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This fall and winter, the Bureau of Land Management will gather excess wild horses and burros from the High Rock Complex and the Tri-State Calico Complex and herd management areas in northwest Nevada.
These gathers occur within a portion of the Tri State coordination area where BLM Nevada, Oregon and California and the US Fish and Wildlife Service are working together to improve management
of federally protected wild horses and burros on BLM managed lands and feral horses on the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge.
Gene Seidlitz - Winnemucca District ManagerPart of that has been population surveys for the past two years, doing that collaboratively. Also, collaboration on rangeland monitoring, collaboration on looking at
fences or range improvements in terms of the conditions of those and what needs to be done.
Just this past August, the Sheldon Wildlife Refuge removed 250 excess feral horses. The High Rock Complex on the California side is starting their gather in mid-October, and shortly after that gather, the Tri-State Calico.
Nancy Huang - Northern California District ManagerOur primary objective is to bring the wild horse and burro populations back to their appropriate management levels.
We want to make sure that we have healthy horses on healthy lands in balance with the other authorized uses of public rangelands.
The BLM's wild horse and burro specialists along with the range and wildlife specialists monitor herd management areas closely looking at what kind of forage and water is available,
how much of it is available, and what kind of wildlife share the land and these resources with the wild horses and burros. The management levels for the wild horses and burros were established based on available
forage and water resources as well as factoring in other uses of the land. In the High Rock Complex the Appropriate Management Level is 258 to 451 wild horses. There are no burro herds. In the Tri-State Calico Complex,
the Appropriate Management Level is 572 to 952 wild horses and 39 to 65 wild burros. On the range, forage and water are limited. When too many horses and burros compete for limited forage and water, they can damage the habitat they share with
wildlife and permitted livestock.
Ashley Johnson - Wild Horse & Burro SpecialistIs there enough vegetative cover around the green line? And a green line is where your water meets the land surface.
This should be a green line. And it's called a green line because we want it to have vegetation.
We should have grass growing along here, and what we have is bare soil where the burros have made this their watering hole.
They've pawed this out to get it deep enough that they can get a drink. And as a result, you can see the mass trailing where they come up,
they stick their nose in and they get a drink, and the vegetation suffers from that.
Despite the wet winter of 2010, precipitation in the region has been below average for 9 of the past 11 years. Because of this, some springs are dry and others are producing very little water.
In their search for water, horses and burros concentrate on just a few springs, even scraping at the ground in an attempt to get more water, as well as digging up and damaging developments.
Richard Knox - Rangeland Management SpecialistWe're here in the Fox Hog herd management area and this is Rocky Peak Spring, one of the developed water sources within the herd management area, and you can see
here that the wild horses have dug two feet or more down in the soil to get water.
And as they have dug here, you can see right over there, that they've broke the pipes and now the developed spring is no longer functioning, and the water is running right in here and making a mud hole that the wild horses are drinking out of.
The Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act requires management and protection of wild horses and burros within herd management areas. Animals outside these areas must be removed. Both upcoming gathers will address this need.
Wild horses and burros must share the range with wildlife including bighorn sheep and sagegrouse. The BLM must maintain wildlife habitat to keep these species healthy while keeping the wild horse and burro herds healthy as well.
Over the past four decades, cattle grazing has declined. Over the past six years, cattle have consumed about 60 percent of the forage allocated to them. Because of their population growth, wild horses have consumed nearly 300 percent more than their
allocated forage amount.
Ron Cerri - President, Nevada Cattlemen's AssociationWell there's a perspective out there that that the Cattlemen want to see the horses removed so that they can run more cattle, when in actuality when the Wild Horse and
Burro Act became the Act,
there were 700,000 cattle in the state of Nevada. Today, there are only 420, 000 total. That's a reduction of better than 40 percent.
Livestock grazing numbers must be managed based on forage, water, and wildlife use just like the wild horse and burro numbers. Since 1982, the BLM has reduced livestock use in the Calico Complex by more than half due to drought, lack of forage and water,
and wild horse and burro overpopulation. In fact, in areas where the livestock grazing overlaps the herd management areas the forage allocated to livestock and to wild horse and burros is almost the same. However,
while the livestock permittees have kept their livestock numbers in check, the wild horse and burro populations have exceeded what they're allocated by almost double.
Will Roger Peterson - Sierra Front-North Western Great Basin Resource Advisory CommitteeThe rangeland is the key to all of these issues. It's not the horses, it's not the cattle, it's
not the elk and the hunting seasons that control those animals, it's, it's the fact that if the grasses are healthy and the rangeland is healthy, then all those other animals are healthy.
The last gather within the Tri-State Calico Complex occurred in the winter of 2009 when more than 1914 wild horses were removed.
We stopped a gather after an aerial survey showed the number of animals in the area was close to the low end of the appropriate management level. However, wild horses in this area are known to move around,
including during gathers, so it was unclear exactly how many of them were truly left in the complex. In June 2010, a coordinated population inventory flight of the Tri-State areas showed that in the
Tri-State Calico Complex there were 1,277 animals, more than twice the number counted at the end of the 2009 gather. Consequently, the last gather did not result in wild horse population reaching the appropriate management level.
In June 2011, a similar population inventory flight was conducted and supported the 2010 counts and the need for another gather. Wild horse and burro gathers are an integral part of the BLM's management of public lands.
They are conducted through a public input process and in close coordination of communication with a variety of stakeholders from local government to interest groups to livestock permittees and tribal nations. Here is what some of the people in the area
have to say.
Garley Amos - Chairman, Humboldt County CommisionThis here's a very very marginal country. And I think it's very difficult for people to understand how marginal this country really is, you know, as far as producing
vegetation.
Mark Freese - Habitat Biologist, Nevada Dept. of Wildlife Everything needs to be managed out there including livestock, wild horses and even wildlife cuz otherwise we'll end up with degraded habitat.
Jim Kudrna - Livestock Grazing PermitteeThere's nothing finer than seeing about 350 horses all charging, you know, completely around you.
We are committed to ensuring that there will always be healthy horses and burros on healthy rangelands that the public can go see and enjoy.
We are also deeply committed to ensuring that those animals that are removed from the range are gathered in a humane manner with great care and handling by all those involved.
The experienced BLM staff and contractors have the animals' interest at heart as they are horse and burro lovers, owners and enthusiasts themselves.