Animal Protection Institute

Animal Protection Institute
P.O. Box 22505
Sacramento, CA 95822

June 23, 1997

The Animal Protection Institute is a national nonprofit citizens group with a special interest in public land wildlife including wild horses and burros. We have well over ten thousand members in California vitally concerned with the protection of black bear, mountain lion, bobcats, fox, pine martin, badgers, and coyotes on federal lands. Wild horse projections, predator control activity, and fur trapping on BLM lands are of major concern to us.

The draft ElS is impressive and informative. The Advisory Councils did an outstanding job of formulating their standards and guidelines. We studied them carefully with particular attention to Susanville's because this is where most of California's wild horse populations occur. Since predator control is a livestock grazing issue, we are acutely aware that the predator/prey balance is not part of your Chapters on Affected Environment and Environmental Consequences. For us, this is an enormous omission.

The document contains such useful information, it is of value as a basic textbook. It forces all parties to talk the same language, which has been badly needed for Some time both inside and outside BLM. Hopefully the other states come up to the same quality as California in their DEISs.

Because the ecological language of the 1971 Wild, Free-roaming Horse and Burro Protection Act requires BLM to manage for the thriving natural ecological balance in the areas where wild horses and burros occur, API has been a longtime advocate of recognizing the allowable utilization level (AUL) as synonymous with the thriving natural ecological balance. We have preached and protested for many years that the percent of the annual growth left on the plant is to provide for wildlife habitat, watershed, soil stability/composition, and the regeneration of the plants (photosynthesis). While it is refreshing to see BLM come at last to this ecological perspective, I have to say that 75 percent of my own understanding and knowledge of an ecological management perspective derives from BLM's own pre-James Watt technical documents and field staff explanations, In actuality, this DEIS is BLM coming back to its own ecological approach required by NEPA, range condition as defined in FLPMA, and the sustained yield principle Congress intended.

Thus it was shocking to come upon the section related to wild horse management in Chapter 3. Nothing could be more wrong than the information on pages 3-52 through 3-56 and more out of step with all the foregoing.

Here, you have exempted the Montgomery Pass wild horse area saying its population is stabilized by mountain lions. In fact, this is the only area where a study on mountain lion predation on wild horses was ever conducted. The ecological language in the wild horse law requires extensive consultation with wildlife agencies and experts for the purpose of maintaining the natural ecological balance among wildlife in the given area. For us this includes natural predation as a stabilizing factor. We don't know, nor does BLM, if Dr. Turner's findings apply in areas other than Montgomery Pass. The North Stillwater wild horse population in Nevada was at one time said, by BLM to be stabilized and the reason was thought to be mountain lions (Winnemucca District). This is where the sonic booms of low altitude military training drove the ranchers out of Dixie Valley so there was no demand to control predators. Our concern for protecting the predator/ prey balance and wanting to see it included as a significant part of the environment directly affected by livestock grazing is as a required (e.g., by law) wild horse management consideration as well as an inhumane and irrational wildlife extermination program conducted exclusively for the benefit of livestock operators.

On p.3-5O there is an interesting description of the historical existence of pronghorn at the time of the fist Europeans--with a density greater than "any area west of the Mississippi." Yet there is not one word of the wild horse populations at the time the first Europeans began to settle. I know from my own family history that huge numbers moved back and forth between the Carizzo Plains and the Santa Lucia Mts between the San Antonio and Nacimiento Rivers but as far north as the headwaters of the Arroyo Seco. In the cultural background section, there is also a lack of information on the influence of the Spanish land grants or outfits like Miller & Lux on the grazing history in the State. This lack causes a blur with regard to just how historical, how entrenched as a culture, is today's rural ranching community and lifestyle. This is not in opposition to that ranching lifestyle, it is to raise the question of taxpayers subsidizing the destructive impact of that lifestyle on our public lands.

To its credit the section in the DEIS on the real estate value of AUMs is candid and out on the table at long last. But missing is the use of this real estate value as collateral on loans. It is the impact of AUM reductions on the permit as devaluing the collateral forcing foreclosures and possible bankruptcy that has been the driving force behind BLM's status quo management which the Secretary is trying to correct today. To ignore the use of AUMs as collateral is to avoid the very thing that has obstructed full compliance with the policies of NEPA and other range laws for the past sixteen years. In fact going all the way back to the adjudications of forage allocations on the 1964-65 ten year permits and carried over decade after decade as "preference."

Still the information that cattle ranching in the eleven western states, containing federal rangeland with grazing privileges, makes up only 22 percent of beef production and 19 percent of sheep with the public land providing only 25 percent of forage intake for cattle 5 percent for sheep, is surprisingly low. You report the California and Nevada figures for dependency on public land forage by permittees and leasees as 15 percent in California and 36 percent in Nevada. Turned around it means 85 percent of livestock forage in California and 64 percent in Nevada comes from sources other than public lands. Yet in 1993, the government collected 28.1 million in fees and spent 94 million to service ranchers on public lands. This translates to the rancher paying $1.86 per AUM and the taxpayers paying $3.90 per AUM to maintain his lifestyle.

