TO: The Honorable Debra Haaland, Secretary, Department of Interior
RE: Draft Solution for Plight of American Wild Horses
Dear Secretary Haaland:
I trust that you, your staff and others at your offices are well.
My name is William E. Simpson II. I spent my formative years on my family’s working ranch in southern Oregon as a rancher, managing lands with forest and with horses and cattle, as a member of the Future Farmers of America (FFA). I am now retired, and living on my ranch in the Soda Mountain wilderness area (Oregon-California border) among the free-roaming wild horses that I have studied for the past 7 years.
The combination of my training in science, background in business, logging, livestock production and forest/land management (including firefighting), and wild horses have informed my perspective in a unique and synergistic manner.
The first 5 years of my ongoing and continuous study of wild horses — ‘Impact Of Wild Horses On Wilderness Landscape And Wildfire’ — has been condensed and published at GrazeLIFE (a division of Re-Wilding Europe). My study is unique in that the wilderness study site is virtually devoid of livestock (too remote and too many apex predators); there are only cervids and equids.
My experience, is both academic in regard to my background in science (attended Oregon State University as a Pre-Med Science major), and empirical, in regard to the behavioral ecology of wild horses and their management. Some of my bona-fides (letters from legislators and public officials) are online here.
I am writing to you in regard to a Draft legislative outline, for a bill (attached PDF) that I believe can solve the longstanding dilemma facing public lands managers in regard to the conflict between stakeholders in public lands uses and the interests and well-being of native-species American wild horses.
Americans cannot allow any virus (COVID or not) to derail or stall the efforts to save native-species American wild horses, a National Treasure, especially at a time when rogue elements at DOI, BLM and USFS are engaged in what is arguably the largest and most reckless roundup in recent history.
As you know, the recent and ongoing roundups by the BLM and USFS are devastating to the wild horses.
Wild horses (and burros) are driven beyond their physical abilities, in many cases, some are dying from stress during or after the roundups. Foals literally run their hooves off, and some can’t keep up and are lost, left behind for predators. Pregnant mares abort their unborn, some die from shock out on the range, some of these atrocities are concealed from the public.
Roundups that use helicopters and other vehicles, force wild horses to run for their lives randomly (abnormal behavior) across the landscape, and in the process of their desperately fleeing, they inadvertently trample threatened and endangered species of flora and fauna.
The draconian methods currently being used by the BLM and USFS include:
1) Reducing breeding populations so low (less than 200 breeding adults in a herd) as to induce in-breeding and loss of genetic vigor;
2) Castration of stallions, which results in the loss of genetic diversity (we don’t even know which alleles are responsible for the resistance that wild horses have to Chronic Wasting Disease), and this also interferes with evolved evolutionary competition for breeding rights (survival of the fittest);
3) Chemical interventions (PZP & GonaCon) which interrupt critical social structures in family bands (matriarch mares lose status and their intuitive knowledge for survival is lost to family bands; some mares become infertile, etc. Darting wild horses with chemical contraceptives, as some of wild horse organizations lobbying legislators want to do, is not ecologically correct and it disintermediates evolutionary processes;
4) Wild horses are being shot to death by people now embolden by what seems to be an ‘open season’ on wild horses by the BLM and USFS, resulting from what the public sees as a total disregard for the value of these sentient beings by these government agencies.
These government agencies (DOI, BLM, USDA, USFS) — arguably influenced by money and politics around public land livestock grazing — are devastating the remaining populations of the relatively few (based on genetic diversity) remaining American wild horses.
We need to restore ecological-balance and the trophic cascades in areas where that is still possible, in the remaining remote wilderness areas, where the American wild horse is a critical keystone-species large-herbivore, as is the case in many ecosystems.
The BLM paying ranchers more than $100 million annually to house wild horses off-range, is a serious waste of our tax dollars (one ranching family alone, the Drummond family, has already been paid $24 million by the BLM.) This waste of tax dollars is totally unnecessary when there exists a readily available, virtually cost-free path for solving the entirety of the wild horse dilemma, while concurrently reducing wildfire fuels; a concept supported by peer-reviewed, published science.
Treating wild horses (deemed as ‘native species’ and ‘wildlife’ by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals) with any chemicals is wrong on so many levels it’s just obtuse, and there are numerous experts who agree with this position.
Relocating wild horses from holding (thus initiating immediate reductions in expenditures for offsite holding), and also, relocating wild horses from areas where they are in conflict with livestock interests (subject to potential BLM-USFS interventions) via humane relocation methods (unmolested family bands are baited-in and relocated together as family bands), into select wilderness areas with abundant water and forage, that are nevertheless manifestly unsuited for livestock wildfire grazing (for many sound reasons; I.E. loss of profits due to; predators, management logistics in rugged remote terrain, etc.) is both economically and ecologically appropriate.
An article at Pagosa Daily Post, details how American taxpayers can save (literally) hundreds of millions of dollars annually by implementing new public lands management using wild horses.
This article, that appeared in the Mail Tribune and the Pagosa Daily Post, outlines the common-sense solution that all stakeholders should consider in contrast to the ongoing dire situation:
I can only hope that there are enough enlightened people in the mix to implement a final solution that is fair and just to these magnificent, highly evolved, sentient beings…
So far, in our short stead on the planet, we’ve done a fine job of wrecking almost everything we mess with… especially things in the Natural world. Maybe we proceed with that thought to guide us as we evaluate our next plan to save wild horses…
Capt. William E. Simpson II – USMM Ret.
Naturalist, Author, Conservationist
Wild Horse Ranch
P.O. Box 202, Yreka, CA 96097