You can watch live, now, https://www.blm.gov/live
REMEMBER the range is impacted by every use out there. Wild horses are a fractional use…. we will not discuss how to restrict impacts from other interests to wild horses, we will only hear about how to remove, surgically impair or kill wild horses.
From BLM press release:
The agenda of the upcoming meeting can be found in the September 5, 2018, Federal Register at https://go.usa.gov/xPcdQ. The final meeting agenda will be posted on the BLM website at BLM.gov/WHB prior to the meeting. The meeting will be held at the Courtyard Marriott Salt Lake City Downtown located at 345 West 100 South, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84101. The hotel’s website address is https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/slccd-courtyard-salt-lake-city-do… the phone number is (385) 290-6500.
The public may address the Advisory Board on Thursday, October 11 from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Mountain Time. Individuals who want to make a comment should register in person with the BLM prior to 1:45 p.m. local time, on that same day at the meeting site. Depending on the number of speakers, the Board may limit the length of comments, which has been set at about three minutes per person during previous meetings.
If you wanted to submit comments the BLM required you send them by October 2, not the usual “by the close of the comment period.”
That does not allow the public to respond or reply to what they hear during the meeting. So you should feel free to write the board with the preface, “after watching the board speak my comments are the following.” You should be given an opportunity to respond after hearing the position of the board. The email is: whbadvisoryboard@blm.gov
You can find individual board members here: https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/wildhorse_whbadvisoryboardcontacts_10082018.pdf
We will update you soon with commentary that YOU can take to Congress about discussions on this board. We will place a discussion section at the bottom of this post as this meeting progresses to help you gain a deeper understanding.
Normally those of us at WHE have not found a board that, in truth, has no legal authority much use.
We engaged the board for years. Found most of the members not knowledgeable about the range itself or the program. We have even done private presentations on fertility control (in 2016) and found the board lacking basic knowledge and could not take discussions into any depth. In 2016 we were harassed by others that came only to the comment period without attending the meeting. BLM did not care nor control the situation.
This year? Listen closely. We will craft comments based on the board meeting for you to use in your interactions with Congress!
The expectation is that we will hear horses discussed in a bubble. Other interests (livestock) will not be discussed as a destructive force to wild horse habitat, this will be a “blame the horse” focal discussion.
A good thing to remember as you listen is what is on the horizon for Pancake. Without analysis, your voice excluded in process, the herd will be impacted and destroyed for mining. The deer can leave. The elk can leave. The horses are stuck in that habitat and if they leave? the horses break the law and will be removed. We do nothing historically to protect wild horse habitat as we limit the areas they can exist in. We do nothing to manage them with scientific analysis. We just remove them after habitat is destroyed primarily by other interests.
This is an election year and your voice matters! We will have more soon. This notice will be updated.
UPDATE 10/11: If you are following the agenda (lined above) and listening to the speakers you have heard the common trend we mention above.
Wild horses are the only animal in out nation defined legally by the land it stands on, not what it is biologically. This is very important to remember.
Wild horses managed by the BLM are the subject of this board. But we have already heard the board discuss state, reservation, etc. Those horses lie outside the purview of this board and their “management” has underlying factors that do not resemble federal land management under the BLM. This “jurisdiction” issue is a constant “confuse” are for the media, public and legislators. https://wildhorseeducation.org/reality-of-wild-horse-slaughter/
Wild horses live, legally, inside ares designated as Herd Management Areas (HMAS). These HMAs are not open areas. These areas are essentially a series of areas that are criss crossed with fenced grazing pastures and fenced ares for mines. More and more HMAs have ATVs and some even ave “off road tracks” that include campgrounds and racetrack areas. Even if an HMA is listed as 500,000 acres, the are is not am open 500,000 acres. Please be aware that the areas our horses live in are impacted by many human footprints. The 300 horses that BLM might call an “appropriate number” of horses in the example 500,000 acre HMA might only actually use a small portion of that HMA because of human interference.
The board does not discuss that human interference much. The board does not address core issues in the program. The board has demonstrated in conversation a deficit in understanding of basic law.
The board keeps discussing the “BLM report.” The report is essentially a data poor “wish list” crafted during the “summit” in Utah where not one advocate org was invited. The “Summit” in Utah was a renaming of the “Summit of the Horse,” a proslaughter meeting run every year by Dave Duquette, who now works for Protect the Harvest, a proslaughter group.
Must read: https://wildhorseeducation.org/2018/04/27/blm-report-to-congress/
PLEASE REMEMBER this board has no legal authority except the mandate to exist.
Wild Horse Education invested years in creating a large scale data/fertility control program. In 2015 it began. It disappeared in the chess game politics plays with lives of humans. The program disappeared under death threat. Does that create an environment where private parties feel safe investing in years of time and resource if your effort can simply evaporate under threat?
The most important thing you can do is engage your legislators. Your legislators make the law. Your legislations can push for accountability. Your legislations can push for an investigation into corruption in todays BLM. http://GovTrack.gov
AN EXAMPLE of how this conversation is a game of numbers and words from the Advisory Board meeting:
Paul Griffin (BLM data guy) talking about the pending experimental spaying at Warm Springs.
I also think that it’s an important misnomer that I need to point out here is that the proposed work at Warm Springs for horses that would be coming from Warm Springs, as clarified in the EA, would not be conducted in the field. No one at BLM has considered using gelding or spaying in an HMA. These animals would be removed from the HMA, transported to the corral, which you have visited, and the facility there is set up with padded squeeze chutes for appropriate or appropriate restraint of an animal, of animals, that is suitable for this type of surgery. So, it shouldn’t be interpreted as a method that’s being considered for use in the field. That doesn’t mean it’s $30 to give a mare a dose of PZP, because you have to have that mare in hand. To get the mare in hand, you have to capture her, and to capture a mare, you typically have to capture — if you look at the age structure and so on, probably at least a stallion and .4 or .5 foals on average. So, if you’re talking about $1,000 to capture each animal, it’s a $30PZP dose, and then $3,000 to catch the animals. There has been discussions about which HMAs are suitable for darting. And you have to know what that mare is and what her history is….
Categories: Wild Horse Education
