7. SELECTIVE REMOVAL POLICY

The BLM's selective removal policy provides field office guidance for identifying wild horses that may be removed from public lands for adoption. Within HMAs, only "adoptable" horses 5 years of age and younger may be removed. For horses outside of a HMA and on public lands, adoptable horses 9 years of age and younger may be removed for adoption. The remaining horses are returned to the HMA.

Selective removal, as broadly defined, has increased the overall effectiveness and improved the public's perception of the BLM's WH&B adoption program. BLM has been successfully moving towards or achieving AMLs on many HMAs. As a result, horses have been gathered and placed successfully, feedlots have been eliminated, and the number of horses in sanctuaries have been substantially reduced.

However, selective removal as interpreted and applied to some HMAs has had negative effects and has failed to contribute towards achieving a "thriving ecological balance." In areas where BLM started with the number of horses far exceeding carrying capacity, application of selective removal has resulted in horse populations with age, sex, and social structures that may threaten their viability. In some instances, selective removal has prevented BLM from removing enough horses to achieve and maintain AMLs.

Recommendations:

The Team recommends:

• Selective removal should remain as the fundamental guidance when removing horses. Where AMLs cannot be achieved using selective removal without recurring negative effects, interim removal criteria for the HMA needs to be developed to ensure viable populations on healthy, sustainable habitats. The interim criteria may result in removal of fewer adoptable horses in some HMAs to achieve AMLs. When it is necessary to remove horses for which adoption demand has not been identified, special supplemental handling to enhance their adoptability will be necessary. Supplemental handling may require additional time to allow horses to attain good health, special handling of older horses, and extra marketing for these horses.
• On areas such as the Nevada Horse Range where sex ratios and age structures have been significantly altered by selective removals, the responsible wild horse specialist must very closely monitor the herd to make sure enough young horses are returned to the range after gather operations to ensure viability of the herd. The number of young horses to return should be determined through careful analysis using all available data, and the wild horse population model.
  
• As the Strategic Plan is updated, the selective removal policy should be reviewed.
• When selective removal is not effective in achieving herd objectives, interim criteria should be developed and employed for each herd until AMLs can be achieved.
• The NPO should establish guidelines for developing interim removal criteria.
• When developing interim removal criteria, BLM's population model should be utilized and incorporate all available data for the herd(s) in question. BLM's population model is a computer based management tool which allows wild horse and burro specialists to forecast herd population trends given a set of parameters. Specialists using the program can also run scenarios to predict what might happen to a herd population should changes occur in one or more of the variables.