Source:  Various

At the Phoenix, AZ, BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Advisory Board meeting yesterday and today, Dean Bolstad, BLM Wild Horse and Burro Specialist, announced that anticipated federal budget cuts may severely curtail planned gathers.  

The House of Representatives has put forward a bill that would cut the BLM's budget by $2 million dollars in Fiscal Year 2011.  However, the Senate version of the bill would actually increase BLM funding by $12 million.  Discrepancies in the bills will be settled in committee conference.

The BLM's published Proposed Strategy for 2011 included round-ups of more than 7,600 horses in the eighteen Herd Management Areas - down from a previously projected number of 10,000 animals to be removed.  The Proposed Strategy document set out a number of alternative plans, some of which are under study by the National Academy of Science (NAS).  

Meanwhile, the document revised total numbers upward, from 26,600 to between 32 and 36,0000, for the desired number of animals in sustainable herds.  It also proposes to refocus primary management procedures from large round-ups for cutting numbers to using birth control methods ('round-up, treat, and release').  

In addition, the 52,000 unadopted animals currently under BLM care will need some kind of long-term management plan.  Proposals to increase adoptions from the current number of 3,000 per year to 4,000 per year involve training  more of the animals in existing programs to make them more desirable to potential adopters.  

However, adoptions of 4,000 animals per year while removing 5,000 or more from the wild, still adds a considerable number to the unadopted horses in holding areas.

All of this discussion and planning, still subject to intense scrutiny and dissension from wild horse advocates, will become an empty gesture if funding for the BLM wild horse and burro management programs is drastically cut.  

The Proposed Strategy does not undertake a major revamp of BLM policy by any reckoning.  While numbers have been juggled and some strategies have been refocused for example, from round-ups to relying more upon birth control to control numbers and lowering gather numbers eventually from 10,000 to 5,000 per year, wild horse advocates will not consider that enough change to win their support for the proposed policy.

Those same advocates will no doubt rejoice if funding cuts reduce or eliminate 2011 gathers; however, how this will ultimately effect BLM policy is not at all clear.

View the thirty-two page document online: