By Scott Streater, E&E News
June 25, 2021
The Bureau of Land Management says its request to Congress for an additional $35 million for wild horse and burro management is tied to the Biden administration's efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change and the growing threats of wildfires.
The budget justification document, posted online today nearly a month after President Biden unveiled his fiscal 2022 budget proposal, offers detailed information that outlines to congressional appropriators the administration's priorities for public lands management.
Biden's $1.6 billion budget proposal for BLM addresses a host of other issues, including funding to potentially restore national monuments, to create a Civilian Climate Corps and to increase diversity in hiring at the bureau.
Among the highlights is the requested increase to BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program budget — to $152.5 million, from the current enacted level of $115.7 million. Of the $36 million increase, about $1 million would go toward converting the program's vehicles to "zero emission" vehicles.
BLM partly justifies requesting this extra money in the document by tying excess wild horses and burros to climate change and wildfires.
The bureau argues in the document that the tens of thousands of excess wild horses and burros trampling federal rangelands have degraded them, making them susceptible to wildfires, which are increasing in frequency and intensity because of a warming climate.
"Excess wild horse and burro populations undermine the health of public rangelands, undoing years of BLM investments and making the public lands less resilient to other stressors such as climate change," the document says. "Such degraded landscapes can also directly contribute to climate change, as they are more susceptible to wildfire occurrence and accompanying carbon release."
In an effort to "help mitigate this problem," the Wild Horse and Burro Program needs the extra $36 million "to allow BLM to better constrain the growth of animals on the range, including through removals, fertility control treatments, and permanent sterilization efforts, and to cover rising holding costs."
BLM's attempt to tie wild horses and burros to the growing climate crisis drew the ire of wild horse advocates.
"Wild horses and burros are only present on 12% of BLM-managed public lands," said Holly Gann Bice, government relations director for the American Wild Horse Campaign. "It is outrageous that the Biden administration is scapegoating these animals for climate change while turning a blind eye to the nearly 7 million privately owned commercial livestock that are permitted to graze on the public lands."
Advocates are also not pleased that the Biden administration is following the Trump-era strategy that calls for aggressively removing tens of thousands of wild horses and burros from federal herd management areas that are deemed to be overcrowded.
"The funding increase would allow BLM to remove an estimated 20,000 animals from the range and perform an estimated 3,100 fertility control treatments, including both vaccines and permanent sterilization methods, in 2022," the document says.
BLM in this fiscal budget cycle, which ends Sept. 30, plans to remove nearly 11,000 animals "and perform approximately 2,200 fertility control treatments," it says.
Ramping up the roundups and removals "would lead to increased costs off-range for holding and caring for the additional animals" in pens and corrals.
It would also require hiring an additional 70 employees to the Wild Horse and Burro Program, for a total of 209 employees, the document says.
To deal with increased costs, BLM "will strive to achieve 6,500 private care placements of excess wild horses and burros," it says, presumably through the bureau's pay-to-adopt plan that is currently under scrutiny from wild horse advocates and some congressional leaders following recent reports that some animals adopted through this program later ended up for sale at auctions (Greenwire, May 17).
Some of these auctions were attended by known "kill buyers" from slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada.
The Interior Department has never addressed the allegations against its adoption incentive program, even though Interior Secretary Deb Haaland received a detailed report with documented evidence on the auction claims from advocates and faced pressure from Congress to investigate the claims.
It continued to hold adoption events throughout the spring.
Today's budget justification also does not address the allegations.
It also does not address the lack of a current wild horse and burro population count.
The latest population count in March 2020 estimated there were a record 95,114 animals, or nearly four times the number that federal rangelands can sustain without causing damage to vegetation, soils and other resources.
The rangewide population estimate is usually released to the public in March or early April.
Without the rangewide population estimate, it's impossible to know whether the aggressive roundup strategy begun in late 2019 during the Trump administration, and being carried forward by the Biden BLM, has had a positive impact in reducing herd sizes.
BLM's National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board is scheduled to hold an online hearing next week. The rangewide population numbers are on the agenda for discussion.
Other highlights
Elsewhere, the budget justification document:
- Does not mention any potential decision to move BLM's current headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., back to Washington. BLM has been studying this for months, and earlier this week senior bureau leaders conceded to staffers that they have no idea when a decision will be made (E&E News PM, June 23).
- Proposes $200,000 to go toward continuing to review Trump-era boundary changes shrinking the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. The money would also "support any boundary changes" to the two monuments "as a result of that review." Haaland recently submitted recommendations on the monument revisions to Biden that reportedly include restoring them to their original sizes.
- Explains a $1.4 million request to fund a Civilian Climate Corps at BLM and to hire two full-time employees as part of that. Biden has proposed establishing a new Civilian Conservation Corps that would be similar to the New Deal-era initiative of the same name. The proposal in the budget document says the corps would "advance natural and cultural resource conservation and protection through maintenance, research, resilience, and mitigation."
- Calls for $800,000, and two full-time employees, for a "Departmentwide Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility budget initiative" that in part "will jointly conduct a review of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility program across Interior to identify gaps, challenges, and best practices and to examine Department and bureau roles, responsibilities, and governance."
