Last week BLM held a meeting of the Advisory Board in Sacramento, California. WHE had a member onsite and several of our team members spoke virtually. WHE also submitted written comments. 

Many of you listened in or sent comments, spoke virtually or in-person.

We know most of you remain as frustrated as we are that the board remains a body that parrots and promotes existing BLM agenda, is populated by livestock and hunting groups and basically ignores areas of desperately needed informed and intelligent discussion. Many of the board members have a real lack of knowledge on basic BLM land use, the Code of Federal Regulations and even basic procedures followed by BLM. But please remember, each member is chosen specifically by BLM leadership.

In only 72 hours, over 1200 of you signed a letter WHE posted.Some of you thanked us for giving you a jump point to begin writing your own comments.

The letter had 5 simple points that touched on only 5 subjects needing to be addressed out of dozens that could have been listed: 1.) The board should recommend that BLM and USFS immediately create a designated task force to address the increase in shooting deaths of federally-protected wild horses and burros. 2.) The board should recommend that BLM complete the process of formalizing welfare rules so they are enforceable. 3.) The board should recommend that BLM and USFS include facility reports as part of online gather updates. 4.) The board should recommend the Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) be suspended. 5.) The board should recommend that BLM prioritize creating and updating Herd Management Area Plans (HMAPs).

Not only did you hear inaccurate representation of any discussion that even remotely came close to addressing a couple of these issues, the board only created 4 recommendations after the 2 day meeting: 3 of the recommendations all center around population growth suppression and one recommending an adoption facility in the eastern states.

It is not surprising that the board focuses on subjects key to the Path Forward lobby document adopted in 2018 and funded in the fiscal 2020 budget, one of the authors of the original Ten Years to AML sits as chairperson of the board. Many of you are familiar with the premise of the document that essentially promotes pushing population numbers down to the unscientific Appropriate Management Level (AML) and increase a mashup of fertility control to keep population numbers down at levels acceptable to industry (livestock, mining, etc.).

The board discussed doing roundups, even if there is no space in holding, to apply fertility control. Many of you were surprised and wrote to us. For years there has been a misconception that “fertility control” means “no helicopters.” We have tried to explain to you numerous times that a method of population control (removal, fertility control) is not the same as the mechanism used to achieve that end method and mechanism are two different things). Multiple substances can be darted or applied during capture by hand. In the vast majority of HMAs (particularly large HMAs) a helicopter roundup is the mechanism of application of the chosen method and substance. “Using fertility control” does not mean “no helicopter” until populations reach AML and are kept there at that number after the herd is no longer growing.

Nothing discussed at the board (or in Path Forward) addresses the fact that AML (allowable numbers) is still not science based and the actual equations used (data points in a mathematical breakdown) of how they were set have never been disclosed. When BLM says they “affirm” those numbers in a land use plan, that does not mean a science-based breakdown, it means they retyped the numbers. Land Use Plans (LUP) are not site-specific, landscape level analysis. The LUP is where all existing management plans and expected industrial growth are worked into one document to set overarching and general guidelines in a district. So every recommendation of the board simply pushes BLM to get to an unscientific and dangerously genetically bankrupt goal? 

Our court rulings this year pushed the words “Herd Management Area Plan” (HMAP) into dialogue. Several of you were surprised that they only mention one ruling (Pancake) and ignored that we obtained a second ruling that stated HMAPs have been illegally delayed (Blue Wing). “We do not need to do any recommendation to urge BLM to address HMAPs because we are seeing them do it everywhere,” said the chair. Yes, we almost fell out of our seat as well. We are not seeing BLM do HMAPs everywhere, only where we have won litigation. And even then what we are seeing is BLM play “word games” again and trying to pass off gather plans as HMAPs by placing “Herd Management” in the title of the document and leaving the “objective of the document” as a large removal. We will have to keep going to court and fighting this nonsense. BLM simply will not disclose actual equations on how AML was set, how forage allocations are set and evaluated. BLM simply will not discuss any management actions that protect critical habitat and identify aspects of the herd required for preservation. We have already begun to set up additional litigation.

We know the discussion above may be hard for some of you that are new to advocacy. Essentially what you need to know is that BLM has put a lot of effort into avoiding anything that would upset livestock and will put in more effort to avoid anything that will actually disclose that AML was set in (special interest) agreements, not by data, and that there will be no effort at all on the part of the agency without a court order to evaluate how wild horses and burros are being pushed out by profit-driven uses (on the 12% of public lands designated for their use). BLM operates for administrative ease, not scientific integrity.

