browser icon
You are using an insecure version of your web browser. Please update your browser!
Using an outdated browser makes your computer unsafe. For a safer, faster, more enjoyable user experience, please update your browser today or try a newer browser.

Action Alert TODAY: Protect Wild Horses in Wyoming’s Red Desert Complex

Posted by on September 30, 2015

Take Action TODAY: Protect Wild Horses in Wyoming’s Red Desert Complex

Photo | Casper Tribune

Comment deadline: October 9, 2015

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is accepting public comments on an environmental analysis (EA) of a massive helicopter roundup and removal of nearly 2,000 wild horses living in Wyoming’s Red Desert Complex, which includes the Antelope Hills, Crooks Mountain, Green Mountain, Lost Creek and Stewart Creek Herd Management Areas (HMAs). The action would leave behind just 480 horses on this 700,000-acre (more than 1,000-square-mile) public lands area!
.
The EA ignores over 6,000 public scoping comments submitted earlier this year calling for the humane management of Red Desert wild horses on the range with PZP fertility control, and for humane capture methods, instead of using helicopters to chase horses into holding pens. Alternative 2 — the Proposed Action in the EA — calls for removal of over 1,700 wild horses from the Complex — that’s 45% of the total estimated mustang population in the entire state — and includes the token application of PZP fertility control to just 23 mares.  Alternative 1, a second alternative analyzed but not proposed in the EA, would more fully utilize fertility control and return more wild horses to the range, but would still permanently remove approximately 830 wild horses from the Complex. Both alternatives call for using traumatic helicopter capture methods.
.
It’s time to take a stand for Wyoming’s wild horses.  We must insist that the BLM stop ignoring the public and start humanely managing the Red Desert wild horses on the range, allowing the horses within the HMAs to remain where they are on our public lands! The BLM should raise the “Appropriate” Management Levels (AMLs) for the Red Desert Complex wild horse populations. The BLM must fairly allocate range resources to ensure that wildlife — including wild horses — have a fair share of the forage on our public lands, rather than giving exorbitant resources to the privately-owned cattle and sheep operations.
.
Federally protected wild horses and burros deserve to roam free and with fewer cattle, and they can if we continue to speak up! Please personalize and submit the sample letter below to demand humane management and fairer treatment of wild horses on public lands in Wyoming. 
Subject: Red Desert Gather EA Comments

BLM, Red Desert Complex

Email:
Welcome back!
For your convenience, we have filled out your form with the information you provided previously from postal code 03801.

Click to see and manage your information.

Not denise@adceteragraphics.com? Please click here. Thank you!

Comments are due no later than October 9, 2015. They may be emailed directly to: RedDesertComplex_HMA_WY@blm.gov (please include “Red Desert Gather EA Comments” in the subject line) or can be mailed or delivered to either field office:

Benjamin Smith, Wild Horse & Burro Specialist  BLM Rawlins Field Office, 1300 N. 3rd Street Rawlins, WY 82301

Jeremie Artery, Interim Wild Horse & Burro Specialist, BLM Lander Field Office, 1335 Main Street Lander, WY 82520

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Evironmental Assessment

Excerpts from the EA: 

Proposed Action (Alternative 2):

  • Approximately 80% of an estimated population of 2,185 wild horses of the Complex would be gathered (approximately 1,748 wild horses) and approximately 1,705 wild horses would be removed.
  • In contrast to Alternative 1, only 22 studs and 21 mares (numbers are approximate) would be returned to the Complex and the mares older than 1 year would be treated with PZP-22 before being released back into the HMA(s).
  • This would bring the population to low AML (480 horses) and would ensure long term health of the horses and ensure an ecological balance with other uses of the landscape The primary objective of this alternative is to reduce the population to the lower AML and slow the population growth within the Complex to increase the time interval before another gather would need to be completed.

Alternative 1:

  • Approximately 80% of an estimated population of 2,185 wild horses in the Complex would be gathered (approximately 1,748 wild horses) and approximately 402 wild horses would gathered and removed from outside of the HMA boundaries.
  • Approximately 713 mares would be treated with PZP-22, and approximately 1,320 wild horses would be released back into the HMAs. Every effort would be made to return the released horses to the same HMA from which they were gathered.
  • The estimated 482 horses residing outside of HMA boundaries at the time of gather was determined from the 2015 aerial survey that included certain discrete areas outside of the HMA boundaries of interest to the BLM.
  • The post gather population remaining in the HMAs would be approximately 1,800 horses.

Comments are closed.