The Bureau of Land Management says its request to Congress for an additional $35 million for wild horse and burro management is tied to the Biden administration's efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change and the growing threats of wildfires.
The budget justification document, posted online today nearly a month after President Biden unveiled his fiscal 2022 budget proposal, offers detailed information that outlines to congressional appropriators the administration's priorities for public lands management.
Biden's $1.6 billion budget proposal for BLM addresses a host of other issues, including funding to potentially restore national monuments, to create a Civilian Climate Corps and to increase diversity in hiring at the bureau.
Among the highlights is the requested increase to BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program budget — to $152.5 million, from the current enacted level of $115.7 million. Of the $36 million increase, about $1 million would go toward converting the program's vehicles to "zero emission" vehicles.
BLM partly justifies requesting this extra money in the document by tying excess wild horses and burros to climate change and wildfires.
The bureau argues in the document that the tens of thousands of excess wild horses and burros trampling federal rangelands have degraded them, making them susceptible to wildfires, which are increasing in frequency and intensity because of a warming climate.
"Excess wild horse and burro populations undermine the health of public rangelands, undoing years of BLM investments and making the public lands less resilient to other stressors such as climate change," the document says. "Such degraded landscapes can also directly contribute to climate change, as they are more susceptible to wildfire occurrence and accompanying carbon release."
In an effort to "help mitigate this problem," the Wild Horse and Burro Program needs the extra $36 million "to allow BLM to better constrain the growth of animals on the range, including through removals, fertility control treatments, and permanent sterilization efforts, and to cover rising holding costs."
BLM's attempt to tie wild horses and burros to the growing climate crisis drew the ire of wild horse advocates.
"Wild horses and burros are only present on 12% of BLM-managed public lands," said Holly Gann Bice, government relations director for the American Wild Horse Campaign. "It is outrageous that the Biden administration is scapegoating these animals for climate change while turning a blind eye to the nearly 7 million privately owned commercial livestock that are permitted to graze on the public lands."
Advocates are also not pleased that the Biden administration is following the Trump-era strategy that calls for aggressively removing tens of thousands of wild horses and burros from federal herd management areas that are deemed to be overcrowded.
"The funding increase would allow BLM to remove an estimated 20,000 animals from the range and perform an estimated 3,100 fertility control treatments, including both vaccines and permanent sterilization methods, in 2022," the document says.
BLM in this fiscal budget cycle, which ends Sept. 30, plans to remove nearly 11,000 animals "and perform approximately 2,200 fertility control treatments," it says.
Ramping up the roundups and removals "would lead to increased costs off-range for holding and caring for the additional animals" in pens and corrals.
It would also require hiring an additional 70 employees to the Wild Horse and Burro Program, for a total of 209 employees, the document says.
To deal with increased costs, BLM "will strive to achieve 6,500 private care placements of excess wild horses and burros," it says, presumably through the bureau's pay-to-adopt plan that is currently under scrutiny from wild horse advocates and some congressional leaders following recent reports that some animals adopted through this program later ended up for sale at auctions (Greenwire, May 17).
Some of these auctions were attended by known "kill buyers" from slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada.
The Interior Department has never addressed the allegations against its adoption incentive program, even though Interior Secretary Deb Haaland received a detailed report with documented evidence on the auction claims from advocates and faced pressure from Congress to investigate the claims.
It continued to hold adoption events throughout the spring.
Today's budget justification also does not address the allegations.
It also does not address the lack of a current wild horse and burro population count.
The latest population count in March 2020 estimated there were a record 95,114 animals, or nearly four times the number that federal rangelands can sustain without causing damage to vegetation, soils and other resources.
The rangewide population estimate is usually released to the public in March or early April.
Without the rangewide population estimate, it's impossible to know whether the aggressive roundup strategy begun in late 2019 during the Trump administration, and being carried forward by the Biden BLM, has had a positive impact in reducing herd sizes.
BLM's National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board is scheduled to hold an online hearing next week. The rangewide population numbers are on the agenda for discussion.
Other highlights
Elsewhere, the budget justification document:
- Does not mention any potential decision to move BLM's current headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., back to Washington. BLM has been studying this for months, and earlier this week senior bureau leaders conceded to staffers that they have no idea when a decision will be made (E&E News PM, June 23).
- Proposes $200,000 to go toward continuing to review Trump-era boundary changes shrinking the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. The money would also "support any boundary changes" to the two monuments "as a result of that review." Haaland recently submitted recommendations on the monument revisions to Biden that reportedly include restoring them to their original sizes.
- Explains a $1.4 million request to fund a Civilian Climate Corps at BLM and to hire two full-time employees as part of that. Biden has proposed establishing a new Civilian Conservation Corps that would be similar to the New Deal-era initiative of the same name. The proposal in the budget document says the corps would "advance natural and cultural resource conservation and protection through maintenance, research, resilience, and mitigation."
- Calls for $800,000, and two full-time employees, for a "Departmentwide Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility budget initiative" that in part "will jointly conduct a review of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility program across Interior to identify gaps, challenges, and best practices and to examine Department and bureau roles, responsibilities, and governance."
