Long before a helicopter flies a roundup begins. If you want to “stop the roundup” you have to start working long before a helicopter flies.

At Pancake BLM is in the process of approving a massive mining project, Gold Rock. This project will not only destroy critical habitat but will impact water quality. This project will impact deer and elk migration, sage grouse habitat, destroy roads that are currently peaceful with massive mining trucks traveling way too fast. Those trucks will disrupt a valley that, these last few years, was an amazingly peaceful place to sit with a few hundred horses, sage grouse and wild beauty.

UPDATE: BLM did not send out the approval on this mine to the public. A private firm did. The notification was received a full week after approval by BLM.

BLM has failed the public, the horses, the land in so many ways to satisfy a foreign mining company set to reap a massive profit off your land. 

More soon. 

Comments on the Final document closed August 29. BLM did not, in any meaningful way, analyze the impact to wild horses. They proposed no new wild horse water sources, no habitat replacement options. They did not even propose any additional monitoring.

They essentially gave a map and a population number. Said “no harm, no foul” and propose to obliterate the heart of the Pancake HMA.

Our wild horses can not simply leave the area like deer or elk, if they do they will be considered in “trespass” and removed. The impact to wild horses is the most critical to analyze because they have no place else to go.

Once removed they will stand in the heart of the “bullet in the head” debates in Congress that will not end this year. Stopping a roundup happens long before a comment letter on the EA to do the roundup… it begins with keeping our wild horses free on a range that can sustain them. These profit driven (often foreign owned) companies decimate your public land, offer a few temporary jobs for politicians to crow about, and are impacting wild horse country at a rate never seen before. This one will destroy this herds long term survival in any fashion that resembles the herd they are today.

No decision record has been signed. BLM has not yet determined if they will fix their mistake and analyze, appropriately, how this project will impact this herd. We do not know if they will even recognize how grave the error of excluding a segment of the public, wild horse interests, actually is.

We saw roads being created already…. and there was not even a decision signed.

If you sent in a comment letter today might be a good day to contact Ely BLM?

Make your call today! This area must be appropriately analyzed and your voice must not be intentionally ignored! The voice of one American should count more than a foreign company needing to wait before they decimate America’s public land! (Gold Rock is foreign owned)

You can use the same email you used before: mseal@blm.gov 

Or call the Ely office at 775-289-1800 and ask for Mindy. If you can not get through you could try the BLM state office: 775-861-6500 and ask for the NV State Director Mike Courtney.

The mine permit belongs to Canadian  Fiore Gold http://fioregold.com/fiores-gold-rock-project-nears-completion-of-federal-mine-permitting-process-with-publication-of-the-final-eis/

We deserve an answer.

Background: https://wildhorseeducation.org/2018/08/21/blm-fails-wildhorses-in-nepa-threatening-entire-herd/

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“Stop the Roundups” is work that must start long before a helicopter flies.

This is “big picture” time.