Wild horses on range free, below after bring sent to a holding facility. You can find a lot of answers in how BLM conducts revisions in planning documents.

A Resource Management Plan (RMP), also can be referenced as a Land Use Plan (LUP), establish goals and objectives to guide future land and resource management actions implemented by the BLM on a district-by-district planning process (article for those looking for a deeper look into the paper chain of BLM.)

An RMP is supposed to be revised about once every ten to fifteen years. The revision process is supposed to include new technologies, fix underlying flaws brought through new information, and set goals that protect our public lands and resources (like wild horses) while allowing profit driven industry a privilege of applying for a permit to make a personal profit off the public domain.

It usually does not work that way. Industry leaders often have BLM managers on speed dial and exert personal pressure through those relationships and through their political connections. Most members of the public are not even told how to engage an RMP and what to do if BLM ignores them.

When BLM does a roundup the documents they currently prepare (an Environmental Assessment, or “EA”) confine public participation and analysis to a removal operation, not a management plan. BLM will state that “management is guided by the RMP.”

Management for wild horses and burros is supposed to be guided by the Herd Management Area Plan (HMAP) that would be used to inform an RMP (much like an Allotment Management Plan, AMP, would do for livestock). BLM simply skips these.

The BLM Report to Congress in 2019 stated BLM wants to stop doing any additional paperwork beyond an RMP to roundup (or spay) wild horses. We expect their new Report, that has a due date some time next week, to make the identical request. 

Many of BLMs RMPs are 20, 30, or more years old. BLM is approving oil and gas drilling under RMPs that never even imagined things like “fracking.” Yet, BLM finds loopholes and creates exceptions.

When an advocate tries to address decades old flaws, in a decades old RMP, BLM simply makes excuses and continues to run a broken program into the ground.

Familiarizing yourself with the “RMP” is important. Tomorrow you can listen to a Resource Advisory Council in Vale Oregon discuss the RMP. There is another in Idaho still open for public comment. Both of these RMP’s include spaying and sterilized herds (whole or in part) as part of their proposed paperwork.

If you do decide to listen a glossary of terms might come in handy. We have one for you HERE.

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