Dangerous air quality and excessive roping during heat waves (that is smoke, not dust)

Where this type of generational obstinance can be really easy to understand is when we look at how welfare issues are addressed. Instead of formalizing enforceable welfare rules (every welfare rule in the nation is punitive and enforceable), the BLM has created a “support system” and “mentoring program” where they shower praise on offenders to “slowly create progress.” They tout the Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP) using words like “policy” and “success.”

All you need to do is peek at one roundup, the Blue Wing roundup of 2024, and see how this “gentle” approach to people plays out for horses and burros. Instead of postponing as dangerous heat index rises and air quality went into danger zones, BLM plowed forward on a roundup that was not an emergency and the second large roundup in this area in two years. (Right before the court ruling that management planning that sets things like AML was illegally withheld. It was really hard not to interpret this action as trying to beat the court ruling.) Animals began to die simply during transport in the heat. Aggressive roping and handling began in the very first days and escalated each day until a horse was choked and kicked in the head. In just the first six-week post capture, the death rate of burros rose to over 13%.

The BLM CAWP (support) team gave the Blue Wing roundup an “excellent” rating. 

BLM simply dances claiming that CAWP is “policy” (without enforceability), because they typed the word “permanent” on an internal memorandum.

Public policy can be generally defined as a system of laws, regulatory measures, courses of action, and funding priorities concerning a given topic promulgated by a governmental entity or its representatives. Promulgate, in the context of administrative law, is a term used to describe the process of enacting an administrative final rule as an administrative regulation. A regulation is promulgated when a final rule is published in the Federal Register at the conclusion of the rulemaking process.

Instead of actually formal promulgation of policy, BLM stated at the meeting CAWP is not punitive (not enforce, and that abuse is being addressed behind the scenes and that it takes time. BLM simply expects the public to trust BLM and be patient. BLM has had over 50 years to create a welfare policy and only began after court rulings (they hate to mention). “Trust” and “patient” do not work well with BLM.

When asked about welfare rules, BLM claims they do not do rulemaking because “it would take years.” We find that laughable. BLM drafted their CAWP standards in 2015, failed to review any roundup, took 5 years to hire someone for the program and has spent 5 years giving “excellent” ratings to roundups that fail to provide basic humane care. BLM already has the draft standards and can put them out for public comment, review and formalization. It has been 10 years since the standards were drafted. 

Why so much push back on basic welfare rules that would simply stop a roundup if air quality were dangerous or personnel doing things like choking a mare down or other dangerous activity? Because speed and numbers are the only thing that matter.  So BLM will waste another 10 years on “endorsement and not enforcement” and the board will not even have a balanced discussion about it because actually treating wild horses and burros humanely with enforceable rules seems too much of a controversial subject.

Just looking at basic welfare issues can help us understand the entire program: state your purpose (humane management) and then spend money and time to create and manipulate dialogue to avoid simply doing the right thing. 

When it comes to burros? Invite people that looked at burros off the jurisdiction of the board (National Park) to speak. Then the board simply ignored burro-specific issues when it came to recommendations. (We have an entire article coming next week on the BLM Advisory Board and burros.)

Over the next week we will publish specific article focusing on the comments made by WHE team members and breaking down more of what the Advisory Board “covered.”

After watching the board interact with each other and the agencies tasked with the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act (BLM and USFS), we hope it is clear that your voice really matters.

Without YOU, politics will continue to manipulate reality to praise BLM and fail to address the foundational flaws that have kept this program broken, our wild ones suffering from greed and incompetence, for decades. YOUR voice matters. 

Together we will refuse to play politics and focus on fight to protect and preserve our treasured wild ones. 

Our legal team is working on an update. Our team has been working hard through the holiday season and into the new year.

We have follow-ups on the two court wins last year to protect two other herds. We also have an update on the case to preserve the historic Stone Cabin/Saulsbury herds, the case against the denial of wild horse advocates to address habitat and resource loss from mining, the filing against the Winnemucca facility, the ongoing lawsuit to protect the Antelope and Triple B Complexes (the largest in the nation) and more coming soon.

In 2024, meeting with BLM leadership in DC, it was confirmed that the agency itself sees any change (using their words) as “litigation driven only.” In other words, they are not going to change unless we sue. That means we must work hard to expand this critical arm of WHE if we hope to achieve any real reform.

Our team is working hard in the field and in the courts. Without your support, none of our work is possible. Thank you for keeping WHE running for our wild ones!