As you prepare your comments for the Blue Wing Complex Herd Management Area Plan (HMAP) we are presenting a series of articles to assist you. Because this level of management planning has been skipped by BLM for decades for the vast majority of herds, there is understandable confusion. 

Many of you are asking we get an article out, now. We are crafting our own comments and it will take time to complete them. We will provide you with some samples to work from, but please understand that it takes time and care to craft a complete set of comments and we are working as fast as we can. This article was put together fast and we apologize for any typos or lack of clarity. We are working on our comments, lawsuits and coordinating field teams. 

 The deadline for public input is June 1.  (click here to find documents and “participate now” information on BLM website).

We want to thank all that took the action item last week to help us gain some of the necessary missing information from BLMs “scoping packet” they provided. 

According to BLM: “The first step in the HMAP analysis process should generally be to evaluate existing management. At the conclusion of the management evaluation, a report will be prepared and made available to the public for a 30-day review and comment period (public scoping).” 

We have had to contact our attorneys. BLMs response to the request to provide the bare minimum (information established by the state in previous scoping) was met with a resounding “file a Freedom of Information Act” request. BLM knows full well that no information requested through FOIA would arrive in time to be useful in the scoping process. We are still working on addressing the lack of any actual “review of current management” needed for scoping.

BLM is NOT doing any public interface that explains the process, provides clarification on the data they provided, answers questions (as they do during scoping for all other interests). Basically, BLM is saying to advocacy “You are on your own without even basic data.” 

WHE will try to fill the void.

There is not much time to prepare the public to engage appropriately in the HMAP process, one advocacy has waited over 38 years to engage.

We know you are all eager to get started and we present the following information and sample comments. We hope this helps you get started. Remember, every time you have made a comment in the past regarding water, genetics, forage, AML, etc. and were told it was “outside the scope” of the gather plan and “irrelevant,” the HMAP is the place that comment is relevant. 

In a nutshell:

Scoping allows you to identify substantial issues that must be analyzed before BLM can craft alternatives. BLM must include an analysis that provides data-based reasoning, even if they omit the subject of your comments from alternatives. In others words, they can’t simply claim they reject the subject because it is: too hard, not based on their data (that they failed to provide in scoping) or not permissible in some underlying agreement they made with a permittee or management document that was crafted for a private interest without appropriate planning to protect herd and habitat. 

The HMAP is to both “comply with and inform” the Land Use Plan (LUP). This is the same for any planning document, for any subject matter. In much the same way as a mining plan of operations might include things out of the scope of an existing land use plan (LUP), it would then trigger a revision of the existing plan. We have all seen sage grouse, mining, livestock, trigger revisions of underlying planning (RMP/LUP). In this case, there never was any HMAP to guide crafting any plan, for anything. Revision of underlying planning documents to comply with inclusion of the HMAP is decades overdue.

In other words, particularly because BLM is failing to provide guidance out of the gate, BLM cannot dismiss your comment on an HMAP in the same ways they dismiss your comment on roundup plans. Everything is “appropriate” to comment on in a management plan and, if it is outside the parameters of existing NEPA like an LUP, it is still appropriate if it rises to the level of a “significant issue” and indicates the LUP needs revision.

Example: Scoping for the 104,000 acre Pine Nut HMA HMAP revealed that inclusion of HA land (Fish Springs) in any management plan was a significant issue to the public. The draft HMAP included conditions for formal repatriation of the HA in the preferred alternative. The preferred alternative (as usual) is what BLM finalized. The HMAP would then trigger a revision of the RMP to include a designation change of the HA to HMA. (Herd Area, HA, means “designated for horse and burro use but not currently managed as such.” When BLM “zeros out” a Herd Management Area, HMA, it reverts to HA status.)

First, what is “The Blue Wing Complex?”

The Blue Wing Complex encompasses 2,283,300 acres, five Herd Management Areas (HMAs), four Herd Areas (HAs), and non-HMA areas where wild horses and burros (WH&Bs) migrate back and forth (BLM failed to recognize these areas where horses and burros were “presently found” as the 1971 Act decreed and simply denotes the movement to justify low population numbers without inbreeding). The HMAs consist of: Kamma Mountains, Seven Troughs Range, Lava Beds, Blue Wing Mountains, and Shawave.  The Antelope Range, Selenite Range, Trinity Range, and Truckee Range (not managed or “zeroed out” primarily due to checkerboard and other industry conflicts). The Blue Wing Complex is located in western Pershing County, approximately 65 miles northeast of Reno, Nevada.

Drafting Comments

In the previous section we talked about the repatriation of HA land being approved in an HMAP for Pine Nut. In that case, BLM provided much of the data that helped craft the comments to support this very site-specific change to be guided by the HMAP.

How do you craft a similar comment when BLM has provided no data? BLM did not give you census (or other) reports that show why it nearly half the acreage of the complex was “zeroes out.” They provide you no data to demonstrate that horses and burros are still in those areas, even with population management levels set at “zero.”  So how would you structure that comment so BLM does not just claim they can dismiss it?

You could craft a comment addressing HA repatriation, even if you have no more information than you can find in past roundup reports, that sounds something like:

“BLM omitted  the inclusion of over half the acres in the complex from current HMAP scoping documents omitting individual HA acreage . BLM cannot simply exclude what they do not want to address. Inclusion of HA land is both appropriate and set by existing precedent. The land designated as “HA” represents more than half the land base of the complex.

Current law recognizes the portion of Shawave “zeroes out,” the Antelope Range, Selenite Range, Trinity Range, and Truckee Range, as “designated for horse and burro use.” Current law allows evaluation of these areas for repatriation. Considering the costs of capturing and holding wild horses and burros, evaluating HA for repatriation, outlining steps to guide repatriation, is a substantive issue for evaluation in the HMAP. 

Since BLM set AML at “0” in a portion of Shawave, the Antelope Range, Selenite Range, Trinity Range, and Truckee Range, these areas have been included in removal plans demonstrating that both horses and burros still utilize these areas as preferred habitat regardless of any agreements made with private interests to remove all horses and burros. Even without seeing census maps done over the last 4 decades, continued “gathering” of animals in these locations indicates habituation. 

Setting interim AMLs in the HAs to account for historic occupation (more than “0”) would be appropriate.The HMAP should provide clear guidance for guide monitoring and research to provide data to evaluate the areas for inclusion as HMAs.” 

Blue Wing Burros, NV

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