California Riding Magazine • March, 2010

The Gallop:
Calico Round-Up Stirs Outrage

by Kim F. Miller

The Bureau of Land Management’s attempt to remove 2,500 wild horses from the Calico Mountain Complex in Nevada has triggered what wild horse advocates describe as an “outrage” they hope will capture President Obama’s attention. Protests were staged at various points of the Calico round-up, which began in December and ended, earlier than scheduled, in early February, with 1922 horses gathered and, at press time, 46 horses dead. A larger protest was scheduled for Feb. 18, on the Federal Courthouse steps in Las Vegas. Participants planned to make speeches addressed to Obama, who was scheduled to be in Las Vegas that day, then carry big banners to key points for the public to get their message.

With slogans including “Nevada: The BLM is stealing your wild horse and burro legacy. Give them a fair share of public land,” the protests criticize the government’s management of these animals. The BLM was given responsibility for preserving and protecting them in the Wild & Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 and is charged with managing them in accordance with that law and the 1976 Federal Land Policy & Management Act.

The Cloud Foundation is among the veteran advocacy groups leading the current protests. The message to Obama and the public is posted on their website as “No more tax dollars for horrific roundups, castration and warehousing our Western heritage in the East! President Obama, we the people demand an end to BLM’s 40 years of subsidizing livestock and commercial interests on our land. Give wild horses and burros their fair share of public lands. Protect them as the 1971 Free Roaming Wild Horse & Burro Act ordered you to do.”

The warehousing comment is a reference to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar’s request for more money, much of which is earmarked to buy land in the Midwest and East for wild horses. This would address the estimated 34,000 horses who’ve been removed from the range but haven’t found homes in the BLM’s adoption program, which has placed 225,000 horses since it began in 1973. Many wild horse advocates object to relocation, asserting that the horses wouldn’t fare well outside their natural habitat and that, in principle, they are entitled to stay where they are.

Ardent disagreements about what population size constitutes a sustainable level are at the core of the problem. The BLM says the 37,000 horses currently roaming free on BLM land in 10 Western states, half of it in Nevada, is 10,000 more than the land can sustain. The agency’s “appropriate herd management levels” maintain the horses in balance with other entities entitled to share public lands. That includes oil and gas development, wildlife management and cattle ranching, the latter being the most offensive to wild horse supporters. By some estimates, privately owned cattle outnumber wild horses by 100 to 1 on BLM managed lands.

Necessary Removals?

The BLM says the removals are necessary because the horses have no natural predators and their herd sizes roughly double every four years. Wild horse aficionados challenge the no-predator statement and suggest that, if left to their own devices, horses will adjust their population according to the viability of their terrain.

Karen Sussman, of the International Society for Protection of Mustangs and Burros, suspects that round-ups and removals intended to reduce numbers are triggering the opposite effect. “In our two herds that have not been ‘managed’ for a long time, the mares don’t get pregnant until they are 4 or 5. That’s how it was in the 1970s, before they started doing the massive gathers,” she explains. In a herd more recently taken in from publicly managed land, mares are impregnated at 1 or 2. “It’s their way of countering the loss in numbers,” Sussman observes. “It’s their survival instinct.”

The BLM is used to intense criticism regarding its management of wild horses and burros, and the Calico gathers have generated increased complaints to the agency’s Nevada offices. Also, “There is a marked increase in the amount of misinformation posted on the Internet and sent via e-mail that is generated by anti-gather extremists,” says JoLynn Worley of the Nevada BLM’s communication department.

The loss of 46 horses after arriving at short-term holding facilities is proportionally higher than that sustained in past Nevada round-ups, but Worley notes that causes vary greatly. “Each gather is unique in the conditions of the rangelands the excess horses are being removed from, the body condition of the horses and the number of animals gathered,” she says. “While many of the 1,922 excess wild horses gathered from the Calico Complex show good body condition, there are quite a few, primarily mares, that came in off the rangelands in poor body condition. The wild horses in poor body condition have a difficult time adjusting to the change in feed (grass hay) and the stress of the gather and transportation to the holding facility. They constitute the majority of the euthanizations and deaths of Calico horses. It is not unusual for there to be a few deaths as a result of congenital defects and accidental injuries such as a horse running into a gate or fence.”

In addition to the Nevada protests, The Cloud Foundation and other groups are encouraging supporters to sign an online petition seeking a moratorium on any more wild horse gathers. The BLM says that might serve to starve the horses off their land due to overgrazing of limited forage.

To learn more about this complex and challenging issue, visit www.thecloudfoundation.org, www.returntofreedom.org, www.blm.gov, among several informative websites.