“You can’t be killing mountain lions and then complain about too many foals"

Cattle grazing on some 155 million acres leased on 21,000 allotments of the 245 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management in thirteen western states now outnumber horses thirty to one. Over 54 million of those acres have failed the BLM's Land Health Assessment according to data released through the Freedom of Information Act to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility or PEER. As of October, 2022 BLM has removed over 19,000 horses and burros from public land and holds over 64,000 in confinement although the data clearly show domestic and feral cattle or hogs are far more destructive. 

Part of an ongoing process initiated in April 2020 the Billings, Montana Field Office seeks to manage for all protections especially against inbreeding within the Resource Management Plan intended to address genetic diversity in the Pryor Mountain wild horse herd. 

The Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range comprises about 40,000 acres in the southeastern portion of Carbon County, Mont. and northern Big Horn County, Wyo. covering lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, the BLM and the National Park Service. There are currently about 200 horses in the Herd Management Area. [BLM SEEKS COMMENT ON PRYOR HORSE HERD MANAGEMENT PLAN]

The BLM has also proposed removing the conifers that are encroaching into grasslands and cougars are in the crosshairs, too.

The plan was panned as “pretty unacceptable to most wild horse advocates” by Ginger Kathrens, founder of the wild horse advocacy group The Cloud Foundation, based in Colorado. “There needs to be a removal, but this would be a real slash and burn,” she said. The herd is also well known because some of the horses display characteristics similar to the original Spanish horses brought to the Americas in the 1500s: “narrow but deep chests, short backs, with a sloping croup and low-set tail,” the BLM noted. Kathrens said her group also continues to advocate for protection of mountain lions in the Pryor Mountains, which may kill young and sick horses, as a means of natural population control. “You can’t be killing mountain lions and then complain about too many foals,” she said. “The natural way is the best way.” [Pryor wild horse plan would reduce herd to heal range]

The feds should buy out landowners unwilling to lease for wildlife corridors. Migration routes over public and private land to the Fork Peck, Crow, and Northern Cheyenne nations then into Wyoming's Thunder Basin National Grassland and beyond to North and South Dakota would help create the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge. 

We all know this: unless the West embraces rewilding on portions of the Missouri River basin west of a north/south line from Oacoma, South Dakota through the CM Russell National Wildlife Refuge to Yellowstone National Park then to the Yukon water wars will clog the courts leaving violent armed vigilantism to settle disputes. 

Clear the second growth conifers and restore aspen habitat, prescribe burns, begin extensive Pleistocene rewilding using bison and cervids, empower tribes and buy out ranchers or lease private land for wildlife corridors, turn feral horses from Bureau of Land Management pastures onto other public land to control exotic grasses and elect Democrats to lead the way.