The Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe and Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest will begin to remove tribal members’ privately-owned horses from the Santa Rose Ranger District and return them to their rightful owners. This is the second in a series of operations and could take up to eight days with at least 800 horses expected to be removed.

“Over the past 30 years, the number of unauthorized tribally-owned horses grazing on tribal and public lands increased to more than 2,500 horses,” said Santa Rosa District Ranger Joe Garrotto. “These horses are competing for forage with native wildlife and authorized livestock, overgrazing, harming ecosystems, and damaging fences and stock-watering facilities.”

Tribal Chairman Tildon Smart agrees with the Forest Service about these horses being a major concern. “They are causing safety issues for people driving on public and tribal lands and on U.S. Route 95,” Chairman Smart said. “They are also damaging important tribal natural and cultural resources.”

The removal operations will take place about 75 miles north of Winnemucca, Nevada, on the northern portion of the Santa Rosa Ranger District and adjacent tribal lands. The horses being removed from federally-managed public lands are tribally-owned domestic horses, and are not protected under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. Safeguards have been built into the removal operations plan to ensure that wild horses from the Bureau of Land Management’s Little Owyhee Herd Management Area are not impacted. No wild horses were gathered in a previous removal efforts.

“The Forest Service will retain control of gathered horses until they are delivered to the tribal holding facility, where they will be inspected by a team of Tribal and Nevada State Brand Inspectors and Forest Service Wild Horse Specialists,” said Garrotto. “Forest Service personnel will also be on hand to record the ownership of horses to help with future management.”

Chairman Smart explained that once the horses are removed from federally-managed public lands, tribal members will decide whether to sell or keep their horses and constrain them from further unauthorized grazing. The Tribe is responsible for returning the horses to their owners or arrangement of sale.

 “With the help of the Forest Service, we were able to remove more than 500 horses off National Forest System land in December 2018,” added Chairman Smart. “After a recent helicopter survey, we estimate that there are still around 2,000 tribal horses that need to be removed.”

Public viewing is extremely limited since most of the activities will occur on tribal lands. There will be opportunities to view limited helicopter operations on National Forest System (NFS) lands on or around Aug. 7, 2019 provided that it does not jeopardize the safety of the animals, staff or observers, and that it does not disrupt removal operations. There will be no public access to tribal lands

Please contact Public Affairs Staff Officer Erica Hupp at 775-771-4777 prior to the desired viewing date to be added to the attendee list and to receive specific instructions on meeting locations and times. The Forest Service will escort the public to the observation site, which will be difficult to access without a high-clearance four wheel drive vehicle.

The Navajo Nation has canceled a planned wild horse hunt aimed at thinning a herd in an Arizona area after opponents of the hunt organized a protest against it.

The tribe’s Division of Natural Resources rescinded on Monday a proclamation declaring the 2018 feral horse management hunt designed to remove 60 horses from the Carrizo Mountains in northeastern Arizona, according to a notice on the Navajo Nation Department of Fish and Wildlife’s website.

Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said in a statement that the hunt will be postponed and the proclamation was rescinded to allow for public input and education, the Farmington Daily Times reported .

There are more than 38,000 feral horses on Navajo Nation land, according to a 2016 study conducted by the Navajo Fish and Wildlife Department. Horse advocates, including members of the Facebook group Indigenous Horse Nation Protector Alliance, organized a rally for Friday in Window Rock, Arizona, to protest the hunt.

Gloria Tom, the director of Navajo Nation Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the public outcry led to the cancellation.

Navajo Nation Speaker LoRenzo Bates said in a statement that his office was not aware that the executive branch had made a decision to issue permits for hunting feral horses.

​“As Navajo people, we are taught to respect all life forms and that includes horses,” Bates said. “Considering the cultural and historical factors and concerns over water shortages and overgrazing — this is certainly an issue that should have been brought before Navajo leadership and medicine people to discuss and consider.”

If the hunt had not been rescinded, hunters accompanied by wildlife conservation officers would have been able to kill non-branded horses that were at least two years old. Hunters would have been prohibited from killing mares with foals.

The proclamation called for removing up to 60 horses over a six-day period.

Begaye urged Navajo chapters to pass resolutions to address feral horse management in their regions. Begaye said the division of natural resources will put in place a horse management strategy.

