The Opening Of A Closed Area

In February of 2013, I made a post in regards to some land, known as the Administrative Pastures.

Click on PASTURE, to read it.

Within the above post, there is also a link to a post that Matt Dillion from the Pryor Mountain Mustang Center did on this land back in 2009.  I encourage you to read both of these posts.

And so, finally, part of the pasture is open to the horses.  While the forage is not great (it a sparse desert area ), it still adds more forage for the horses to use, especially in the winter months when every little piece of forage counts.  The remainder of the pasture will be open soon.  Thank you Jim Sparks  and all others involved for making this happen.  Here is the official information that I received from Jim Sparks, BLM Billings:

“Adding the admin pastures back into the herd management area was one
of the decisions in the 2015 Resource Management Plan. Although part
of the herd area, those pastures were not part of the herd management
area. They were used when we used to gather horses at Britton Springs
and for other extra reasons which I am not entirely sure of. At any
rate there was no reason to not include them in the HMA so we did.

Right now, the horses can only access the area from Britton Springs to
the northwest. After we ensure that nothing can get out on the
southeast side we will open the area from Britton Springs to the
southeast.

About 2 miles of fence has been removed, and that nwest of BS area is about a section (600 or so acres) that was opened up.  The southeast of BS area will open about 2000 acres up.

There is not much forage in the pastures, surely not enough to consider increasing herd size.

Ryan, Blair and Jerad Werning did most of the work from BLM, but had a lot of assistance from Montana Conservation Corps and our BLM veteran firefighting hand crew. The old materials were carried by hand to central spots that could be accessed by UTV.  It took a long time.”

This is great news for the horses, and also a great example of how those involved with the horses can make good things happen.  I am very grateful for the Billings, Montana Blm, and their willingness to work with all of us. Thank you again.

Sandy