Federal land managers say 14 wild horses were euthanized during a roundup in northeastern Nevada.
The roundup at the Triple B complex north of Ely gathered more than 800 horses to be removed and shipped to holding facilities.
The Bureau of Land Management says the roundups are necessary because there are more horses than the land can sustain.
This is not so. There are not more horses than the land can sustain. Read on.
FEDERAL LANDS — A Perspective
The federal government owns roughly 640 million acres, about 28% of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States.
Four major federal land management agencies administer 610.1 million acres of this land . They are the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and National Park Service (NPS) in the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Forest Service (FS) in the Department of Agriculture.
In addition, the Department of Defense (excluding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) administers 11.4 million acres in the United States , consisting of military bases, training ranges, and more. Numerous other agencies administer the remaining federal acreage.
The BLM manages 248.3 million acres of public land and administers about 700 million acres of federal subsurface mineral estate throughout the nation. The BLM has a multiple-use, sustained-yield mandate that supports a variety of activities and programs, as does the FS, which currently manages 192.9 million acres.
Most FS lands are designated national forests. Wildfire protection is increasingly important for both agencies.
The FWS manages 89.1 million acres of the U.S. total, primarily to conserve and protect animals and plants. The National Wildlife Refuge System includes wildlife refuges, waterfowl production areas, and wildlife coordination units.
In 2015, the NPS managed 79.8 million acres in 408 diverse units to conserve lands and resources and make them available for public use. Activities that harvest or remove resources from NPS lands generally are prohibited.
Numerous issues affecting federal land management are continuously before Congress.
These issues include the extent of federal ownership and whether to decrease, maintain, or increase the amount of federal holdings; the condition of currently owned federal infrastructure and lands and the priority of their maintenance versus new acquisitions; and the optimal balance between land use and protection, and whether federal lands should be managed primarily to benefit the nation as a whole or to benefit the localities and states.
WE’VE BEEN THERE
Various individuals who work and volunteer for The Fund for Horses (The Horse Fund) have viewed great pieces of public lands managed by the BLM over the course of 15 years. They viewed these public lands by both helicopter and light plane.
It is virtually impossible to get across to anyone who have not seen the vastness of these areas just how immense federal lands are.
You can fly for large chunks of time — sometimes hours — and see absolutely nothing but land as far in any direction as your eye will take you.
A huge chunk of federal lands managed by the BLM are where our wild horses and burros roam.
ROOM FOR OUR WILD ONES
How is it possible there is room for cattle ranchers, miners, drillers, and all the rest, yet not space for our wild horses and burros, somewhere — no matter how remote? We do not care.
Our wild horses and burros would acclimate themselves. It may be unsettling at first. However they would survive.
It would be much better for our wild horses and burros to remain free roaming, even if it meant being captured and re-released, no matter where it was, than being robbed of their precious freedoms, breaking up their bands and confining them to holding facilities often in unsafe and deplorable conditions. Certainly anything must be preferable to submitting them to a brutal and terrifying death by slaughter. Castrating their males. Yanking the ovaries out their females.
We asked BLM personnel why this was not a workable solution, one that could surely offend no one and possibly delight quite a few.
The BLM spokesperson replied that the Department of Interior would not want wild horses and burros removed from their designated, herd management areas and moved to vast open spaces where the BLM might find it difficult or impossible to track and “manage them”. That they told us would be in direct opposition to the 1971 The Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.
Not so.
At any rate, it seems obvious to us that they could simply do fly overs (like the ones we went on) once or twice a year to see where the bands were and report on their size and condition.
Certainly this is doable and good economics. Would this not also benefit America’s public lands? Wild horses and burros actually refurbish the land, not destroy it leaving it barren the way say, cattle do.
Mostly importantly of all, this would mean no more deaths like those of the 14 murdered Triple B wild horses. At least out in the wild, our mustangs and burros have a fighting chance to survive.
HELP
At long last we finally won some introductions, and caught the ear of some valuable people at the Department of Interior. They have been much more receptive to our ideas than the BLM have been. Please chip in with a contribution, any amount, to help keep us in nation’s capitol and active on behalf of our wild horses and burros, domestic horses, racehorses and walking horses. There’s a lot to do!
Thank you for your generosity and support.
Tuesday's Horse 
Have you tried to contact Lara Trump,….she is Trump’s daughter in law, and a BIG animal lover. She may have some influence and be able to help.
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We fight a war against money and power, but we will not give up. At some point, the anger, horror and disgust will reach a level that they will not be able hide their deceit and false data. The more they are exposed, the more the people become aware that faster we can win this fight. We need awareness to grow.
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This MUST stop. Period
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There are so many more cattle and many many more sheep out there in the Triple B Complex and the Appropriate Management Levels for the wild horses are outrageously low. These wild horses are stuggling to survive a viable levels and BLM’s management is in cahoots with the wild horses’ enemies. This is just not right, nor according to the WFHBA!
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True words Mr. Downer. We think that it is the master plan to rid our public lands of all wild horses and burros period, and why the BLM is so opposed to moving them.
If the BLM keep them contained to the same HMAs where ranchers and other business interests are constantly battling to get them removed — this is how the BLM hope to get rid of our wild horses and burros altogether. This is nothing but sheer bloodymindedness, and the historic and unrelenting hatred by them and those who want the lands to use for themselves.
While all this goes on, of course, people are making money off their roundups, “storing them” on private lands, selling them for slaughter etc.
The DOI is beginning to see the light. Only because there are new people there. They checked out our proposal. They see that it is not only feasible but also would save the government and the taxpayer millions and millions of dollars. Wild horses and burros can manage themselves and always have. They do not need man’s help. It only looks like that now because of BLM mismanagement.
Predictably the BLM called our proposal “utter nonsense” and “totally unworkable” but could not back it up with any data. They couldn’t even manufacture any that would stick even with their usual lies and manufactured data. Instead they made themselves look foolish which only strengthened our case.
Our DOI contacts were not impressed with their response, at all. No one seems to be. Yet — if our plan eventually goes ahead, is successful and preserves our wild horses and burros, they will claim they were on board at the beginning, or say they were the ones who originally came up with the plan. Business as usual.
All we can do is see how far we can get with it. This is a highly politicized issue with many powerful factions involved. But nothing else has worked. We must come up with something new, not persevere with the same old tired ideas while our wild horses and burros are mismanaged into extinction.
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BLM stop the pointless roundups. You run the babies fragile legs to pieces, you have no consideration for the elder or pregnant. Most wild horses are not in jeopardy left to themselves. We all know you just want to sell grazing rights to private ranchers whose livestock will ruin the land, so then will be privatized to big oil companies. For shame to destroy beautiful God’s creation/horses for your filthy lucre.
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So true Donna. Tragic and totally unnecessary. They don’t seem to ever want a solution. That’s why we are going to the DOI instead of the BLM who are in cahoots with the cattle ranchers to make a killing sending 100s to slaughter. Their arithmetic doesn’t add up. Never has. There’s different people in the DOI now. It’s worth a try. We can’t just sit on the sidelines and do nothing. We will never work anything out with the BLM. They are saying they need to preserve the HMA’s (herd mgmt areas for the new readers).
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