Fight and Flight, Tammi Adams (WHE NEPA Coordinator)

Traveling to Nevada from Minnesota by air is an experience not for the faint of heart.  Especially for those of us who value and fight for our public lands, wildlife, and the ecosystems.  As I made my way to the Wild Horse and Public Lands conference in Reno, my flight across Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada continued to clarify just how the fight for our public lands and wildlife has become even more important.  Not many people look, much less take pictures, out of an airplane window to witness the environmental devastation created by mining/extraction industries.  But I do.

The Nevada BLM is completing a Final EIS for the Bald Mountain Gold Mine Juniper Project expansion (DOI-BLM-NV-L060-2021-0013-EIS). 

Noted by the WHB specialist for that project was the disappearing seeps and springs, which are essential water resources for the wild horses in the Triple B HMA.

Triple B

The Triple B wild horses shall lose more than 46,000 acres to this gold mine expansion, yet Nevada BLM states it is a small percentage of the HMA (and we will just continue to remove more wild horses under the inadequate 10-year Gather EA stating the rangeland is degraded and there is a WH overpopulation.) The acreage these horses will lose is larger than most Herd Management Areas (HMAs) in the West.

Yet, the Plan of Operations (PoP) presented to BLM from the mining company states “no impacts to wild horses.” 

Noteworthy, is the Triple B wild horse HMA (directly impacted by Bald Mountain gold mining) has no Herd Management Area Plan (HMAP) to even begin to evaluate nor mitigate this exact loss of resources and cumulative impacts from other “multiple uses.” Without an HMAP, appropriate mitigation for wild horses is near impossible.

Triple B is back on the BLM roundup schedule. Multiple mines have expanded in the vast wild horse complex, along with proposed energy transmission lines, livestock fencing and “water improvements” for privately owned livestock, and more.

Since 2018, 4,181 wild horses have been removed from Triple B. In 2024, they plan to remove another 2,255. The complex is comprised of the Triple B, Maverick Medicine and Antelope Valley Herd Management Areas (HMAs) and spans over 2 million acres. When the 2024 roundup ends the population left in the area will teeter around 600.

Hardrock mines (gold, silver, nickel, copper, etc.), whether underground or surface disturbances, devastate ecosystems, wildlife, and human health through ambient air dispersion of contaminants, loss/contamination of water resources, and widespread soil contamination.  More than a century worth of uncontrolled mining and the massive political push today for “green energy” creates unabated and unstudied pollution that cause human/wildlife cancer, kill ecosystems, impair water resources/waterways/aquatic live, and cause irreparable damage to forage resources/ecosystems for all living creatures.

There is no such thing as “green mining.”  Just as there is no such thing as “mine reclamation” that returns the landscape back to esthetically pleasing or “like before.”

Contaminated water from the air

My many years as an environmental engineer in the west demonstrated the inability, throughout history, of the state or federal governments to predict the unpredictable, nor respond to the predictable continuous environmental impacts to human health and the environment from the impacts of mining/extraction industries. 

Despite federal laws developed in the 1980’s and 1990’s attempting to direct “cleanup” for the mining “leftovers,” and identify those “principally responsible parties” (companies, often internationally owned) to be held financially responsible for the cleanup.

Currently, there are an estimated 500,000 abandoned mines in the US posing significant dangers to human health and the environment (air, water, and soil).  Nevada alone has nearly 200,000 abandoned mines.

The cost of reclamation and restoration for abandoned mines falls on the State and federal governments tasked with the abandoned mine cleanup.  In other words, taxpayers like us are paying the bill.

Mining exploration pads from the air.

Even mining “exploration” denudes ecosystems, removes/impedes wildlife and avian migration corridors/patterns, and destroys ecosystems that shall never recover.

Long ago I watched a Twilight Zone episode where a man on an airplane saw a monstrous and dangerous creature on the wing of the plane outside of his window … for me, the experience was so similar I could hear the theme song from Twilight Zone in my head.

The experience was made more poignant as I spent time with our wild ones on the ground. 

In order to keep “wild horses wild” we must begin to focus on habitat protection for wild horse and burro use and not simply how to keep the numbers so low we keep mining and livestock happy. 

Tammi Adams has served as the NEPA coordinator for Wild Horse Education since 2020. 

Our team is back on the road and back in the thick of working on active litigation.

We need your help to continue to document, expose, work toward reform with lawmakers and litigate. Our wild ones deserve to live free on the range and free from abuse.

Thank you for keeping WHE on the frontline in the fight to protect and preserve our treasured wild ones.