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"It really at a fundamental level provides some stability for the grazing industry by assuring that our permits will be renewed in a timely fashion," said Jim Magagna, executive director of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.The legislation allows agencies to approve permits in the face of environmental lawsuits against permit renewals. U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials reported a permitting backlog of more than 5,600 permits nationwide in September. At the time, Congress was required to renew these permits annually.  "The agencies didn't have the resources to meet that requirement, (which) basically put people in a position where they couldn't get their permits renewed in a timely manner," Magagna said. "In some cases, they couldn't graze their livestock for extended periods of time." Under current law, permitting is subject to environmental analysis prior to renewal of a permit. The new legislation allows federal agencies to approve permits without requiring environmental analysis. Agency range managers will still conduct environmental reviews at their discretion. Magagna said the new law focuses range management on the health of allotments. "Environmental analysis has been tied to permit renewal, and really that analysis isn't about the permit. It's about the actual range condition," he said. Sen. John Barrasso, the author of the bill, said it will provide added protections for Wyoming ranchers seeking consistency in their operations. "For too long, our ranching families have been the target of anti-grazing litigation that puts their grazing permits in jeopardy,” Barrasso said. The legislation passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. Source: Billings Gazette, by Trevor Graff Wyoming public lands grazers could see shorter permitting times after Congress passed a bill seeking to streamline grazing permit renewals. The Grazing Improvement Act, approved last week, allows the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to speed the renewal of the agency's 10-year grazing permits.
This new Wyoming lawsuit is a waste of public tax dollars amounting to nothing but a display of chest-pounding bravado to appease ranchers and energy extraction capitalists. This positioning is also a show of allegiance and support for the fringe political initiative to have states take over the management of public lands. It should be duly noted that after BLM's September 2014 round up in Wyoming, the entire population of horses in the state is now only about 2,000 horses! ~ Horses For Life  CHEYENNE, Wyo.- Today, the State of Wyoming filed suit against the United States Department of the Interior and the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over the federal government's failure to appropriately manage wild horses in Wyoming. Wyoming announced its intent to sue in August.
“The lawsuit asks the court to force the BLM to manage wild horses in Wyoming as required by the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act,” Governor Mead said. “It is my belief, and the belief of other western governors, that the BLM does not have the resources to manage wild horses effectively. By filing suit it sends a message that wild horse management is a priority and the BLM must be provided the funding necessary to manage them.” The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act requires the BLM to manage wild horses below previously set appropriate levels and to remove excess horses when populations exceed those levels. Herds will continue to exponentially grow beyond what the BLM determined is ecologically appropriate for each herd management area (HMA). These herds have population growth rates that range from as low as 25% to as high as 58% each year. Horses often stray from HMAs onto state and private land. “Excess wild horses in Wyoming can harm the habitats used by other wildlife species, including sage-grouse, antelope, deer and elk,” Governor Mead said. “Overgrazing caused by overpopulation threatens all animals including horses.” - View Wyoming's December 8, 2014 Petition for Review. Additional documents, including correspondence with the BLM, can be found on the Attorney General's website at: http://ag.wyo.gov/current-issues. Source: Wyoming Governor Press Release  Is Wyoming waking up to the reality of our nation’s unworkable approach to managing wild horses? The horse issue is so heated and divisive, that I’m a natural skeptic.
However, the recent news that a group of Wyoming legislators is urging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to rethink its approach to horses makes me, at least, somewhat optimistic. According to an Oct. 28 article in The Horse magazine, legislators also plan to work with Gov. Matt Mead’s office to educate Wyoming residents about horse management issues. Although this discussion is prompted more by land-use concerns than by wild horses, more dialogue is welcome. Federally protected wild horses on public land have no intrinsic economic value, yet compete with the enormous economic interests of the livestock industry, mining, energy development, and recreational use. According to financial data supplied by the BLM to the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, the agency spent 67 percent of its total annual $77 million wild horse budget, in 2014, rounding up, removing and stockpiling horses from federal lands. It spent a mere 0.3 percent on population growth suppression for 450 mares. Three of five wild horses now live in government holding pens and pasturages, costing taxpayers an estimated $120,000 per day. Worse, each removal merely speeds up the reproductive success of horses remaining in the field. Although BLM field censusing is not scientific, the agency claims there are 40,000 wild horses on federal lands that can sustain less than 30,000. With few natural predators, however, populations will grow. The federal government’s Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Program can place only a few thousand horses each year. There is no good outcome to the current situation until BLM starts to aggressively curb wild horse population increases. One strategy that could help significantly is more widespread use of wildlife contraception, as advised by the National Academy of Sciences in 2013. The immunocontraceptive vaccine, native PZP, has a long track record of success in wild horses, dating back more than 25 years. Today, native PZP vaccine is used in more than 20 Herd Management Areas (HMAs)—several in Wyoming. Model PZP programs at McCullough Peaks HMA, near Cody, and the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, traversing the Wyoming/Montana border, have sharply reduced population growth. Little Book Cliffs Wild Horse Range, near Grand Junction, Colorado, has also demonstrated the value of fertility control. This vaccine blocks fertilization in mares and other animals, such as bison, elephants and urban deer. It can be administered by a rifle-fired dart and doesn’t harm existing pregnancies or an animal’s health. Unlike earlier, hormone-based wildlife contraceptives, PZP breaks down in the mare’s body and will not pass into the surrounding environment, or to other horses. The vaccine is also reversible. BLM has been studying contraceptive agents for years and is said to be holding out for a longer-lasting vaccine. Mares that receive native PZP need boosters every year for the first two-to-three years and then every-other or every third year. This presents challenges in large HMAs. However, horses can be gathered expressly for treatment in temporary corrals through bait or water trapping. That presents a minor challenge compared to the expense and man-hours required for humanely accommodating growing numbers of once-wild horses. Had more HMAs started using immunocontraception 15-plus years ago, as advised by the scientific community, horse populations would be far lower. In some HMAs and wild horse ranges, volunteer groups have been trained to dart mares with native PZP and to track those requiring boosters. This is far less costly than paying more and more to round up, feed and care for these animals off the range. Caring for a horse over a 30-year life span costs taxpayers around $45,000, compared to well under $1,000 to gather, treat, and release a wild mare with native PZP. How long should we wait for the perfect solution? I hope our legislators and the BLM conclude that further delay in not using the best available tool we have—native PZP—makes no horse sense. Source: OpEd Casper Star Tribune by Patricia M. Fazio, PhD Patricia M. Fazio, Ph.D., is an environmental editor, historian, and scientist, with a special interest in the federal wild horse issue—leading to her dissertation on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, completed in 1995. |
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