recent research has demonstrated repeated applications of PZP can cause physical damage to treated mares; it is not completely reversible; it can increase mortality in foals post-PZP effectiveness; and it interferes with herd cohesion, which is critical to the overall health of wild horses. In addition, preventing mares from producing foals can create a genetic bottleneck that may ultimately extinguish the species as a whole.

A driving principle behind FoA’s mission is that we must reestablish meaning with regards to the word “wild.” Humans often refer to “wild animals” or “wildlife” only to distinguish them from truly domesticated animals. Little thought is given to what “wild” should mean, and how to protect it. The truth is, a majority of all “wild” animals are not wild at all today. They are merely free-roaming, human managed animals. FoA’s definition of wild means no human exploitation and manipulation of the animal, period. Humans should not be managing any wild animal by keeping them in small “herd areas,” or limiting their population through culling, relocation or forcibly drugging them with the fertility control drugs.

Yes, FoA recognizes that many might see our position as a “pipe dream.” Today, public lands in the United States are a bleak place—largely ecologically unsound because of extensive human involvement. We have killed off or limited the number of nearly every native animal; we have over utilized resources; and we have filled the landscape with non-native species. But still, it is a dream we cannot give up on; if we do, then any chance of a return to ecological balance is lost forever. But if we continue to push, maybe we can someday soon see a real push for true ecological zones on public lands; zones where the landscape and animals are free from exploitation and management.

As Aldo Leopold said, “There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.”

Friends of Animals cannot.

– See more at: http://friendsofanimals.org/friends-animals%E2%80%99-comments-potential-wild-horse-gather-pryor-mountain-range#sthash.pfib1MJ8.dpuf

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