Park Service signs deal to round up Death Valley’s wild burros

A wild burro stands in Death Valley National Park. The agency has entered into a five-year agreement with a nonprofit rescue group to remove all burros from the park. (National Park Service)

By Henry Brean
Las Vegas Review-Journal

Death Valley National Park hopes to be burro-free within the next five years.

The National Park Service said Thursday it has entered into a contract with Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue, a Texas-based nonprofit, to round up and remove up to 2,500 wild burros from the park 100 miles west of Las Vegas.

The animals are not native to Death Valley, but they have made themselves at home there, said park Superintendent Mike Reynolds. They damage springs and vegetation, create a safety hazard on park roads and compete for food and water with desert bighorn sheep and other native animals.

“Burros are not part of the natural California desert ecosystem,” Reynolds said in a written statement. “With this partnership, we have created a win-win situation for the burros, the park and taxpayers.”

Starting later this month, Peaceful Valley will lure the animals with food and water or drive them with wranglers on horseback into temporary pens. The burros will then be trucked out of the park to training centers to be prepped for adoption.

“Our main objective is to protect our wild burros. If they must be removed, we want to ensure that it is done safely with as little stress possible,” Mark Meyers, the rescue group’s executive director, said in a written statement.

“This is what they do,” Death Valley spokeswoman Abby Wines said of Peaceful Valley. “Their main mission is to rescue burros and put them up for adoption.”

Wines said the group has agreed to find room at one of its sanctuaries for any animals that can’t be trained or placed in new homes.

Pleasant Valley also plans to remove up to 2,500 wild burros from nearby Mojave National Preserve in California under the same five-year contract.

The operation is being paid for with private donations and grants to the group. Wines said the cost to the federal government is “pretty close to zero.”

Eliminating wild burros from Death Valley has been the Park Service’s stated goal since the adoption of a master plan for the 3.4 million acre park in 2002, but no roundups have been conducted since 2005.

So why now? “They’re multiplying,” Wines said. “We don’t really know what our population is, but we think it’s in the neighborhood of 2,000.”

The largest concentrations of burros can be found in Saline and Butte valleys and in the Wildrose area, she said, but the animals also have recently shown up in the Black Mountains south of Dantes View for the first time since the 1940s.

The National Park Service is allowed to remove them because it is not bound by the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, which requires the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to manage and maintain the animals on public land.

The wild burros of today are not related to the larger animals used in the 20-mule teams that famously hauled borax out of Death Valley in the late 1800s, but Wines said they may be the descendants of old pack animals once used by prospectors in the region.

“That’s the foundation of the wild population in the West,” she said.

The Park Service doesn’t expect the upcoming roundup to eliminate the burro problem entirely.

For one thing, Wines said, “it will be very hard to get all of them.”

And there is nothing to stop burros from neighboring parts of Nevada and California from making their way into Death Valley some day.

“We’re not going to fence the park,” Wines said.

BLM to remove fewer mustangs across West

In this June 5, 2013, file photo, horses stand behind a fence at the Bureau of Land Management's Palomino Valley holding facility in Palomino Valley. (Scott Sonner/AP file)

Martin Griffith
Associated Press

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management says it will remove fewer wild horses and burros from the range across the West this summer because of budget constraints and overflowing holding pens.

Under its roundup schedule announced this week, the bureau plans to gather 2,400 of the animals through the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. All but 215 of them will be horses.

Plans call for removal of 1,535 horses in Wyoming, 285 in Nevada, 200 in Utah, 75 in Oregon, 50 in California and 35 in Idaho. The bureau also plans to gather 140 burros in Arizona, 50 in California and 25 in Oregon.

The announcement comes at a time when the bureau has been under increasing pressure from Western ranchers to step up removal of horses they say threaten livestock and wildlife on drought-ravaged rangelands.

The bureau estimates 40,600 of the animals — the vast majority of them horses — roam free on public rangelands in 10 Western states. The population exceeds by some 14,000 the number the agency has determined can exist in balance with other rangeland resources and uses.

Bureau officials said aggravating the situation is severe drought that has resulted in reduced forage for the animals. The agency also faces limits on the number of horses and burros it can remove because holding facilities are at capacity. Some 49,000 of the animals are being held in government-funded short- and long-term facilities.

Removal of fewer mustangs from the range "will exacerbate the difficult challenges we face in nearly every aspect of the wild horse program right now," BLM officials said in a statement.

But the bureau's actions contradict recommendations of an independent panel of the National Academy of Sciences released last year, said Deniz Bolbol, spokeswoman for the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign.

In a report, the panel said the bureau should invest in widespread fertility control of the mustangs instead of spending millions to house them. It concluded the bureau's removal of nearly 100,000 horses from the Western range over the past decade is probably having the opposite effect of its intention to ease ecological damage and reduce overpopulated herds.

"The BLM already warehouses more wild horses in holding facilities than remain free in the wild," Bolbol said in a statement. "The agency's plan to remove thousands more mustangs and burros from the range makes no ecological, scientific or fiscal sense."

Horse defenders also dispute the bureau's position that mustangs are overpopulating the West. They say the vast majority of forage on the range is being allocated to privately-owned livestock, and public rangelands are being overrun by livestock instead.

"The hyper-focus on mustang numbers is a concerted effort to scapegoat wild horses and distract attention away from the massive level of livestock grazing that is occurring on our public lands," said Suzanne Roy, director of the AWHPC.

After removing horses from the range, the bureau places them in short-term corrals until they're either adopted or shipped to government-funded pastures in the Midwest where they spend the rest of their lives.

Nevada Farm Bureau, counties allege feds mismanage wild horses

By Daniel Arkin -- NBC News/Associated Press

Two Nevada organizations have filed a lawsuit alleging that federal government has mismanaged wild horses, causing damage to rangelands — and the animals themselves.

The Nevada Farm Bureau Federation and the Nevada Association of Counties named three defendants in their lawsuit filed Dec. 30 in U.S. District Court: Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, the Interior Department and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The groups say the BLM should "destroy" horses that are judged unadoptable rather than keeping them in crowded ranches, the Elko Daily Free Press newspaper reported. The BLM, for its part, has opposed the sale of horses for slaughter.

The agency has removed close to 100,000 horses from the Western range over the past 10 years, citing a federal law that mandates the protection of "the natural ecological balance" on public lands and the removal of "excess" horses.

A record number of wild horses – almost 50,000 – are now living in captivity, far more than the 32,000 left on the range, according to the BLM.

When contacted by the Associated Press on Sunday, BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington declined to comment on the lawsuit.

MOJAVE DESERT: Reward offered in burro death

Burros rounded up from public land in the West are held in BLM corrals until adopters can be found. (File photo)

BY David Danelski
Press-Enterprise

The federal government is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever killed and butchered a wild burro on public land in northeast San Bernardino County.

A biologist found the carcass earlier this month in the Ivanpah Valley, near the site of a solar energy project under construction next to Interstate 15 a few miles from Primm, Nevada.

The animal appeared to have been cut up at the site for its meat, said David Briery, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokesman. Whoever killed the burro left behind its head and ribcage.

Burros are protected under the federal Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. The law makes it illegal to kill them.

“We are working with other agencies to bring the responsible parties to justice and hope members of the public will provide us with helpful information,” said Amy Dumas, a BLM wild horse and burro specialist, in a news release.

Anyone with information about the dead burro can contact Chief Ranger Brad Baron at 760-326-7000.

The bureau regularly uses helicopters to round up wild burros on public land in Southern California and throughout the West when theirs ranges are deemed to be overpopulated. Some of the animals are taken to holding corrals in Ridgecrest and later offered for adoption.

The BLM regularly brings horses and burros to the Sundance Ranch off San Timoteo Canyon Road in Redlands for adoption events.

As of November, about 1,100 burros rounded up in the West were being held in federal corrals, according to a BLM website.

Feds Plan Roundup for 3,500 Wild Horses, Burros

A wild stallion runs for freedom after jumping over the fence of a holding area during a wild horse roundup in the Clan Alpine Range in Fallon, Nev., about 120 miles east of Reno, Nev. (AP file photo)

Paul Foy
Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY — Federal officials plan to round up thousands of wild horses and burros across six Western states starting today, Monday.

The roundups will take place through February on drought-stricken range lands in Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.

Contractors for the Bureau of Land Management will use helicopters plus bait- and water-trapping methods to corral 3,500 wild horses and burros, officials said.

