Jack — the Pancake Complex wild horses need your help, and there’s no time to lose. Here’s the situation: 

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is currently evaluating a long-term Herd Management Area Plan (HMAP) for the Pancake Wild Horse Complex. This Complex — including two BLM-managed Herd Management Areas (HMA), one Herd Area (HA), and one Wild Horse Territory (WHT), administered by the United States Forest Service (USFS) — spans over 1 million acres.

The Pancake Complex is home to more than 1,800 wild horses. But now, the BLM is planning to slash that number by up to 80%. 

The BLM and USFS have set incredibly low Appropriate Management Levels (AML) of:

• 240-493 wild horses at Pancake HMA
• 29-49 mustangs in the Sand Springs West HMA
• 72-96 wild horses for the Monte Cristo WHT

Altogether, that sets the unscientific AML for the entire 1 million-acre complex at a mere 361-638 horses. Meanwhile, year-round private livestock grazing will continue across the Complex. We urgently need your help  asking BLM officials to reevaluate the Pancake Complex HMAP. 

There’s more:

In the HMAP currently being evaluated, the BLM is considering returning 138 gelded stallions to the wild in what appears to be part of an expanding permanent sterilization plan for America’s wild horses. Not only that, but the plan calls for skewing the sex ratio 60/40 in favor of stallions and implementing unstudied population control methods like intrauterine devices.

Instead, the BLM must consider and evaluate the following in the Pancake Complex HMAP:

1. Reevaluate the Appropriate Management Levels of the HMAs and Territory based on current ecological conditions.
2. Invest in habitat stewardship, such as improving water sources and reseeding damaged areas.
3. Reevaluate the Herd Area as a Herd Management Area, allowing intact wild horses to be relocated into the redesignated HMA.
4. Evaluate Livestock Grazing Impacts: Assess and disclose the extent of livestock grazing within the Complex and the Territory and its impact on the area's land health.
5. Prioritize wild horses over commercial livestock grazing and reduce the number of cattle allowed to graze in the Complex. If removals are needed to protect the habitat, the BLM and USFS must remove private livestock before wild horses. 
6. Implement Fertility Control: Utilize humane, scientifically studied, and reversible fertility control initiatives to humanely manage the herd, without resorting to removals.
7. Abandon the use of unproven population control methods, including sex ratio skewing, castration, and intrauterine devices (IUDs).

Jack, please take a moment to send a letter to the BLM asking them to consider scientific, humane conservation for the majestic wild herds of the Pancake Complex!

Thanks for all you do!

– Team AWHC