Erik Molvar: How federal land and wild horse management really work
The Elko Daily recently interviewed Jenny Lesieutre, a Bureau of Land Management public affairs staff person, about the agency’s workings and its approach to wild horses. Lesieutre did a fine job of faithfully sticking to the agency’s talking points, but made so many erroneous statements that one wonders whether she simply doesn’t know what her agency is doing, or is cynically trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes. Sometimes when government officials speak, they need subtitles to translate the carefully-massaged talking points into what they really mean.
Here’s the real story on the Bureau’s land management efforts, and how the agency’s false narrative differs from reality.
The Bureau of Land Management is a multiple-use agency, which means they have a legal obligation to offer specified uses – “recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific and historical values” – and make sure to provide a sustained yield of these natural resources. It does not mean every use on every acre. But there is not, as Lesieutre suggests, any balance: Livestock and minerals (think mining and oil and gas development) are the dominant uses, and are typically permitted at levels that destroy wildlife habitats, irreversibly damage trout streams, pollute watersheds far beyond Clean Water Act limits, ruin scenic viewsheds, destroy Indigenous and pioneer historic and cultural sites. If there is any space left over for the public to recreate, it’s likely to be degraded by one of these profit-driven uses. That’s why the agency has famously been lampooned as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. The shoe fits. Read More…