In addition, more than 900 other horses will be captured for birth control injections and returned to range lands.

The government is already holding 47,000 horses, most of them on green pasture in the Midwest. Bureau of Land Management officials said it was a popular misconception that they send horses to slaughterhouses. The animals are protected under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.

A small number of horses are put up for adoption, but most horses are kept until their final days in permanent corrals, officials said.

Owners of adopted horses must swear under the penalty of law that they do not plan to send horses to slaughter, said Heather Emmons, a BLM spokeswoman in Reno, Nev.

The BLM's ability to care for ever-rising numbers of wild horses is a decision left to Congress, she said. The BLM says there are 11,000 more wild horses roaming public lands across the West than belong there.

In all, there are 37,300 wild horses and burros on public range lands across 10 Western states, the government says.

Officials said they have no choice but to cull wild horse herds. With virtually no predators, they say, the herds can double in population every four years.

Horse advocacy groups have been critical of government roundups and what they call the rough treatment of horses gathered up.

"They aren't placing enough wild horses through adoption so they need to put a freeze on roundups," said Anne Novak, executive director of Berkeley, Calif.-based group Protect Mustangs. "Killing them is not a solution. Selling them to slaughter is not a solution. They need to be responsible for their actions and stop the gluttony of roundups at taxpayer expense."

BLM officials say comments suggesting they kill horses are irresponsible.

"We do not send horses to slaughterhouses," said Chris Hanefeld, a BLM spokesman in Ely, Nev. "You can quote me."

Several multi-month roundups will get under way across Nevada starting Monday. Officials plan to hold those horses at pens at Palomino Valley near Reno or at Utah's Gunnison Correctional Facility until they can be prepared for adoption or sent to long-term pasture in the Midwest.

Utah

One 400-horse roundup is planned for the Cedar Mountain herd, known as "Utah's Rainbow Herd" because of its high number of pintos, roans, buckskins and grays. The herd is thought to be related to the mounts that the Standard Horse and Mule Co. supplied the U.S. Cavalry in the late 1800s.

Officials say they will release 250 of the Cedar Mountain horses after injecting them with a contraceptive. Roundups also will take place in two other Utah locations.

New Mexico

Officials say 102 horses will be rounded up — and 66 later released — on the Carson National Forest. Another roundup will take place for 365 horses in the high desert of the Jiicarilla Wild Horse Territory. Ninety of those horses will be returned to the land after fertility injections.

Oregon

105 horses will be removed from the Murderer's Creek management area near Mount Vernon. None will be returned.

Idaho

274 horses will be captured — and 137 released — on national forest land along the East Fork of the Salmon River. The BLM says this herd is comprised of a hardy, genetically diverse stock roaming across more than 240 square miles of mountains.

Wyoming

810 horses will be rounded up — and 580 released — near Riverton. Another roundup is planned for 90 horses in the McCullough Peaks region near Cody. Twenty of those horses will be released to the range.

This is of the government's most widespread roundups. Horse advocates say the practice should be scaled back.

"Rounding up only the number of wild horses they can adopt out is a viable solution that makes fiscal sense," Novak said.

BLM burro roundup in Arizona starts amid criticism

By FOX 10 News - Staff Report

YUMA, Ariz. - The Bureau of Land Management is conducting a burro roundup in southern Arizona despite objections from animal advocates as well as a congressman.

BLM spokeswoman Deborah Stevens said the agency started a two-week roundup Wednesday of 350 wild Arizona burros in the Yuma desert.

The roundups are done using a helicopter. In a video of a roundup that took place in southern Arizona, a burro was chased in circles and even knocked over at one point.

The BLM says there's a good reason for this -- overgrazing is preventing the regrowth of vegetation. Some are calling it abuse.

"It is everything that I have in me to watch animal abuse. For the BLM to claim there is no abuse. You actually see the skids of the helicopter and exhausted confused tired burro. This is very very upsetting," said Julianne French.

Rep. Raul Grijalva and animal preservation groups have criticized the BLM for not postponing the roundup. They say roundup activity should stop at 90 degrees because of possible dehydration and other dangers.

Stevens says workers will cease the operation if temperatures rise above 95 degrees. She says a safety officer will monitor the temperature on an hourly basis. There will also be a veterinarian on site.

Stevens says the BLM believes it can gather the burros humanely and will stop if they are in stress.

Dozens of burros die at dried-up spring

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

Fenner Spring CA - Nearly 60 burros were discovered dead in and near a horizontal mine shaft in a remote Mojave Desert wilderness area late last week, federal officials said Tuesday.

The animals probably were seeking water from a spring inside the tunnel that apparently had dried up. In all, 56 burros died, most likely of thirst, BLM officials said.

Some of the animals had been dead for as long as two weeks and were decomposing in the 100-degree-plus heat, said a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Land Management. Bureau officials saved the lives of another 13 burros that were suffering from severe dehydration.

A helicopter delivered 750 gallons of water to the site, about 35 miles west of Needles, on Thursday. By the next morning, all of that water had been consumed. Another 4,000 gallons were brought in by helicopter and a county water tender and placed in portable troughs.

The survivors remained at the remote site on Tuesday but probably will be moved to the federal corrals in Ridgecrest, nearly 200 miles away, officials said.

While BLM officials believe the 56 burros most likely died from lack of water, they are checking the possibility that they consumed contaminated water in the mine tunnel, Briery said

Fenner Spring, inside the 6-by-6-foot tunnel, is a regular water source for wild burros, said BLM spokesman David Briery.

But the spring appeared to have dried up, he said. The next available source of water is about 12 miles away.

Briery said the burros had pushed as far as 30 feet into the tunnel.

"They just started piling in," Briery said.

Alex Neibergs, a BLM horse and burro specialist, said the spring probably was their only water source. He said one of the animals may have become stuck in the tunnel and blocked the others.

"I have never seen anything like it," said Neibergs, one of several BLM officials who went to the scene on Thursday and Friday .

The dead burros were discovered by a rancher who grazes cattle near the Piute Mountains Wilderness Area, Briery said. He tried to pull the bodies out of the tunnel with his horse, but couldn't, Briery said.

Working in temperatures as high at 105, BLM officials removed the bodies, then used heavy equipment to bury them.

Wild burros have roamed the Mojave Desert since they were brought to the area by gold and silver prospectors. The BLM regularly captures them and holds them in federal corrals in Ridgecrest. They are then made available for adoption.

Judge allows wild horse roundup in Nevada

Mustang advocates claim use of helicopters to corral animals is inhumane

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Wednesday it is going forward with a contentious plan to round up about 2,500 wild horses in Nevada.

A spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said herds in the Calico Mountains Complex in northwestern Nevada are overpopulated and need to be reduced to protect the horses and the rangelands that support them.

"The current population in the five Calico herd management areas is three times what the range can handle, so this gather will ensure high-quality habitat for the wild horse and burros and other wildlife while protecting the public rangeland from overuse," said spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff.

She called the dispute over the roundup "yet another clarion call to develop and implement a long-term solution to the challenges we face concerning wild horses and burros on our public lands."

The Interior Department announcement came after a federal judge on Wednesday denied a request to block the roundup, saying opponents had failed to demonstrate that removal of the horses would violate federal law.

Mustang management

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the agency is obligated under a 1971 law to carefully manage wild horse herds to prevent overpopulation.

The mustang roundup planned for Monday would be one of the largest in Nevada in recent years. Officials plan to use helicopters to force the horses into holding pens before placing them for adoption or sending them to long-term holding corrals in the Midwest.

The roundup is part of the land management agency's overall strategy to remove more than 10,000 mustangs from public lands across the West and ship them to greener pastures in the Midwest and East. The Bureau of Land Management estimates about half of the nearly 37,000 wild mustangs live in Nevada, with others concentrated in Arizona, California, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.

Another 32,000 horses and burros are cared for in corrals and pastures in Kansas, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

Contentious issue

Mustang advocates had sued to block the roundup, saying that use of the helicopters is inhumane because some of the animals are traumatized, injured or killed. Opponents also contend that the bureau is grossly inflating horse numbers to justify their removal from the range.

The lawsuit says wild horses are an integral part of the natural ecosystem and should remain on rangeland throughout the West rather than be herded into long-term holding pens.

A state wildlife agency sided with federal land managers, arguing in court papers last week that the mustangs have "severely degraded" the range and adversely affect Bighorn sheep and other wildlife that compete for scarce water resources in the drought-plagued region.

