In September we informed you BLM had just published the 2024 roundup schedule. The 2024 fiscal year begins October 1. We also told you BLM would add more roundups to the schedule as Congress released funding through the Appropriations process.
BLM expects to be fully funded at the same level that has driven record breaking removals the last 5 years and has expanded capture totals to 20,942 wild horses and burros.
Many of you are getting mixed messages saying something like “BLM just announced” the 2024 roundup schedule. Back in September we told you about the first 2024 schedule here. In years where funding is distributed through Appropriations from Congress piecemeal to federal agencies through Continuing Resolutions (CR), the roundup schedule always comes out in pieces. In years where funding is distributed in a fully approved budget in October, BLM can still simply approve the schedule in bits and pieces as they determine funding priorities. The 2024 schedule began in October with the government fiscal calendar and runs through the last day of September 2024. (Example: Clan Alpine roundup, Roberts Mountain roundup and Moriah are all part of the 2024 schedule and have concluded.)
We also want to note there was no official “announcement” from BLM. The updated schedule was part of a presentation at the Advisory Board meeting in AZ this week. BLM has also not released any Decisions of NEPA Adequacy (DNA) on any of the roundups where their Environmental Assessments (EA) are more than 2 years old (some on the schedule as old as 8 years) to allow the public to see things like census and range data showing the EA is still valid. Around 2017, BLM dimply stopped issuing DNAs for wild horse roundups after losing in court when the DNA did not match the EA in scope and intensity and the DNA opened the way for a legal challenge. Our guess? BLM figures if they don’t do the paperwork to prove compliance the doorway to a court challenge stays closed? (We are actually in court now on this very issue.)
The largest removal of wild horses in 2024 will be at the East Pershing Complex in NV with 2,875 targeted for removal with no release. This roundup will begin on December 28, run through the last day of February.
BLM will hit North Lander in Wyoming with a removal of 2,766 and a capture of 2, 806 (we assume with a release and fertility control).
Breaking down the schedule
Above you can see the darting schedule. Each year we note that both PZP and GonaCon are used in darting protocols by BLM. Each year, the public seems to fail to recognize that darting is a method of application and not a substance. Multiple substances can be delivered with a dart gun (remote application). Many in the public and media have confused the use of a dart gun with the use of PZP (that the public has found more acceptable than the hormonal hit of GonaCon). They do not mean the same thing.
What is very interesting is that when BLM lists helicopter capture, they do not list the substance that will be used in fertility control application.
An interesting note: About a third are listed as “maintain AML” (does not support the assertion that every range is overpopulated according to low BLM standards), several of the trapping operations are also in areas BLM darts, more than half are in areas BLM is expanding extractive industries. Many are in areas BLM relentlessly captures horses due to expanding extraction and livestock.
An example is Triple B. Triple B has been hit every other year since the EA was approved in 2017. More horses have been removed under this EA (nearly 10,000) than under any ten-year EA in the nation. This is the same area BLM is in process of approving the “Juniper Project,” another expansion of the Bald Mountain mine where wild horses will be losing nearly a third of their designated territory.
In 2023 (and so far in 2024) BLM is NOT doing any census flights before roundup, they are doing distribution flights. Not “how many,” but “where are they.” Some of these areas are conducting census flights only after the roundup (and it seems only under pressure from potential litigation).
We are working on gathering BLM data and will expand on how BLM prioritizes, sets up the roundup plan, funds it and what happens afterwards. This is important to understand to really grasp just how inadequate and political roundups are, they are not data-based decisions.
Our team is working on our year-in-review as we countdown to the 2024 calendar year. We are also gearing up to cover the next roundup of winter roundups beginning in twelve days.
You can see roundups in review from the 2023 fiscal year HERE.
You can take our survey on the necessity for taking the welfare policy through an open rulemaking to create an enforceable standard HERE.
Thank you for keeping us in the fight!
Our wild ones should live free on the range with the families they hold dear. Our wild ones should also live without abuse. WHE carries ongoing litigation to push BLM into open public process to create an enforceable welfare standard for our treasured wild ones.
There are many ways to support the work of WHE from direct contribution, stock donations and even while you shop. More HERE.
Categories: Wild Horse Education
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