The Ruby Pipeline-Wild Horse Myth

It has recently been falsely alleged by some wild horse activists and by Las Vegas television reporter George Knapp that there is, or appears to be, a connection between wild horse gathers in northern Nevada and the construction of the Ruby Pipeline Project, a proposed 678-mile, 42-inch diameter interstate natural gas pipeline that would cross 368 miles of Federal land beginning near Opal, Wyoming, passing through northern Utah and northern Nevada, and terminating near Malin, Oregon.  Supposedly, according to this allegation, the BLM -- which manages public lands for multiple uses -- is moving horses out the way of the pipeline as a favor to the oil and gas industry.  The parent company of the pipeline project is El Paso Corporation.

This alleged horse removal-pipeline connection is false.  The BLM's removal of wild horses from herds in Nevada, or any other Western state with wild horses, is necessitated by herd overpopulation, a management issue that the Bureau must deal with regardless of the existence or non-existence of the Ruby pipeline.  As it is, wild horse and burro herds, which have virtually no natural predators, grow at a rate of about 20 percent a year, which means herds can double in size every four years.

The BLM's gathering and removal of horses is determined by site-specific rangeland conditions in the 179 Herd Management Areas under BLM management in 10 Western states.  After monitoring these conditions, the Bureau makes on-the-ground assessments of how many horses and burros the public rangelands can support in balance with other rangeland resources and uses.  Currently, the West-wide population of 38,400 wild horses and burros on BLM-managed rangelands exceeds by nearly 12,000 the number that the land can support.

The hard reality is that the ecosystems of public rangelands are not able to withstand the impacts from overpopulated herds, which include soil erosion, sedimentation of streams, and damage to wildlife habitat.  As for the landmark 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, Section 1333 of that law mandates that the BLM, after determining that an overpopulation exists, "shall immediately remove excess animals from the range so as to achieve appropriate management levels."

The areas affected by construction of the Ruby pipeline will be re-vegetated with a mix of grasses and shrubs for the benefit of wildlife and wild horses and burros.

The BLM will continue to work to achieve the appropriate management level of wild horses and burros on Western public lands.  By doing so, healthy herds will be able to thrive on healthy public rangelands, both now and in the generations to come. 

###

Here's what the Elko Daily Free Press says on the issue: Horse Deaths Explode into a Conspiracy (July 15, 2010).