Friedman sided with roundup opponents in one aspect of his 25-page ruling. He said federal officials likely were violating federal law by stockpiling tens of thousands of horses in long-term holding facilities in the Midwest. The judge invited both sides to offer more legal arguments on the issue but said Congress ultimately may have to get involved.

Since the bureau has no money to euthanize the horses and no authority to hold them in a long-term facility, "it would face an inescapable conundrum" in conducting the roundup, Friedman said. The dispute is best solved by Congress, he added.

William Spriggs, a lawyer who argued against the roundup on behalf of California-based In Defense of Animals, said he was disappointed that Friedman allowed the roundup to go forward, but added: "I'm elated the judge at least bought one of our arguments."

Spriggs said President Barack Obama should issue a "holiday reprieve" for the mustangs and block the Nevada roundup until the legality of the long-term holding facilities is decided.

"The BLM's policy of stockpiling tens of thousands of horses in the Midwest — off their rightful Western ranges — is contrary to law, the intent of Congress and the will of the American people," Spriggs said.

Judge asked to block wild horse roundup in Nevada

June 28, 2002 File Photo. A helicopter used by the Bureau of Land Management rounds up wild horses near Cold Creek, Nev. Federal officials plan to use helicopters to force the horses into holding pens before placing them for adoption or sending them to long-term holding corrals in the Midwest. (AP Photo/Joe Cavaretta)

By MATTHEW DALY
Associated Press

WASHINGTON – An animal protection group asked a federal judge Wednesday to block a plan to round up about 2,500 wild horses to remove them from a Nevada range.

The mustang roundup planned for Dec. 28 would be one of the largest in Nevada in recent years. Federal officials plan to use helicopters to force the horses into holding pens before placing them for adoption or sending them to long-term holding corrals in the Midwest.

Mustang advocates say use of the helicopters is inhumane because some of the animals are traumatized, injured or killed.

The roundup is part of the Bureau of Land Management's overall strategy to remove thousands of mustangs from public lands across the West to protect wild horse herds and the rangelands that support them. The bureau estimates about half of the nearly 37,000 wild mustangs live in Nevada, with others concentrated in Arizona, California, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.

Another 32,000 horses and burros are cared for in corrals and pastures in Kansas, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

A lawyer for In Defense of Animals, a California-based group that advocates on behalf of animal protection, called the roundup plan illegal.

"The BLM's policy of mass removal and stockpiling of horses was never authorized by Congress when it protected these iconic animals in 1971 as an important part of our national heritage," said William Spriggs, a Washington lawyer who argued against the roundup plan in court Wednesday.

In Defense of Animals and wildlife biologist Craig Downer sued the BLM last month to block the Nevada roundup. Terri Farley, a Nevada author whose books about wild horses target young readers, joined the lawsuit Monday.

Erik Petersen, a Justice Department lawyer who represents the BLM, said the roundup is needed because more than 3,100 horses and burros crowd the Calico Mountain Complex in northwestern Nevada — about five times as many horses as the land can handle.

The 1971 law requires removal of excess horses to ensure they are treated humanely, Petersen said. Removing the animals also will help preserve the "endangered and rapidly disappearing" rangeland where they live, Petersen said.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the mustang roundups in October as part of a new management plan he said would avoid the need to kill any wild horses. Interior Department officials had warned last year that slaughtering some of the 69,000 wild horses and burros under federal control might be necessary to combat rising costs of maintaining them.

Salazar said the current program is not sustainable for the animals, the environment or taxpayers.

The BLM's wild horse program cost about $50 million this year and is expected to rise to at least $85 million by 2012 if the program is not changed, officials said.

Spriggs, the lawyer for In Defense of Animals, said the BLM has only itself to blame for the high costs. At least two-thirds of the costs for wild horses are for long-term storage facilities in the Midwest that he said were nothing more than warehouses.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said he would rule on the case before Christmas.

Lawsuits triggers delay of BLM wild horse roundup

Carrol Abel
Examiner.com







Calico Mountains wild horse band, June 2009. (BLM)


In response to a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court on Monday, the Bureau of Land Management has postponed a controversial roundup and removal of almost 3,000 wild horses from five Nevada herd management areas. The US Department of Justice announced the delay Tuesday night.

A Preliminary Environmental Assessment for the roundup brought a huge public outcry in the form of 10,000 responses into BLM's Winnemucca office. The now infamous roundup of wild horses from the Calico Complex, originally scheduled to begin December 1, would remove 80-90% of the population estimated at 3,095 horses. The document states that the range cannot support that many horses but also admits to 2,500 cattle that will remain.

William Spriggs, Esq. of Buchanan, Ingersol and Rooney, pro bono attorney for plaintiffs In Defense of Animals (IDA) and wildlife ecologist, Craig Downer, said in response to the announcement, " We welcome this moratorium on the capture and inhumane treatment of the Calico horses. The BLM plan for a massive helicopter roundup of these horses is entirely illegal."

Though the roundup is now delayed until December 28, IDA and Mr. Downer plan to file a motion today for a permanent injunction to prevent the roundup entirely. "We are confident that the court will agree that America's wild horses are protected by law from BLM's plan to indescriminately chase and stampede them into corrals for indeterminate warehousing away from their established habitat." said Spriggs.

JoLynn Worley, BLM representative, says the agency still intends to issue it's formal decision regarding the Preliminary Environmental Assessment some time on Tuesday.

Momentum is growing in the public sector for a moratorium on all roundups. Almost 200 animal rights and wild horse advocate groups have united in the call to stop the roundups and are pressing for a Congressional investigation. Of the many issues in question is the inequitable use of public lands under a multiple use policy. A habitat summary done in July of 2008 by the Animal Welfare Institue shows that the BLM administers over nineteen million acres of public lands..... lands set aside by law for wild horses and burros..... lands that are no longer used for that purpose.

Burro traps go up in Fort Irwin area this week

Burro trap.

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

The federal Bureau of Land Management this week will begin trapping wild burros at a spring near Fort Irwin used by an array of wildlife.

BLM officials said they expect to capture 30 to 40 burros at Owl Hole Spring, located about 40 miles northwest of Baker on a strip of public land between Fort Irwin Army training center and Death Valley National Park.

BLM wranglers will use what they call a "water bait trap."

It consists of temporary steel-pipe fencing set up around the spring. Burros, lured by hay and water, are expected to enter the trap through a "trigger gate" that doesn't let them out. The trap will be checked daily and captured burros will be taken to BLM corrals near Ridgecrest to be put up for adoption, BLM spokesman David Briery said.

The trapping is part of a larger effort to remove burros that stray onto Fort Irwin and into the national park. Helicopters will be used later this month to round up an estimated 160 burros in the Slate Range east of Death Valley and the Chemehuevi area near Needles.

Burro advocates say the animals are harmless and should be left alone. Instead of rounding them up, the BLM should take water to them, said Linda Lee, of Costa Mesa. The roundups injure animals and the adoptions break up burro families, leaving them depressed, she said.

Burros have roamed California deserts since miners used them in the region more than 150 years ago. Federal land-use plans dating to the 1980s call for no burros in Death Valley and BLM-managed land west of the park.

Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said Friday she supports the roundups because burros drink scarce water and foul sources with their manure. The water is needed by bighorn sheep, deer and other wildlife, she said.

Please, don't feed the burros

Too many treats harm animals, official says


By HEATHER SMATHERS
Mohave Daily News





LOVED TO DEATH? Oatman's burros have long been a draw for visitors, but now the BLM is asking people to stop feeding them because it is affecting the animals' health. (HEATHER SMATHERS/The Daily News)

OATMAN - Give burros care, not carrots.

That's one of many draft slogans the Bureau of Land Management has issued, asking people to stop feeding the Oatman burros.

“The Oatman burros have been fed so much they are sick and fat,” said BLM Public Affairs Officer Mike Brown. “They're being loved to death.”

The BLM is asking Oatman shopkeepers, residents and tourists to stop feeding the wild burros carrots, hay pellets, salt cubes and even water.

“Frankly, the wild burros that live around Oatman are far healthier than the burros that come to town,” Brown said.

Burros can get all the nutrients and sustenance they need from the vegetation in the desert areas around Oatman, Brown added.

With thousands of tourists buying bags of carrots and hay pellets to feed to the burros, Brown said the burros are sick from hoof disease, behavior problems and are extremely overweight.

