Story and Photo by Laura Leigh, Horseback Magazine
RENO, (Horseback) – In a story reported over the weekend by Horseback magazine about the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) $12 million dollar contracts for flight services to El Aero of Nevada and Will Hogan of Montana are for “routine” services.
BLM spokesperson Thomas Gorey responded to our inquiry saying these contracts were for “for inventory and monitoring purposes.” When asked if these contracts were for additional services or special projects Gorey responded that the services were “routine.”
The BLM conducts inventory flights to determine populations of wild horses and burros. The inventory flights are also used to determine herd health and range conditions.
Congress appropriated $71.8 million to the Wild Horse and Burro Program in Fiscal Year 2013, which ended September 30, 2013. Holding costs (long and short term) accounted for $46.2 million (64 percent), gathers and removals cost $4.8 million (6 percent), and adoption events cost $7.5 million (10 percent). (*statistics taken from BLM webpage).
Currently BLM manages 179 Herd Management Areas (HMAs). The acreage currently managed by BLM for wild horses and burros is 26.9 million acres. Within the HMAs BLM sets an “Appropriate Management Level” (AML) nationwide of both wild horses and burros at 26,677 animals.
In June of last year the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released the findings an extensive review of the BLM Wild Horse and Burro program. In the report the NAS cited deficiencies program wide. Yet noted that “AMLs are a focal point for controversy, it is important to develop and maintain standards for transparency, quality, and equity in the establishment, adjustment, and monitoring of AMLs.” In recommendations for establishing and validating AML the report outlined six steps. The first step involves “Inventorying the landscape to assess the current states of the system quantitatively and qualitatively.”
“It is disappointing that these contracts are said to be routine” state Marta Williams, VP of Wild Horse Education, “we have been waiting for the BLM to announce that they are implementing some of the recommendations of the NAS. The NAS also recommended that AML be a flexible adaptive number based on ‘new information’ and ‘social values.’ Perhaps we will hear something soon from BLM that indicates that the NAS report is being taken into consideration as well overdue reform of a program intended to protect wild horses and burros is actually created based on science and not administered to protect a few that reap a private profit.”
