ProPublica

For decades, a factory on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, has churned out hulking metal parts for Boeing’s commercial airplanes. Despite the steady pulse of its machinery, the plant maintains a low profile; Oregonians more readily associate Boeing with its historic headquarters up north in Seattle. Perhaps, I reasoned last spring, this helped explain why no one had noticed that the company’s satellite campus seemed to have unleashed an environmental catastrophe.

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By Michael Kohn, The Bulletin

A herd of more than 120 horses roaming free in the Ochoco National Forest will be cut in half as part of a management plan to control their numbers.

The 2021 Ochoco Wild Horse Management Plan will establish a management level of 47 to 57 horses that can reside in the national forest, according to a news release on Friday from the U.S. Forest Service.

The Big Summit herd is the only one in Oregon and Washington to be managed solely by the U.S. Forest Service. Most of the other wild horse herds in the Pacific Northwest are managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

The number of horses permitted in the herd takes into account forage availability in winter and the management of a lack of genetic variability in the horse herd. The decision also includes an emergency action plan that provides protocols for how the Forest Service will intervene on behalf of sick, injured or starving horses.

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(May 15, 2021) The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) was implemented in 2019 to increase the number of wild horses and burros adopted or sold as a mechanism for accommodating the previous administration’s plan to accelerate roundup and removal of wild horses and burros from public lands, as outlined in the BLM’s 2020 Report to Congress. An alarming number of BLM horses and burros have been subjected to cruel conditions and sold at kill pens where they are purchased for slaughter. The evidence accumulated by the American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC) and affirmed in today's New York Times expose’ demands immediate suspension of, and formal investigation into, the Adoption Incentive Program.

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Oct. 14, 2016
The New York Times

By Dave Philipps

OSAGE COUNTY, Okla. — As the sun set on the honey-colored prairie here, a herd of wild horses grazed belly deep in Indiangrass and big bluestem. On the next ridge, a dozen more horses nibbled in the pasture, and beyond them even more, dotting the hills almost as far as the eye could see.

The head of the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse program, Dean Bolstad, tipped up his cowboy hat and looked out at the animals from a hilltop. “I love seeing this,” he said, “but it’s also an absolute anchor around our neck.”

The horses were grazing on a ranch the agency rents, one of 60 private ranches, corrals and feedlots where it stores the 46,000 wild horses it has removed from the West’s public lands. The cost: $49 million a year.

Trying to make that rent has pushed the wild horse program into crisis. The expense eats up 66 percent of the federal budget for managing wild horses, and it is expected to total more than $1 billion over the life of the herds. The program cannot afford to continue old management practices that created the problem in the first place, or afford to come up with solutions that might fix it.

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WASHINGTON, DC (May 15, 2021)  — Today, the nation’s leading wild horse protection organization, the American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC), and its coalition partners are calling for the immediate suspension of the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) following an investigation, confirmed by the New York Times, documenting that the government is laundering wild horses to slaughter through the AIP, evading long-standing Congressional slaughter ban. 

The Times story, prompted by research conducted by the American Wild Horse Campaign with assistance from Evanescent Mustang Rescue, Skydog Sanctuary, and Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary, investigated the influx of wild horses and burros in kill pens (livestock auctions that ship the federally-protected animals to slaughter plants in Canada and Mexico).  

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May 15, 2021
The New York Times

By Dave Philipps

In a lifetime of working with horses, Gary Kidd, 73, had never adopted an untrained wild mustang before. But when the federal government started paying people $1,000 a horse to adopt them, he signed up for as many as he could get. So did his wife, two grown daughters and a son-in-law.

Mr. Kidd, who owns a small farm near Hope, Ark., said in a recent telephone interview that he was using the mustangs, which are protected under federal law, to breed colts and that they were happily eating green grass in his pasture.

In fact, by the time he spoke on the phone, the animals were long gone. Records show that Mr. Kidd had sold them almost as soon as he legally could. He and his family received at least $20,000, and the mustangs ended up at a dusty Texas livestock auction frequented by slaughterhouse brokers known as kill buyers.

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By Bradley W. Parks (OPB)

Bend, Ore. May 7, 2021 5:25 p.m.

The agency plans to shrink the Big Summit wild horse herd by capturing horses and putting them up for adoption. Horse advocates worry this puts the herd at risk of collapse.

The U.S. Forest Service will reduce the wild horse population on a 27,000-acre range east of Prineville to a level horse advocates say could lead to the herd’s elimination.

The most recent count of wild horses on the Big Summit Wild Horse Territory of the Ochoco National Forest puts the population around 130, but the Forest Service estimates it closer to 150. (Counts for the past two years have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

The management plan approved Friday will cut the herd down to 47-57 horses total over the next five years.

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BY KELCIE WALTHER |FEBRUARY 10, 2021

In the Pacific Northwest, several species of salmon are in danger of extinction. The Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office has released a report on the state of salmon populations in the state’s watersheds — and the findings predict a grim future.

The report was commissioned by the Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office, established by the state legislature in 1998 in response to the Salmon Recovery Planning Act. Its findings showed that 10 to 14 species of salmon in the northwest are “threatened or endangered,” and five species are “in crisis.”

The findings, though alarming, are in line with population trends over the last few decades. The once prolific salmon populations in Washington State have been declining for years, and populations are now estimated to be at about 5% of historic highs.

The five species of salmon and steelhead that the report found to be most at risk are Snake River spring/summer chinook, Puget Sound chinook, Lake Ozette sockeye, Upper Columbia River spring chinook, and Puget Sound steelhead — a sampling that covers a wide geographic area in the state.

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