WINNEMUCCA — The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Winnemucca District, Black Rock Field Office, began the Calico Complex Wild Horse gather today. The Calico Complex includes five wild horse herd management areas (HMAs) in northwestern Nevada in Washoe and Humboldt counties. The gather plan is to start at the Black Rock Range East HMA to gather and remove about 250 excess wild horses and then move to the next HMA. The capture sites on the first HMA will be on private land where, in 2004, the BLM also set up to conduct a wild horse gather. As the gather progresses the capture sites will be moved.
The BLM plans to keep 600 to 900 wild horses in the Calico Complex. To reach that number, the BLM will need to remove about 2,500 excess wild horses from the Complex. The five HMAs that comprise the Calico Mountains Complex include Black Rock Range East, Black Rock Range West, Calico Mountains, Granite Range, and Warm Springs Canyon. The gather is expected to continue into late February or early March 2010.
Parts of the gather, including the initial couple of weeks, are occurring on private land because these are the areas closest to the horses and the only way to access the horses. The BLM is coordinating with private landowners to arrange possible times for the public to attend the gather escorted by BLM. Additionally, the BLM will inform the public through its website when it will move trap sites onto public lands so the public may view the gather.
Plans for where trap sites will be located throughout the gather are somewhat flexible due to weather conditions and the ability to gather the horses.