“One carrot won't harm the burros,” Brown said. “But it's the 10,000 more they are being fed every year that will kill them.”

Judy Love, who owns and operates the Classy Ass, said the health of the burros is her main concern.

“I love Oatman and I love the burros, but their health is the most important thing,” Love said. “I'm glad they (BLM) are taking a stand.”

The Oatman burros are more likely to become ill and to die early than the 300 or so wild burros that stay out of town, Brown said.

Brown said the burros will not suffer from any kind of delirium or other illness if they can not have carrots and hay pellets.

“We've seen this before where we cut off the burros and the only side effect is that they get healthier,” Brown said.

But some Oatman shopkeepers dispute that.

“They are getting aggressive because they are not being fed like they used to,” said John Nowak, owner of the Oatman General Store.

Shopkeeper Jolene Brown, who owns Amargosa Toads, agreed, saying that the burros have practically been “kicking her door in” to get food.

All of the burros are managed by the BLM's Wildhorse and Burro Program, legislation that passed Congress in 1971. All wild horses and burros are under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior and the BLM is responsible for keeping statistics on their numbers, health and safety.

Brown said the BLM has held several town-hall style meetings with the residents and shopkeepers of Oatman. BLM suggested a committee be formed to examine the way the town and the federal government could work together for the well-being of the burros.

“What came out of those meetings is that the townspeople asked the BLM to take the lead and give them guidelines,” Brown said.

What the BLM came up with was an indefinite moratorium on feeding the burros. Shopkeepers have been asked to stop selling carrots and pellets in their stores and to post signs asking tourists not to feed the burros any carrots or other treats they may have brought with them.

Brown said he would not speculate on any possible sanctions shopownwers or tourists would face if they don't comply with the request.

“First, we want to work with people and see what happens. Again, everyone has the same love of the burros and we all have their health in mind,” he said.

Nowak said just because shops will no longer sell carrots doesn't mean people will stop feeding the burros other types of food.

“Part of my shop is a grocery store and I see people buying cookies and potato chips for the burros,” he said. “Is the BLM going to ticket people for feeding them other foods, or food they brought to town?”

He also wondered if the BLM or another agency had the authority to tell stores that they couldn't sell carrots.

“I don't think there is any way to limit our sales of carrots,” he opined.

Jolene Brown said she believes not being able to sell carrots will have an impact on some businesses and the Oatman economy in general.

“I think some businesses, who do a lot of carrot sales, will have to close,” she said.

Changing a culture of many generations of tourists to Oatman won't be easy, Mike Brown acknowledged.

“Think about when the National Park Service asked people to stop feeding the bears at Yellowstone,” he said. “It didn't happen overnight, but people eventually stopped doing it.”

Love said she does not believe the burros will stop coming to town.

“I've been here 21 years, and burros wandered through town before we started feeding them carrots,” she said. “They are wild animals and they will continue to go where they please.”

The BLM's Brown agreed that the burros will still come to town to greet visitors.

“This will not affect Oatman,” Brown said. “People will still come to Oatman to see the burros, just not to feed the burros. People can still come and take pictures, go to the gunfights and shop in the stores.”

But Jolene Brown said she thinks the moratorium will affect Oatman merchants in a negative way.

“The burros are the only reason people come to Oatman,” she said. “Without the burros it's just an old town that sells a bunch of items people can get anywhere.”

Wild donkeys to be removed from area

Burros will be relocated over 100 miles away





By EUNICE LEE
Desert Dispatch





Greg Cook lassos a baby burro during a round-up in Panamint Valley at Fort Irwin in 2005. Over 60 burros were removed during that gathering, according to the Bureau of Land Management.


FORT IRWIN • Up to 100 burros — wild donkeys — at Fort Irwin and areas bordering Death Valley National Park will soon be rounded up and relocated over 100 miles away.

Why?

Fort Irwin officials have said that burros roaming outside designated areas are causing a nuisance and have contracted with the Bureau of Land Management to remove the animals.

According to Anthony Chavez, BLM range land management specialist, natural springs at Fort Irwin have attracted large numbers of burros.

“When you only have one water source...where else are they going to go? They’re going to concentrate there and have some impact,” Chavez said, noting that other animals, like desert tortoises have to share the area and have been negatively impacted. Fort Irwin shares the same space as the desert tortoise, which has been listed as a threatened species since 1992.

According to Clarence Everly, natural resources program manager at Fort Irwin, burros will even show up during soldier training.

Burros “roam through live fire training areas on the installation,” Everly wrote in an e-mail. Training halts each time this happens, he noted.

“These burros pretty much roam freely between Fort Irwin and public land,” Chavez said.

Fort officials have contracted with the BLM to remove up to 40 donkeys from around the military base, including areas near the Goldstone Deep Space Network Complex, starting in late August, according to Alex Neibergs, wild horse and burros specialist for the BLM. The burros’ new home, although temporary, will be Ridgecrest, which is about 150 miles northwest of Barstow. Another 40 to 60 burros will be trapped at Owl Hole Springs near Death Valley.

The burros will be kept at the BLM’s holding facility in Ridgecrest, where they will then be put up for adoption.

This isn’t the first time that burros have been removed from the fort. In 2004, 17 burros were captured and removed, according to Neibergs. In 2005, 66 were removed.

Neibergs said the four-legged, 400 lbs. creatures are relatively easy to domesticate and are often used as pets or guard animals for livestock.

“They go quick. It’s hard for us to keep burros,” said Chavez.

The BLM is required to take public comments when an animal gathering requires helicopters or motorized vehicles, according to Spokesman David Briery. The Barstow Field Office has tentatively set a public hearing for late August, said Briery.

House sides with wild horses, burros

GOP criticism of bill may foretell troubles in Senate



The Associated Press







WASHINGTON - Galloping to the aid of the nation's wild horses and burros, the House voted Friday to rescue them from the possibility of a government-sponsored slaughter and give them millions more acres to roam.

But the effort may get penned up in the Senate.

The bill passed the House, 239-185, with Republican opponents arguing that it underscored wrongheaded Democratic priorities by focusing on animals instead of people at a time when the nation's unemployment rate is approaching double digits.

An estimated 36,000 wild horses and burros live in 10 Western states. Federal officials estimate that's about 9,400 more than can exist in balance with other rangeland resources. Off the range, more than 31,000 other wild horse and burros are cared for in corrals and pastures.

The plan aims to reduce the number of animals kept in holding pens awaiting adoption and to reduce the stress on land currently set aside for them.

Supporters mobilized after the Interior Department announced last year that it might have to kill thousands of healthy wild horses and burros to deal with the growing population on the range and in holding facilities.

'Disgrace to our heritage'

Republicans dismissed the measure as welfare for horses, but Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said a majority of Americans would not support slaughtering healthy animals or keeping them in holding pens for years at a time.

"The status quo is a national disgrace," said Rahall, chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources. "It is a disgrace to our heritage."

However, no comparable bill has been sponsored in the Senate, which doesn't bode well for final passage of the measure. Both houses would have to approve the legislation before it could be sent to the White House for President Barack Obama's consideration.

Some lawmakers from Western states said Congress is mismanaging the nation's wild horse population by preventing the Bureau of Land Management from keeping populations at a level that's appropriate for the environment. They said more horses will just make the problem worse.

"This bill is based on emotion and not science," declared Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., saying the bill would elevate wild horses above threatened and endangered species in her state.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that enacting the Restore our American Mustangs Act would cost about $200 million over the next five years. Currently, the wild herds roam over about 33 million acres of Western land.

To comply with the bill, the Bureau of Land Management would need to find an additional 20 million acres, primarily after 2013, at a cost of up to $500 million, according the CBO. But Rahall said those estimates don't reflect new language in the bill that makes adding millions of acres of rangeland a goal rather than a legal requirement.

Rahall said the bill would actually save the government money by reducing the amounts now devoted to caring for the animals in corrals and on pastures. He said slaughtering healthy animals to control their population should not be an option.

"How in the world can a federal agency be considering the massive slaughter of animals the law says they are supposed to be protecting?" he said.

While Rahall said the cost estimates were overblown, Republicans weren't buying it. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said even debating the bill was an insult to people looking for work and small businesses trying to keep their doors open.

"It doesn't make any sense that we're debating a welfare program about wild horses when the American people really want to know, 'where are the jobs?"' Boehner said.