"Beneficial use" terminology is used. But what we see is the senseless extermination of predators for the exclusive benefit of livestock operators, miles of pasture and boundary fences constructed for the exclusive benefit of livestock operators, native vegetation chained, plowed and reseeded for the exclusive benefit of livestock operators, and millions of dollars allocated for water development for the exclusive benefit of livestock operators. While the benefit of public land livestock to local economies or the nation at large as a source of food and fiber is minimal.

There is no analysis of the impact on that 85 percent non public land forage if reductions in public land AUMs are required to meet restoration and improvement objectives. Since water quality and usage is one of the major consequences being considered and irrigating alfalfa fields is one of the major draws on California waters. This relationship between alfalfa farmers, public land permittees, and water use in California appears to be a very significant factor in the overall equation. What percent of alfalfa production is for the exclusive benefit of public land livestock operators?

As we study the consequences of the alternatives on the natural systems being analyzed (riparian vegetation, hydrologic systems, wildlife, soils, and upland plant communities), the outcome is the same for all. So that the question is the timeframe between Alternatives 1-3 and Alternative 4. But the "range improvements" for grazing systems all require increased fences to convert open range to cow pastures and new water developments that put livestock into areas they have not yet damaged. We disagree with the wisdom of this. It is particularly questionable in light of your facts regarding the ever increasing recreational and nonconsumptive use of the public lands.

Chapter 4 perpetuates another myth about wild horses. That is that wild horses move into riparian areas when cows leave. So it is really the wild horses causing riparian damage, not cows. It is wild horses preventing successful restoration projects.

All of our information on wild horse grazing patterns (from the National Academy of Sciences field report to individual observers such as Frei within the BLM, who timed horses at a water source, as well as BLM census/distribution maps, to reports by Downer and other's outside BLM) is that wild horses move into a water source, drink, and move out again to graze from three to ten miles away. Those who have adopted wild horses are well aware of the "space factor" which triggers their horse's flight response when they begin their gentling program. The National Academy of Science Phase I field study reported the significance of bands maintaining a distance from each other that evenly distributes them over a given area. Conflicts occur between bands when that space diminishes at a water source. The hearsay claim that horses come into the riparian area to graze thus causing the damage, needs to be shown. Otherwise it flies in the face of a wild horse's grazing pattern. Furthermore, the grazing pattern of wild horses is dictated by their digestive system which requires exercise to function properly (Downer). They do not congregate near water chewing their cud, horses nibble as they. Mosey along. When looked at from Alan Savory's discussion of root recovery between "hits" during the growing season. the highly mobile wild horse's chance of "hitting" the same plant twice is highly improbable. I have studied dozens of use pattern maps, they all show slight/light utilization in radials from three to ten miles out which is wild horse usage not cows.

It is popular to use wild horses as scapegoats and it is also the line of least resistance within BLM field office. This is not to say that where there is an overpopulation of wild horses excess should not be removed. But the 1978 amendment spells out how BLM is to determine if an overpopulation exists and whether the removal of excess is needed. Implementing that statutory language requires monitoring and current inventories of range condition which, if they were done, preclude such hearsay and biased statements about wild horses moving in when livestock leave. The very reason the law requires it be documented is to force technical, not political, decisions by BLM.

The DEIS does say that these standards and guidelines do not apply to wild horses and burros. But it does not explain the statutory management directives in the law. Instead it refers to regulations which were struck down by the IBLA but never changed by BLM. Instead the Strategic Plan, which contradicts the law and the IBLA rulings, was put in place to avoid making the needed changes to regulations. The Strategic Plan was never subjected to public comment or its impact on wild horse bands analyzed. "AML" is the acronym for the appropriate management level after determining if there are excess and determining if excess need to be removed or other options are available. IBLA says that the appropriate management levÝnonymous with the optimum number to leave. They point out that BLM is authorized to remove only the number of excess needed to restore the thriving natural ecological balance [which is measured as the allowable forage take-off or "AUL"]. Dahl v Clark says the law does not authorize managing for a number. Yet the description in the DEIS, p. 3-52 to 3-56, describes the very policy of maintaining a management number set through land use planning that lBLA ruled against the federal court ruled against, the GAO found against, and any unbiased layperson reading the law would disagree with.

Therefore we request that pages 3-52 to 3-56 be deleted and a new Section that quotes the law, the IBLA, the Dahl v Clark ruling, and your own 1990 Biennial Report to Congress. Also correct the unsubstantiated statement in Chapter 4. It doesn't change the DElS only the information being given to the public as if existing policy were in compliance with law.

We also request that both the Affected Environment and Environmental Consequences include the impact of livestock grazing on the predator/prey balance. We support much that is in the Proposed Alternative with the exception of new waters to correct distribution by spreading destruction and fences that create cow pastures. We opt for the fast recovery time frame of Alternative 4.

For the Animal Protection Institute,

Nancy Whitaker
Public Land Wildlife Division