The BLM wants to remove 4,000 wild horses from four Herd Management Areas in Wyoming, which would mean removing 40% of all of the wild horses in Wyoming.
Please comment on a new Wyoming Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Resource Management Plan Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for proposed changes to the management of four wild horse Herd Management Areas (HMAs) in Wyoming: Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek, Great Divide Basin, and White Mountain.
Please urge the BLM to select Alternative A, which would manage wild horses in their respective 4 herds at the current Appropriate Management Levels (AMLs) for each herd with a total AML 1481-2065. Wild horses are already currently far outnumbered by privately owned livestock on public lands on these Herd Management Areas.
The BLM certainly seems to be violating the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) by favoring some “uses” (livestock grazing) over other “uses” (wild horses). FLPMA stipulates that the BLM take into account the “coordinated management of the various resources without permanent impairment of the productivity of the land and the quality of the environment with consideration being given to the relative values of the resources and not necessarily to the combination of uses that will give the greatest economic return or the greatest unit output.”
If the BLM even took this into account, they ignored it.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) issued “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” a report that is an in-depth assessment of the various significant impacts of the world’s livestock sector on the environment.
The Center for Biological Diversity has noted that “Cattle destroy native vegetation, damage soils and stream banks, and contaminate waterways with fecal waste. After decades of livestock grazing, once-lush streams and riparian forests have been reduced to flat, dry wastelands; once-rich topsoil has been turned to dust, causing soil erosion, stream sedimentation and wholesale elimination of some aquatic habitats; overgrazing of native fire-carrying grasses has starved some western forests of fire, making them overly dense and prone to unnaturally severe fires.”
The BLM’s “Preferred Alternative” would be to remove 4000 wild horses from the four Herd Management Areas, and to reduce the AML for Adobe Town HMA to only 259-536 wild horses (while allowing over 13,000 privately owned sheep to graze many months of the year), and then to use barbaric and archaic procedures for the spaying of wild mares, gelding of stallions, skewing of sex ratios, helicopter roundups, and other cruel methods on the remaining wild horses.
Apparently, the BLM is good with the high numbers of privately owned livestock grazing on these public lands, and plans to continue to let cattle and sheep run rampant.
As it is, the BLM can’t find enough good homes for the wild horses that it has already removed public lands and holds in captivity, so many of these Wyoming wild horses will most likely eventually end up in the slaughter pipeline.
Please request that the BLM select Alternative A. Use your own words. You might suggest that the BLM prepare an EIS to reduce livestock grazing on Wyoming HMAs. If you sign onto a comment form instead of commenting yourself, 2000 comments just get read as only 1 comment. It only takes a few minutes to get onto the BLM site and submit comments online. Your comments will make a difference. Thank you for caring about our wild horses.
Here is the link to submit your comments by April 30th, 2020:
Click on the link above, and look down to the first line that says “Wild Horse Amendment” – on the right there is a button that says “Comment on Document.” Press this and you will go to the online comment form. You do not need to fill in the “Chapter Reference” or “Section Reference” fields. If you have trouble submitting your comments, contact the Rock Springs Field Office Manager, Kimberlee Foster: kfoster@blm.gov 307-352-0201.
by Debbie Coffey
Wild Hoofbeats