'Animal care disaster'

The bill would give the government authority to enter into cooperative agreements to establish wild horse sanctuaries on nonfederal lands. It also would attempt to bolster an adoption program and sterilize more animals. It would prohibit the killing of healthy wild horses and burros and restrict time spent in holding pens to six months.

The Humane Society of the United States supports the legislation, saying the current program of rounding up wild horses and keeping them in holding pens is a "fiscal and animal care disaster."

"We have got to get off the current treadmill of spending millions of tax dollars rounding up wild horses and caring for them in captivity, and instead make wider use of fertility control as a humane population management tool," said Wayne Pacelle, the organization's president and CEO.

In Friday's vote, 206 Democrats supported the measure and 47 opposed it. Among Republicans, 33 voted for it and 138 against.

Interview With Dennis Schramm

Superintendent of Mojave National Preserve

BY DAVID LAMFROM
The Desert Report

A Brief Introduction to Mojave National Preserve:
To millions of drivers en route to or returning from Sin City, the Mojave National Preserve is a large green or brown area on a map, a desolate, rugged, barren landscape to be traversed. To those who have come to know “the Preserve” it is a 1.6 million acre desert mountain wonderland, teeming with wildlife, wildflowers, and wilderness; a place containing singing sand dunes, sweeping vistas, and arguably the finest night sky viewing in Southern California. The Mojave Preserve is a significant reservoir of cultural history dating back 8,000 years or more and is a haven of wilderness within a developing world, allowing current and future generations the opportunity to experience the vastness and diversity of the Eastern Mojave Desert.

Introducing Mr. Dennis Schramm

Dennis Schramm has been the superintendent of Mojave National Preserve for almost three years. He is a professional botanist who grew up in the Mojave Desert and has witnessed firsthand the population boom that impacts desert wildlands. Dennis has worked for the NPS for 31 years and has worked in Alaska as well as Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. I have posed questionsto Dennis in order to share the work being done at Mojave National Preserve. The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) would like to thank Dennis Schramm for taking the time to discuss the Mojave National Preserve with us.

David: Speaking to those who are unfamiliar with the Preserve, what is significant about Mojave Nnational Preserve?
Dennis: Well, from the perspective of the enabling legislation, it is the natural and scenic resources including transitional desert elements that all come together here; it is the human history and the resources associated with Native Americans and westward expansion; and it is the opportunity for compatible outdoor recreation and to promote understanding of the Mojave Desert. From my personal perspective I think the most significant thing is the preservation of 1.6 million acres of prime Mojave Desert ecosystem and the vast landscapes that are encompassed within the Preserve. Considering the developments being proposed today in the Mojave, it is so important that a large expanse of the Mojave Desert is permanently protected for future generations.

Your favorite destination in the Preserve?
Wow, that’s kind of hard. There are so many different landscapes and vegetation types to explore. But I would have to say that the hike into the Castle Peaks is definitely one of the tops on my list.

In your lifetime, how has the Mojave Desert changed?
Population growth and the way people use the desert have changed a lot. Of course Las Vegas has grown substantially since I went to school and college there in the 60’s and 70’s. This surge of people has caused unprecedented development in the Vegas valley and the Victor Valley/Lancaster areas.

Have attitudes towards the Mojave changed?
I’m not sure if attitudes overall have changed, but a lot more people seem to be interested in motorized recreation, whether it is jet skis on Lake Mead and the Colorado River, or four wheel drive vehicles in OHV areas. There is still a core population of folks who prefer a more intimate experience with the desert, but their voices don’t seem as loud as in the 60’s.

In your tenure, what do you consider to be the greatest victories or achievements attained?
Well, I have to include in my tenure my first seven years here as the planner and management assistant. Of course, my first major accomplishment was completion of the General Management Plan in 2001. During those first years we also removed 4,000 feral burros and around 8,000 cattle (all with donated funds!). Restoration of the Kelso Depot and opening it as our main visitor center has been a significant achievement and remains a tremendous opportunity for visitor contact. Mojave achieved a 99% visitor satisfaction rate last year and a lot has to do with the Kelso Depot and staff that work there. I’m also proud of the work we are doing to reduce our impact on the environment. We now have eleven solar systems operating around the Preserve and this year will eliminate the last diesel generator from the Preserve. This year we also converted all our maintenance equipment to bio-based fluids and greatly expanded our recycling program. Finally I would have to say that the staff we have hired are among the best around and we accomplish a great many things each year due to their hard work and dedication.

What do you consider to be the greatest threats to Mojave Preserve?
I think most of our threats today are originating outside the Preserve, some from sources that you wouldn’t have suspected. Obviously, the proposed Southern Nevada Supplement Airport just north of Primm poses major threats to the natural quiet of the Preserve if it is built. Then there are the hundreds of solar and wind energy applications filed all over the desert. Mojave has nine proposals surrounding it in California. The Ivanpah Solar is moving rapidly through the permitting process. It lies on the bajada just east of Clark Mountain. They propose to clear nearly 9,000 acres for solar energy development, the majority of which is wet solar. They would heat water to produce steam by pointing mirrors at several 450 foot tall towers. Then they would burn natural gas at night to keep the water warm. We’ve learned recently that some of the projects are proposing new utility rights of way through the Preserve to connect with grid.

Why? How can these challenges be best addressed?
The public needs to speak up at the hearings for these projects. As a federal agency we can only do so much. We raise our concerns at every opportunity, but we are also thinking ahead to mitigation if the projects do get built. It is important for the public to learn the details about these proposals and know how these projects will affect the future of the Mojave Desert.

Looking forward, what are your goals and priorities for improving Mojave Preserve?
This could go on for a while! There are several areas that we have identified for the future. One obvious opportunity is the National Park Service Centennial Celebration in 2016. A major initiative is already underway to get the parks ready for this milestone event. 1Mojave has identified a number of proposals, and we will continue to refine our thinking in conversations with the public. One major initiative that needs to be supported is the relevancy of parks to future generations. This means connecting kids with parks and with the outdoors in general. We are working on this initiative with several of our sister parks. Restoration of disturbed lands and ensuring safe visits for the public at all of our abandoned mine lands is a priority for us, and for all the desert parks. Reducing our carbon footprint is a major priority for all of us. We will be looking for opportunities to implement meaningful actions that contribute to this goal. This is just one aspect of dealing with climate change. Protecting Mojave from invasive species rates high as well. Surprisingly, given the long grazing history, Mojave has few issues with the major weed species. After the Hackberry Fire I would have expected lots of exotics to invade the area, and that has not happened. It is important to guard against these invasives making inroads into the Preserve. I also think it is important that we get some wayside exhibits with short accessible trails at four or five key areas along the main paved roads through the Preserve. Providing opportunities for the public to experience areas like the lava beds and cinder cones, the diverse Mojave scrub vegetation in Granite Pass, and the Joshua Tree community on Cima Dome are important to helping people connect first hand with the resources and not just have a drive through experience. Finally, we are anxious to move forward with a tortoise headstart facility in Ivanpah Valley. This facility will help us and other land managers learn more about juvenile tortoise survival and to jumpstart the population recovery with reproductive age tortoises that have been protected from predation. Getting more juveniles to reproductive age in the population is critical to tortoise recovery.

What opportunities exist for the conservation community and the local community to support the efforts of Mojave Nnational Preserve?
Opportunities are almost endless. Obviously volunteers and donations are very important to our operation, and these tend to come from the local communities and members of conservation groups. Being an active voice for National Parks and being a participant in the public review of development proposals that are threatening to further fragment the desert. Teach the children to love the outdoors!

I would like to offer you the last word, is there anything you would like to impart to those reading this article?
Mojave National Preserve is a very special part of the Mojave Desert. Many people worked very hard to create the Preserve and it is up to all of us to ensure that future generations can enjoy this place as we do. Most of all, get out and enjoy the quiet, enjoy the dark night skies, enjoy the smells after a desert rain, and enjoy the vast open spaces and spectacular landscapes. This is your national park!

David Lamfrom is the Cal Desert Field Rep for NPCA’s Cal Desert Field Office. David is a relative newcomer to the Cal Desert and pursues his passions of conservation, wildlife photography, hiking, and herpetology throughout the Mojave.

