RED ALERT: Get Comments into BLM against roundup of 6,700 wild horses

Keep them in the wild and safe from slaughter!

YOU can help STOP the proposed ROUNDUP of 6,700 Wild Horses living in northeast Nevada! #TakeAction Get your comments in against the Roundup, Against PZP, Gonacon, Sterilizations, Give wild horses their fair share of public land and STOP scapegoating them for range damage by sheep and poor livestock management! Please get your comments in by 4:30PM PDT Monday August 21st (eclipse). Don’t forget!

BLM says, “The Antelope and Triple B Complexes Gather Plan EA is available for a 30 day review period beginning July 21, 2017. Submissions will be accepted until 4:30 pm Pacific Daylight Time on August 21, 2017. Interested individuals should mail written comments to the BLM Elko District Office, 3900 Idaho Street, Elko, NV 89801 Attn: Marc Jackson, Wells Field Manager. Comments may also be provided through email to this address: blm_nv_eldowellshorsegathers@blm.gov . Be advised that only the comments received by postal mail or to this specific e-mail address will be considered in the completion of the Final EA, Finding of No Significant Impact and Decision Record.” https://eplanning.blm.gov/epl-front-office/eplanning/planAndProjectSite.do?methodName=dispatchToPatternPage¤tPageId=125205 .”

If your email bounces back then maybe BLM put out a typo. Try this: blm_nv_elkowellshorsegathers@blm.gov

Stand up warriors! Speak Out. Demand an independent head count and no roundup, no birth control as there is no proof of an overpopulation of wild horses. as part of the NEPA before any plans for a Roundup!

Save the Mustangs!

Read about the wild horse crisis on our blog here: www.ProtectMustangs.org

Protect Mustangs is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of native and wild horses. www.ProtectMustangs.org



Comment against BLM getting rid of wild horses to help those monsters #frack for oil and gas!

BLM Seeks Public Comment on Public Lands Nominated for Oil and Gas Exploration and Development

ELKO, Nev. – The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Elko District Environmental Assessment (EA) for parcels of public land nominated for lease in the 2015 Competitive Oil & Gas Lease Sale is available for review. These parcels have the potential for future oil and gas exploration and development. The 30-day public review period concludes October 29, 2014.

The 24 parcels totaling 25,802.47 acres have been analyzed for potential impacts in the EA in accordance with the Oil & Gas Leasing Reform mandated in 2010.

Lease stipulations identified in the Elko (1987) and Wells (1985) Resource Management Plans are attached to applicable parcels to help protect resources. The EA is available for public review at: http://on.doi.gov/1rxlD8j

Inside the EA you will find information about how American wild horses will be impacted on page 64. It reads:

3.2.17 Wild Horses

Existing Conditions

There are 8 wild horse herd management areas (HMA) managed by the Elko District Office. They are the Owyhee, Rock Creek, Little Humboldt, Diamond Hills North, Maverick-Medicine, Antelope Valley, Goshute, and Spruce-Pequop HMAs. These eight HMAs total approximately 1.8 million acres and have an appropriate management level (AML) of 1,338 wild horses. Wild horses inhabit these HMAs year round. Deferred parcels 13 and 14 are within the Maverick /Medicine HMA and parcels 15 through 26 are located in the Antelope Valley HMA. The other parcels are not located within HMAs.

Effects of the Proposed Alternative

There are no direct impacts to wild horses associated with leasing, however wild horses can be found within some of the HMAs and future exploration could affect wild horses within those HMAs. Increased human and motorized activity could disrupt and displace wild horses. The wild horses inhabiting the area of the exploration could leave the area and move away from the noise and activity. During any long term or permanent activity it is probable that wild horses over time would become accustomed to the activity and resume normal activities at a reasonable distance. Construction of new fences as part of development production facilities could disrupt movement of free roaming wild horses and animals could be injured by colliding with any new fences.

Mitigations

Construction of fencing within a HMA would be evaluated during review of any development proposal to determine if flagging or other measures would be necessary to increase visibility to wild horses. Best management practices along with specific restrictions would be implemented to minimize negative impacts to wild horses.

The Competitive Oil and Gas Lease Sale will be conducted on March​10, 2015.

If you have issues or concerns or need more information, contact Tom Schmidt, Project Lead at the BLM Elko District, at (775) 753-0200 or email at elfoweb@blm.gov

 

Watch the telling film Wild Horses and Renegades expose the truth behind wild horse roundups and removals.  You can go to https://vimeo.com/ondemand/wildhorses to watch the documentary. Here’s a rough preview:

 

 

Josh Fox’s Oscar nominated GASLAND I explains how tracking ruins the environment and our water especially. Available on Netflix.

 

GASLAND 2 explains how the oil and gas lobbies control democracy, putting us all at risk and poisoning our water in order to become a world leader in exporting liquid natural gas. There is a nice segment linking wild horse roundups with fracking in Wyoming. Here’s a trailer for Fox’s GASLAND 2. You can also watch the film on Netflix.

