BLM to Gather Horses at Owyhee Complex Starting Nov. 1

The BLM will gather horses from the Owyhee, Little Owyhee, and Rock Creek herd management areas.
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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will begin a wild horse helicopter gather at the Owyhee Complex in Northern Nevada on Tuesday, Nov. 1.

The BLM said the purpose of the gather is to remove excess wild horses in order to prevent further deterioration of greater sage-grouse habitat within the Sagebrush Focal Area (SFA) in northern Elko and Humboldt counties. The agency said wild horse overpopulation leads to rangeland resource degradation, which adversely impacts habitat for other species as well as the horses themselves.

The Owyhee Complex is located in both the Elko and Winnemucca Districts and encompasses the Owyhee, Little Owyhee, Rock Creek, Snowstorm Mountains, and Little Humboldt herd management areas (HMAs). The gather will take place within the Owyhee, Little Owyhee, and Rock Creek HMAs, which contains the majority of the SFA area within Nevada. The total gather area includes 1,120,763 acres of private and public lands.

The BLM said An aerial population survey conducted in August 2016 documented approximately 1,229 wild horses in the Little Owyhee HMA, 349 in the Snowstorms Mountains HMA, 285 in the Owyhee HMA, 779 in the Rock Creek HMA, and 32 in the Little Humboldt HMA, for a total of 3,067 wild horses in the Owyhee Complex. The agency said the cumulative appropriate management level (AML) for all the HMAs within the Owyhee Complex is 483 to 779 wild horses. The AML is the level at which wild horse populations are consistent with the land’s capacity to support them and other mandated uses of those lands, including protecting ecological processes and habitat for wildlife and livestock, the BLM said

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