Dramatic rescue for doomed horses

Animal-rights groups celebrate as billionaire's wife plans to adopt 30,000 animals


Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post


Photo: Horses romp and play late Sunday at the government’s National Wild Horse and Burro Center at Palomino Valley, north of Reno, Nev. Madeleine Pickens, wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, made known her intentions Monday to adopt most or all of the 30,000 horses and burros kept in federal holding pens. Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post

The unwanted horses seemed destined for death. The wheels had been set in motion to put down about 2,000 healthy mustangs, those in a federally maintained herd of wild horses and burros that no one wanted to adopt.

The Bureau of Land Management knew that euthanasia was a legal alternative, but officials were proceeding slowly, afraid of an intense public outcry. The wild horses had become too expensive to maintain, and cattlemen argued that turning them loose would be a drain on the already scarce grazing lands of the West.

Then Monday, at a public hearing in Reno, Nev., to discuss the issue, a solution arrived on a white horse, so to speak.

Madeleine Pickens, wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, made known her intentions to adopt not just the doomed wild horses but most or all of the 30,000 horses and burros kept in federal holding pens. Lifelong animal lovers, the Pickenses just a few years ago led the fight to close the last horse slaughterhouse in the United States.

Madeleine Pickens is looking for land in the West that would be an appropriate home for the horses.

She is working with the BLM staff to adopt the horses, said Henri Bisson, the bureau's deputy director, while the agency persuades Congress to shift $20 million in funding to feed and protect the horses now in captivity for another year. As backup to Pickens' offer, he said, two other groups, both animal rescue organizations, have expressed similar interest in adoption. "We are very hopeful that euthanasia won't be necessary this year," he said.

The news that Pickens and others intend to adopt the wild horses and burros was celebrated by animal rights groups, several of which were preparing legal challenges to prevent the government from putting the horses to death.

"Of course, I'm thrilled, obviously, that these horses are getting a reprieve," said Shelley Sawhook, president of the American Horse Defense Fund. "At the same time, we need to address the basic issue of how these animals got in this position in the first place."

Bisson said policymakers have to resolve the conflict between a law that permits euthanasia and a nation that is opposed to it. "This is a situation where we have to have a conversation about what the law requires," he said. "We're hearing from members of Congress they don't think euthanasia is an appropriate solution, but the law says, 'You shall.' " If people don't like what the law says, they need to address it. We hope we will find homes for all of these animals before the year is out and Congress will decide what it wants to do about the law."

Long an American icon and inspiration for song and story, the wild horse has special protection under a 1971 law. The federal statute calls wild horses "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West" that should be "protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death." But the same law also requires the government to achieve "appropriate management levels" of roaming horses so they don't overwhelm federal lands — and that's the part that has been vexing for bureau officials.

About 33,000 horses still roam wild on federal lands in 10 Western states. About half of those are in Nevada. The federal agency believes the range can accommodate only about 27,000 horses, and each year government-hired cowboys round up 7,000 to 13,000 horses and take them to holding pens in several states.

Right now, there are just over 30,000 horses in holding facilities awaiting adoption. Those 10 or older or those who have not been adopted after three tries can be sold without restriction under 2004 legislation.

Wild horses compete with cattle and wildlife for food and water. Horse advocates say federal officials have made faulty assumptions about the number of horses that can be accommodated on federal land, tilting those findings in favor of cattle interests.

"We're livestock people. We know animals live and die. And we take that as a very normal part of life. We fully realize animal rights people hate that aspect of the livestock industry. We don't particularly seek the euthanization. What we seek is the management of the population," said Jeff Eisenberg, director of federal lands for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, an industry lobbying group.

The federal government has been rounding up wild horses since the 1980s, putting them in holding facilities and offering them for adoption to horse lovers, who promise not to sell them for slaughter. But the roundups became aggressive under the Bush administration. As of June, BLM was holding 30,088 animals, more than triple the 9,807 held in 2001.

Bisson said Monday that the BLM would limit the roundups next year to about 5,000 horses.

Meanwhile, the pace of adoptions has been falling as the cost of feeding and caring for the wild horses has skyrocketed. The price tag to federal taxpayers for maintaining the horses tripled from $7 million in 2000 to $21 million in 2007. Hay prices for one short-term holding facility in Nevada rose from about $160 per ton in 2007 to almost $300 per ton in 2008, for example.

In a report released last week, the Government Accountability Office called the situation a "crisis" and said the bureau needed to exercise its options, including euthanasia and the practice of selling the wild horses "without restriction," meaning they could be sold for slaughter.

In the first analysis of BLM's wild horse program in 18 years, the GAO found that the agency lacked a coherent nationwide management policy. The GAO recommended that the bureau investigate alternatives to euthanasia and adoption.

Animal rights groups say the government ought to sterilize horses and return them to the wild to live out their lives. In addition, they say, it should offer tax incentives to landowners who allow wild horses to live on private land.

Virginie L. Parant of the American Wild Horses Preservation Campaign, a coalition of about 45 groups, said the BLM does not use a scientifically sound method to estimate the size of horse herds or the number of horses that can be sustained on the range. That makes the roundups arbitrary, she said.

What's more, about 19 million acres of land where wild horses once roamed have been removed from the program, reducing the amount of land available to the horses and increasing their concentration elsewhere.

People on all sides of the issue recognize some fundamental changes are needed.

"It's intractable," Eisenberg said. "The animal rights people put the BLM in a box. We are seeking a balance in the land. Congress doesn't want to put more funding into these holding facilities, especially when times are tight. It's a problem nobody likes."

BLM aims to tame cost of caring for wild horses

The BLM hosted a wild horse adoption last year in Herriman. The agency cares for growing numbers of animals in captivity and in the wild. (Scott G. Winterton, Deseret News)

By Lee Davidson
Deseret News

To protect Utah rangelands from overgrazing, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management removes 300 to 400 wild horses and burros a year, but it is able to adopt out only 250 of them. The agency will not destroy the rest for fear of public outcry — so it cares for escalating numbers of them in captivity.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said Monday such practices throughout the West have reached a crisis point, where BLM officials now manage "almost the same number of animals off the range as they do in the wild."

It says the agency must either destroy or sell for slaughter thousands of the horses in captivity — or run out of money to care for horses in the wild, where neglect could increase horse deaths from effects of drought or starvation.

"BLM decided not to destroy excess unadoptable animals (beginning in 1982) ... because of public dismay," when it killed 47 horses the previous year, said the GAO, a research arm of Congress.

Because of that, the BLM now cares for just over 30,000 wild horses and burros in captivity. The GAO said the BLM manages about 33,100 horses and burros in the wild in the West — or just a bit more than it now has in captivity.

In Utah, the BLM estimates about 3,100 wild horses and burros are on open ranges. Gus Warr, BLM lead in Utah for its wild horse and burro program, says short-term holding facilities in Herriman, Delta and Gunnison currently hold 1,300 animals total, while others have been transferred to long-term holding facilities elsewhere to seek adoption.

The GAO noted that the cost of caring for the animals in captivity has grown from about half of the wild horse and burro program's costs in 2000 to two-thirds of its total in 2007.

Costs of caring for animals in captivity climbed from $7 million in 2000 to nearly $21 million last year.

"BLM must now choose between either managing the range to prevent overpopulation or exercise one or both or its other options — destroying animals or selling them without limitation" on such things as allowing them to be slaughtered for meat or used as rodeo bucking stock, the GAO said.

It added that the BLM finally "is considering euthanizing about 2,300 horses from short-term holding. ... In addition, they are considering selling without limitation (thus allowing slaughter for meat) about 8,000 animals from both short- and long-term holding."

In response, the BLM issued a written statement that it concurs with the GAO report and its findings — but said it has made no final decisions about euthanizing horses or allowing their slaughter. It said no such decision will be made until after its National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board meets next week in Reno.

Besides slaughter or expensive continued care in captivity of horses, the GAO said the BLM and Congress might consider some alternatives not now allowed by law.

For example, GAO said several state directors of wild horse programs suggest giving tax deductions or one-time lump sum incentives to ranchers to care for unwanted wild horses. "Implementing tax deductions would likely require changes in tax law," the GAO said.

It also said that the law governing wild horses now "does not allow BLM to relocate wild horses and burros to areas of public lands where they were not found when the act was passed. To date, BLM has not sought the legislative changes that would make these suggestions possible" — even though some BLM officials have offered it as a partial solution.

GAO analysis: Wild horses in captivity giving feds fits

30,000 animals being held; last year's cost was $21 million

By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is struggling to pay for the upkeep of 30,000 wild horses and burros in captivity and hasn't figured out how to deal with the animals in Utah and across the West - short of increasingly rare adoptions or selling them for slaughter, a new federal report says.

