Pryor horse range plan announced

Wild Mustang Center not pleased with BLM management amendment

The leadership and board of the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center this week expressed disappointment with the Bureau of Land Management’s proposed Resource Management Plan amendment for the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range that was released on November 15.

The RMP amendment is one part of a complicated management process that began in 2020 with the planning stage of the Herd Management Area Plan and continued in 2022 with the proposed RMP amendment.

Since then, various components of the process were at first merged, then certain parts separated out, because, as the BLM put it, they are different types of plans. It’s all part of what Mustang Center director Nancy Cerroni termed in the soon-to-be-released Mustang Center fall newsletter “part of a long road of management actions” for the horse range.

Cerroni explained the process in a nutshell in the newsletter, writing, “What started out as two separate actions with the 2020 Herd Management Plan and the 2022 Proposed RMP Amendment merged into a single Environmental Assessment (EA) in March 2023. In addition to the two plans, a gather plan was included, as was an Appropriate Management Level (AML) Re-Evaluation.

“In November, the plan was released in its entirety once again as a revision of the first EA. However, another separation happened at this point. The Proposed RMP Amendment was moved to the decision stage with a 30-day public protest period (which will end on Dec. 16, 2024). The decisions for the other parts of the EA will be released sometime in 2025. The BLM was required to release the whole EA, although the only decision at this point is with the RMP Amendment Proposal.

“At this point, there is not much opportunity for more public comment. Keep an eye on our Facebook page and website for updates.”

Cerroni and the board have always argued that the Pryor Mountain herd has deserved specialized management due to the special nature and unique history of the Pryor Mountain horses, and in fact the Bureau of Land Management has historically used specialized management for the herd. 

The Resource Management Plan is a foundational component of the BLM’s herd management plan, Cerroni explained, noting that BLM lands are managed in accordance with RMPs, which establish how the lands will be used for various purposes.

Due to a court order in a 2018 court case challenging a planned gather, it was determined that one of the management decisions needed to be amended, Cerroni said in 2023, noting that the initial intent of that management decision was for the maintenance of genetic diversity.

In reaction to the court order, the BLM made what Cerroni called a “radical departure” and proposed an amendment to the RMP that changes genetic management of the herd using representation of the herd – color and bloodlines -- to using a statistical measure called Observed Heterozygosity, a “measure of genetic diversity.”

Under that measure, when Observed Heterozygosity drops below a certain level for a blood line, steps would be taken, but she said that practice would be reactive rather than proactive, and remedies taken would be “after the damage is done” to the various family bloodlines the Mustang Center and BLM have worked for decades to preserve.

“What they do with this standardized measurement is, instead of relying on this rich history of documentation about the herd, starting with Reverend (Floyd) Schwieger, all of that extensive documentation is not used,” she said in 2023. “They’re switching instead to statistical measures and population modeling.

“When the scoping notice came out (for the amended RMP) in 2022, we were opposed to this change mainly because it took it away from this specialized management that replaced the use of actual horse information with a single statistical measure.”

It is important to point out, Cerroni said, that a goal of the RMP is to “Maintain a wild horse herd that exhibits a diverse age structure, genetic diversity and any other characteristics unique to the Pryor horses, characteristics that originated with the horses’ Spanish heritage,” adding, “The use of Observed Heterozygosity is not a tool that would maintain the unique characteristics of the Pryor horse.”

Cerroni said a better way forward is for the BLM to monitor the herd using the mare lineage charts the center has on hand to ensure that no bloodlines are either eliminated or overrepresented.

“We’re not so opposed to Observed Heterozygosity, but the problem is it’s very reactive,” she said. “It’s saying, ‘OK, if it drops below, this is what we’re going to do.’ What we are looking for, instead, is, ‘What are you going to do before it drops to prevent it from dropping?’ And that’s where we really believe in specialized management using all of our rich documentation.”

In an interview last week, Cerroni noted that using Observed Heterozygosity is “kind of after the horse is out of the barn that you notice it, and it may be too late to recover. It’s just a statistical number, a genetic measure.

Cerroni said using Observed Heterozygosity comes right out of the BLM handbook, which she can understand for large wild horse herds when there are thousands of horses that officials don’t know as individuals. But for the Pryor Mountain horses are well known as individuals with documented bloodlines from work that goes back decades.

“The Mustang Center really has stood on the foundation of having this knowledge base of these horses, and that’s been a really big component (of management),” Cerroni said. “It’s part of our mission to preserve the future of the Pryor horses. We believe to preserve the future, you have to understand the lineage, the bloodlines.”

Cerroni said she is working on a protest of the proposed Resource Management Plan Amendment for the Mustang Center to issue, noting, “I just feel like the BLM wasn’t responsive at all to our comments.”

She added that the wild mustangs are not only important as a unique and historic herd, they are a huge part of the tourism economy of North Big Horn County.

For more information on the process, go to https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/1502632/510.