 

Sign and share the petition against tracking in wild horse land: https://www.change.org/p/sen-dianne-feinstein-don-t-frack-wild-horse-land

Fracking’s Terrifying Water Usage Trends Spell Disaster

PM frack_map

Almost half (47%) of all U.S. wells are being developed in regions with high to extremely high water stress. This means that more than 80 percent of the annual available water is already allocated to municipal, industrial and agricultural users in these regions. (Source: Ceres)

 

New study shows that fracking boom is happening in places that can least afford to lose precious water supplies

Jon Queally, staff writer

The irony of fracking: It destroys the natural resource it needs most. The tragedy for those living nearby fracking operations: That natural resource is the fresh—and increasingly scarce—water supply on which they, too, depend.

And not only does fracking—or hydraulic fracturing—demand enormous amounts of fresh water no matter where it takes places, a troubling new study released Wednesday found that a majority of places where the controversial drilling technique is most prevalent are the same regions where less and less water is available.

Overlay the regions where most of the fracking is being done in North American with the places experiencing the most troubling and persistent water resource problems and the resulting picture becomes an alarm bell as politicians and the fossil fuel industry continue to push fracking expansion as the savior for the U.S. and Canada’s energy woes.

According to the report, Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Stress: Water Demand by the Numbers (pdf), produced by the non-profit Ceres investor network, much of the oil and gas fracking activity in both the U.S. and Canada is happening in “arid, water stressed regions, creating significant long-term water sourcing risks” that will strongly and negatively impact the local ecosystem, communities, and people living nearby.

“Hydraulic fracturing is increasing competitive pressures for water in some of the country’s most water-stressed and drought-ridden regions,” said Ceres President Mindy Lubber, in announcing Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Stress: Water Demand by the Numbers. “Barring stiffer water-use regulations and improved on-the-ground practices, the industry’s water needs in many regions are on a collision course with other water users, especially agriculture and municipal water use.”

Richard Heinberg, senior fellow of the California-based Post Carbon Institute and author of a recent book on the “false promise” of the fracking industry, says the irony of the study’s findings “would be delicious if it weren’t so terrifying.”

“Nationally,” according to Heinberg, “only about 50 percent of fracking wastewater is recycled. Billions of gallons of freshwater are still taken from rivers, streams, and wells annually for this purpose, and—after being irremediably polluted—this water usually ends up being injected into deep disposal wells. That means it is no longer available to the hydrological cycle that sustains all terrestrial life.”

Click here to look at Ceres’ interactive map on fracking and water use.

The study drew on industry data detailing water usage from from 39,294 oil and gas wells from January 2011 through May 2013 and compared that information with “water stress indicator maps” developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI).

What it found:

Over 55 percent of the wells hydraulically fractured were in areas experiencing drought and 36 percent overlay regions with significant groundwater depletion – key among those, California which is in the midst of a historic drought and Texas, which has the highest concentration of shale energy development and hydraulic fracturing activity in the U.S.

Specifically:

In Texas, which includes the rapidly developing Eagle Ford and Permian Basin shale plays, more than half (52 percent) of the wells were in high or extreme high water stress areas. In Colorado and California, 97 and 96 percent of the wells, respectively, were in regions with high or extremely high water stress. Nearly comparable trends were also shown in New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Among hundreds of hydraulic fracturing companies whose water use was evaluated, those with the highest exposure to water sourcing risk are Anadarako (APC), Encana (ECA), Pioneer (PXD) and Apache (APA). Most of the wells being developed by each of these companies are in regions of high or extreme water stress. The top three service providers, Halliburton, (HAL) Schlumberger (SLB) and Baker Hughes (BHI), handled about half of the water used for hydraulic fracturing nationally and also face water sourcing risks.

Although water use for hydraulic fracturing is often less than two percent of state water demands, the impacts can be large at the local level, sometimes exceeding the water used by all of the residents in a county.

“It’s a wake-up call,” Professor James Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine, told the Guardian. “We understand as a country that we need more energy but it is time to have a conversation about what impacts there are, and do our best to try to minimise any damage.”

The irony of the latest findings, explained Heinberg in an email to Common Dreams, is based on the fact that “much of the fracking boom is centered in the western United States—Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and California—which just happens to be drying up, likely as a result of climate change. And that climate change, in turn, is happening because we’re burning fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.”

Heinberg observed that the Ceres report is largely written from the standpoint of the oil and gas companies—using much of their data—and directed at those who may be invested or would like to invest in the continuation or proliferation of the industry. However, he indicated, detailing the increasing difficulties the industry and its investors are likely to experience in sourcing water for their operations is still valuable for those opposed to fracking.

“In California, where I live,” he said, “we’re experiencing a 500-year drought. The grape-wine industry here in Sonoma County is facing disaster. Farmers in the Central Valley are weighing whether to plant at all this year. The fact that California’s Democratic governor [Jerry Brown] wants to spend what little water we have on fracking—which will only make our climate problems worse—makes the report frighteningly relevant.”

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