The Government Accountability Office on Monday released its first analysis in 18 years of the BLM's actions under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. While the GAO acknowledged the BLM's progress, it also found the agency still hasn't developed a coherent nationwide management policy.

Advocates for the animals, considered symbols of the West as important as bald eagles for the nation at large, were outraged in June when BLM Deputy Director Henri Bisson suggested euthanizing 6,000 animals to bring the herds to healthy levels.

None of the animals Bisson wanted to kill was in Utah, where more than 3,000 horses live across 2.7 million acres of public land. Bisson backed off the proposal in August, saying he would wait for the GAO study and next week's meeting of the BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Council in Reno, Nev.

But an official with a national wild horse and burro advocacy group said Monday the BLM's approach was fundamentally unsound environmentally and legally because the agency has neither properly maintained the herds' genetic diversity nor monitored the range to determine whether the animals are causing damage.

The GAO found the price tag for keeping horses in centers for future adoption or other means has jumped from $7 million in 2000 to $21 million in 2007. This year, those costs could eat up three-quarters of the BLM's wild-horse and burro program budget.

The GAO also said the BLM has resisted selling wild horses with no limitations on their use afterward, including slaughter, "due to concerns about public and congressional reaction to the large-scale slaughter of thousands of healthy horses." Such resistance is illegal under current law, the GAO noted.

In 2004, Congress amended the 1971 law to allow "excess animals" to be sold for slaughter or other commercial use.

BLM national spokesman Tom Gorey said the report was correct when it said the BLM has limited options for dealing with unadopted and unsold animals.

"The GAO recommends - and the Department of the Interior and the BLM agree - that the bureau should initiate discussions with Congress on addressing the BLM's noncompliance with these directives in the 1971 law, as amended," Gorey said.

But Karen Sussman, president of the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros - the South Dakota nonprofit group that initiated and helped push through the 1971 law - said Monday that the BLM has acted illegally by rounding up the horses without first determining whether they had damaged the range.

Sussman said a 1990 GAO report recommended that the BLM also curtail the number of livestock on the range. "If you want to improve habitat," she said, "you need to remove livestock."

The 6,000 horses that would have been slaughtered under Bisson's proposal are held in grassy pastures in the Midwest between Kansas and Oklahoma, Sussman said.

She criticized the federal determination that Utah's maximum horse population should be 2,151 across 2.7 million acres of BLM and other lands, where 3,096 horses now live.

The real way the census should be managed is for genetic diversity, Sussman said.

Every herd should have 150 breeding adults; but under the BLM's culling process, only about a quarter of all the herds have that breeding capability.

Highlights from the horse report

• The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has removed 74,000 wild horses and burros from the range since 2001, but only 46,400 have been adopted or sold.


• As of June, the BLM had more than 30,000 animals in holding areas, up from 9,807 in 2001.


• Utah has 3,096 horses in 21 horse-management areas across 2.7 million acres of BLM and other lands. The BLM says the maximum population should be 2,151. (As of Oct. 27, the BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Center in Herriman held 320 animals.)

Source: Government Accountability Office

Team of lone rangers scours the new Wild West

Park service workers in the Mojave never know what vestige of the Wild West they'll find, right down to train robbers.

By Mike Anton
Los Angeles Times

KELSO, CALIF. — High noon and the desert is hot as a wok, yet Tim Duncan is wearing body armor under his uniform. A handgun and a Taser hang from his belt. Next to him in the truck are a shotgun and an M-16 assault rifle with extra magazines.

"Out here, you have to be prepared," he said.

Duncan is a National Park Service ranger at the Mojave National Preserve, a Mordor-like sweep of serrated mountains, feral deserts, Joshua tree forests, dry lakes and lava beds -- a park five times the size of Los Angeles that's patrolled by eight law officers.

Here the wilds of nature meet the wilds of man, an incongruous environment that has hidden meth labs and illegal waste dumps, plant and wildlife poachers, archaeological thieves, the occasional dumped body and train robbers.

Yes, train robbers.

Union Pacific trains laden with goods from the coast rumble into the Mojave National Preserve at the aptly named Devils Playground, 40 miles of hellish sand dunes and salt flats at the base of the Kelso Mountains. Mile-long caravans of double-stacked cars wheeze to a crawl as they labor up the steep Cima Grade through the heart of the preserve. Sometimes they stop on side tracks to let other trains pass.

Thieves typically strike at night -- busting into boxcars and tossing down the booty to waiting accomplices with trucks.

Sometimes, looters find what they want, such as consumer electronics. "Other times the container is loaded with teddy bears or promotional magnets for a restaurant," Duncan said.

Congress created the preserve in 1994. When Duncan arrived three years later, the railroad was losing more than $1 million a month there to robbers.

"It was just like an open-air flea market out here," he said. "Stuff was strewn everywhere."

Stepped-up enforcement by park rangers and railroad police has dampened the wholesale looting. Yet rangers still come across piles of empty flat-screen television boxes and Styrofoam packing material. Four men were caught last month liberating TVs from a boxcar in broad daylight. A fifth suspect, a 17-year-old boy, was found dead, a victim of the scorching midday heat.

Such arrests are rare. Those who do get caught tend to stand out.

Three summers ago, Ranger Kirk Gebicke and a partner stopped to chat with two men sitting in an empty Budget rental truck near the railroad tracks. The pair had been drinking and couldn't explain why they were parked in a moving van miles from anything that needed to be moved. They expressed ignorance about a sack of cocaine the rangers found in the grass four feet away.

The men were arrested. An aerial search of the area found 75 flat-screen TVs worth more than $225,000 that had been thrown from a train.

"I'm at the edge of the world here," Gebicke said. "There are things here that you won't find at Yosemite or Yellowstone."

Mojave National Preserve lies an hour east of Barstow, sandwiched between Interstate 15, Interstate 40 and the Nevada state line. Known as the Lonesome Triangle, it has been trafficked for eons by people seeking riches, a path to someplace else -- or simply a place to hide.

Prehistoric hunters tracked large animals across a verdant landscape of rivers and lakes sculpted by volcanic activity. Ancestors of today's Mojave, Paiute and Chemehuevi Indians eked out an existence after the lakes disappeared.

Spanish soldiers and Mormon pioneers blazed routes to the coast that others followed in droves -- the Southland's first freeways. Miners in the 1800s discovered gold, silver, copper and minerals used in industry. Ranchers found endless grazing land. During World War II, Army Gen. George Patton chose the Mojave as a stand-in for North Africa to train soldiers. After the war, returning troops turned the Mojave into an off-road motorcycling mecca for a booming Los Angeles.

An anything-goes Wild West ethic permeates the area's history, and vestiges of it persist.

The freeways are conveyor belts for trouble from Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Some 1,800 miles of dirt roads lead to countless out-of-sight arroyos and hidey holes. It's impossible to know what's going on out there.

At any given time, two or three lone rangers drift across a potentially hostile universe where the road signs have been blasted by bullets and any hope of backup is a mirage.

Rangers study the landscape for signs of recent human activity. Gebicke carries what he calls a "track trap" -- a garden rake to smooth over entrances to dirt roads leading to known trouble spots.

"I'm seeing what's in place and what's out of place," Duncan said. "If I'm on a road where there never was a gate and suddenly there is one now, why, that raises a red flag."

Duncan, 52, is a gregarious bear of a man with a graying beard and a Georgia accent thick as country gravy. He grew up in the sticks and dreamed of a life outdoors just like Fess Parker's Daniel Boone in the '60s television series. After a stint in the Air Force and time working for an aerospace firm, Duncan went back to college, earned a forestry degree and joined the Park Service, serving first in Alaska and later at the Manassas Civil War battle site in Virginia. His first two years in the Mojave he patrolled alone.

More than 500,000 vehicles a year traverse the preserve's few paved roads. Because there are no formal entrances or fees, it's unknown how many are just passing through on what is a popular and at times white-knuckle shortcut between Palm Springs and Las Vegas. (A driver recently was clocked going 121 mph and ticketed; fatal wrecks are common.)

Park officials stress that the overwhelming majority of visitors come to admire the preserve's austere beauty. Three of North America's four desert ecosystems meet in its 1.6 million acres to form more than 30 distinctive plant and animal habitats. Hiking the Kelso Dunes, which rise to 700 feet, conjures a feeling of being Lawrence in Arabia. Spring wildflowers are a popular draw as is the lovingly restored Kelso Depot, once a thriving passenger train stop and now the preserve's visitor center.