“Implementation of this plan is required to ensure a sustainable future while preserving the land and natural resources that sustain Navajo tradition and culture,” Begaye said.

Source: The Associated Press

​Feral tribal horses walk the streets within the Navajo Nation. They’re outside restaurants. In people’s yards. There are just too many horses, and the Navajo government is working to change that. It started in 2013 with community roundups and a veterinary management program.

Scott Bender, DVM, works as tribal veterinarian with the Navajo Nation Veterinary Program and is a USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service consulting veterinarian. At the 2014 American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention, held Dec. 6-10 in Salt Lake City, Utah, Bender shared the challenges faced when managing feral horses within the Navajo Nation and results of tribal equine population management efforts.

The Navajo Nation is located in the southwestern United States, with territory spanning Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. The reservation comprises 18 million acres and, said Bender, an estimated 75,000 to 96,000 horses.

The tribe permits 12,000 livestock owners, with the majority of permit holders having one to five privately owned horses.


​Under tribal law, all unbranded horses within the Navajo Nation are tribal property, Bender explained. That leaves the tribe with a lot of horses.

The Navajo traditionally view horses as sport, working, and food animals. “The horse is sacred to the Navajo, but that doesn't mean we don't eat them," Bender explained. The Navajo believe horsemeat has medicinal, healing properties and is useful as a “winter” meat, he said, explaining that “horsemeat, by tradition, can only be eaten in the winter between October and April—end of thunder and not after ‘first thunder.’”

Initially and into the early 20th Century, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs managed tribal livestock, but management has slowly transitioned to the sovereign nation government, Bender said. This happened partly because of U.S. government-approved reduction of livestock in the 1930s and the euthanasia and burial of more than 500 horses by federal authorizes following a dourine outbreak at the Canyon de Chelly National Monument, which is located in northeastern Arizona within the Navajo Nation boundaries. “This ‘waste of resources’ has left a negative indelible mark on the attitude of Navajo livestock owners toward the U.S. government,” Bender said.

To the Navajo, unused horsemeat is a wasted resource that the creator gave the people, he clarified.

With this in mind, surplus Navajo horses had historically been sold off-reservation to slaughter as a way to manage populations and produce income. When U.S. equine slaughter plants closed in 2007, the tribal horses lost 95% of their value and the surplus feral horses were left to breed without human controls, Bender said. “The current (tribal) horse issue is a direct result of the elimination of an outlet for surplus horses,” he added.

As herds grew, damage to rangelands increased, as did horse-caused human injuries. “Horses in right-of-ways caused car wrecks, human injuries, and even deaths,” Bender said. These issues led tribal communities to request that the Navajo National Department of Agriculture start its equine population management program in 2013, which involved roundups and veterinary services, including free:
​

• Stallion and colt castrations;
• Mare fertility control via porcine zona pellucida (PZP) vaccination;
• Deworming for all castrated or fertility-control-vaccinated horses;
• Five-way vaccination against tetanus, Eastern and Western encephalomyelitis, equine herpesvirus, and equine influenza; and
• Microchip placement (since 2006, the tribe has mandated microchips, which are placed in the nuchal ligament along the neck so as not to taint the horse’s meat should it be sold or eaten, Bender said; the Navajo Nation has microchipped more than 18,000 horses since 1997).

While the initial fertility vaccination was effective, Bender described owner booster rates of horses as “dismal,” despite the program’s outreach and communications efforts promoting boosters. The program’s leadership is now investigating anti-gonadotropin-releasing hormone vaccine (know more commonly as anti-GnRH or GonaCon) use as a longer-activing and single-dose alternative to PZP.

In 2013 the Navajo Nation local communities, with the help of the Navajo Nation Departments of Agriculture and Resource Enforcement, rounded up more than 8,900 horses. Permitted owners claimed approximately 250 horses, with the tribe selling the rest with the requirement that they could not be returned to the Navajo Nation.

The veterinary program’s goal was to castrate 1,000 male horses and vaccinate 1,500 mares against fertility by the end of 2014. To date, more than 700 horses have been castrated or vaccinated with PZP for fertility control. Bender said members of communities where horse removals took place have reported improved forage conditions in spite of the continuing 14 years of drought in the southwestern United States and Navajo Nation.

Source: The Horse