But off the beaten path are scenes that will never appear in a glossy coffee-table book: The man hanging from a rope on a Joshua tree in February, an apparent suicide. The attempted hijacking of a recreational vehicle by a luckless man abandoned in the desert by a friend; he was beaten and subdued by the four vacationers when his gun proved empty.

"Some people look at all this desert and say, 'That's just wasteland. It doesn't matter what I do with it -- or do in it,' " Duncan says as he drives past an old water-pumping station with graffiti and three wild burros. "I've had people tell me to my face: 'We know what the rules are, but when no one's around, we do what we please.' "

Thieves will steal anything that's not anchored to the ground -- as well as stuff that is. Scrap metal from historic ranch structures and mining sites. Copper wiring from modern communication relay stations. Rare butterflies and reptiles coveted by collectors, including the colorful rosy boa and the endangered desert tortoise. Tortoises have also been found shot to death.

Two men who stole a front-end loader from an abandoned mine carved a road across miles of black lava cinder cones before they were caught.

Mojave National Preserve has 1,600 documented archaeological sites, some dating to 10,000 B.C. Many of them have been stripped of their pottery, baskets, stone tools and metates, arrowheads and other artifacts.

"What surprises me is how much material used to be there," said David Nichols, the preserve's full-time archaeologist, who compared his findings with old field surveys. "At most of these sites, I'd say 70% of the visible cultural material is gone."

Rampant looting predates the Park Service. An area first documented in 1977 was so rich in artifacts it was dubbed the Freightwagon Site because you could fill one with the stuff. A researcher's report offered this prescient observation: "As soon as this site location becomes public knowledge, it will be vandalized by off-the-road 'enthusiasts.' "

When an associate of Nichols' revisited the area last year, nearly everything was gone. Off-road quad tracks led straight to the site from I-15.

"It's awful," Nichols said. "And because the place is so vast we never, ever catch anyone in the act of doing anything."

Native American petroglyphs have been cut from rock walls and carted off. Boulders adorned with ancient art have vanished. Vandalism is pervasive, especially of petroglyphs depicting "mask figures" which resemble a human face with eyes and a mouth.

People shoot at them for target practice.

"I dream of the day that I come around a corner and find a guy with a hammer and chisel," Nichols said.

Maybe he shouldn't, given that Nichols patrols the backcountry unarmed.

The preserve's remoteness makes it an ideal place to take care of certain types of business.

In 2001, a Dallas man was traveling to Los Angeles with three men he met in a coffee shop. They pulled off I-15 and drove into the preserve to find a quiet place to empty their bladders. That's when one of the man's new friends shot him to death under the soft light of a million stars.

Two years later, a woman's torso was found just outside the preserve. Tattoos of a hummingbird over the left breast and an "M" with a star on the lower back led authorities to identify the remains as those of a 19-year-old Las Vegas prostitute last seen getting into a car with California plates.

Duncan figures it's a sure bet there are more out there who will never be found. "There's an old story: If all the dead here in the desert stood up, we'd have a forest."

As he approaches places such as the New Trail mine, a lurching 20-minute drive up a rock-strewn road, Duncan is aware of the risk of being in this country alone.

It was here in 2001 that Duncan and Gebicke went to saw off locks that had been placed on the camp's old cabins. They encountered four men in a pickup coming the other way. They just happened to have the key.

At the mine, the rangers discovered a drug lab and 10 gallons of pure methamphetamine oil ready to be crystallized.

The men were arrested and the mine site cleaned up.

A 2003 National Park Service narrative of the preserve's history noted that "crystal meth has posed a considerable problem to the park." Rangers periodically run across red phosphorus stains, containers of lye and empty boxes of pseudoephedrine -- signs of a cook at work.

"If I don't get up here for six months, you have no clue as to what's gone on in that six months," Duncan said.

On this day, the New Trail mine is quiet. On a table in an outbuilding are empty bottles of whiskey, sour apple schnapps and a half-filled jar of clear liquid labeled "corn whiskey."

Outside, a lizard scurries across ground strewn with beer bottles and spent shells.

Whoever was here left several camp chairs behind, suggesting they will be back. What they'll be up to is anyone's guess.

The desert is good at keeping secrets.

On patrol, Ranger Tim Duncan carries a handgun and a Taser. Next to him in his truck are a shotgun and an M-16 assault rifle with extra magazines. “Out here, you have to be prepared,” he says.

As Inland residents give up costly horses, U.S. government puts more up for adoption in Norco

By ALICIA ROBINSON
The Press-Enterprise


Terry Pierson / The Press-Enterprise
A burro sounds off during the preview showing of animals available in this weekend's BLM wild horse and burro adoption at Ingalls Park.

Federal efforts to find homes for wild horses may find there's little room in the Inland area, where residents are already trying to get rid of horses they can no longer afford.

The federal Bureau of Land Management rolled into Norco on Friday with 50 horses and burros, but adoptions have been declining -- falling more than 16 percent in 2005 through 2007 -- which the bureau attributes to higher fuel and feed costs. For that reason, at least 30 fewer animals than usual were brought to the annual Norco adoption event.

"There have been less people adopting because they're looking at their bank account," said Art DiGrazia, who heads wild horse and burro operations at the BLM's Ridgecrest office.

If the ads posted on the free Web site Craigslist can be seen as a sign of the times, high hay and gasoline prices are causing tough times for Inland horses and their owners.

The Craigslist Inland Empire page features dozens of listings of horses for sale, often noting that owners must sell "due to financial reasons," "because we need to downsize" or simply "can't afford to feed them all."

Norco boarding stable owner Kevin Bash said he's seen hay prices climb from around $15 a bale in 2007 to $18 or more today, and he hears they may go as high as $25 a bale by this fall.

"It's not just middle-class people (being affected), it's everyone," said Kim Reynolds, who placed several online ads to sell the rescued horses she keeps at her ranch in Murrieta in southwestern Riverside County. "The prices have decreased, and there's not a lot of people standing there wanting them."

Rescues Overwhelmed

While Inland animal control officials said they haven't seen a dramatic increase in horse neglect cases, some rescue operations have seen a spike in need. San Bernardino County Animal Care and Control handled twice as many stray or abandoned horses in the year ending June 30 as it had the previous year, Division Chief Brian Cronin said.

When Cronin's agency can't find homes for horses, it turns to private rescue groups, some of which are swamped.

"The need for helping these animals has far exceeded their ability," he said of the rescues.

Colton boarding stable operator Cheryl Musee has been selling horses whose owners have failed to pay their bills and stopped returning her calls. State law permits this.

"Everybody that was boarding the horses decided that feeding their families was more important than feeding their horses so I kind of got stuck with them," she said.

One customer with five horses gave three of them away because he couldn't afford the board bill, Musee said.

The Bureau of Land Management hasn't resorted to giving horses away, but its budget is being taxed by the 33,000 roaming horses and burros and the 30,000 animals in holding facilities on federal lands it manages in 10 states.

That has put more emphasis on adoptions. Early interest seemed high Friday at Norco's Ingalls Park, where about a dozen people were viewing the wild horses before the scheduled preview event even began. But several of the visitors said they were just looking.

"There's no market for horses of any kind right now," said Cindi Paine, a resident of Pedley in northwestern Riverside County who had stopped by Ingalls Park to see the wild horses but didn't plan to adopt one. "I hope they all get homes but with the recession going (on), I just don't see it."

Some commodities experts predict that development of farmland, drought and growth of grain for biofuels will keep hay prices high in the near future, and other costs of keeping a horse such as farrier and veterinary bills have risen.

But opinions are mixed on the long-term effect on the recreational horse industry.

"I think it's going to go on a straight downhill slide," said Rick Boenisch, a livestock auctioneer in the High Desert community of Pinon Hills. He also helps place unwanted horses for a small fee.

"The average homeowner that just wants to have a horse for their kid, it's just not going to happen," he said.

Others said people who truly want to keep their horses will find a way to do it, regardless of their economic situation.

Corona resident Alesha Watts, a self-described housewife and mother, already has one horse, and she visited Ingalls Park to pick out a mustang to adopt. The expense isn't a concern, Watts said, because she's willing to make sacrifices.

"I'll eat beans and drink water to make sure my animals eat," she said.