Adopt a wild horse event set in Ohio

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — The Bureau of Land Management is holding a wild horse and burro placement event Aug. 11-12 at the Ohio Horse Park, 400 Bobcat Lane, Franklin Furnace, Ohio.

The event will offer for adoption about 30 excess animals gathered from western rangelands. Adoptions and sales will be held by appointment only from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. CDT Aug. 11, and from 8 a.m.-1 p.m. CDT Aug. 12. On both days, placements will occur in one-hour increments (five appointments per hour).

Appointments can be made via email at BLM_ES_NSDO_WHB@ blm.gov. The BLM requests all potential buyers and adopters to disclose their top three preferred time slots when making appointments.

The BLM’s Adoption Incentive Program was designed to help improve rangeland health in overpopulated herd management areas in the western states and to save taxpayer costs for animals held at off-range holding facilities. Through this program, qualified adopters are eligible to receive $1,000 after one year of issuance of the certificate of title for an untrained wild horse or burro. The incentive is available for all untrained animals eligible for adoption with an adoption fee of $125 per animal.

Animals that are over 10 years old or younger animals who were unsuccessfully adopted out to new homes three times may be sold. BLM staff will be available to identify these animals to interested, qualified buyers. Purchasers will receive immediate ownership of the animals.

Applicants to adopt must be at least 18 years old; provide a facility with access to feed, water and shelter; and have a stock or horse trailer with a rear swing gate and covered top. The basic facility requirements are a minimum of 400 square feet of corral spaces per animal for untrained animals with suitable fencing as laid out in the program guidelines. To learn more about BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro program, visit https://www.blm.gov/whb.

fessor of agricultural and biological engineering.

Questions have emerged about existing buffers’ capabilities, she said. In a recent survey of 52 buffers at long-term agricultural research sites, 27 were underperforming by as much as 78%, damaged by breaches called concentrated flow pathways. These torrents of varying intensity undermine buffers’ integrity by “short circuiting” them, essentially enabling surface runoff to enter streams untreated.

Such short-circuiting can render the potential pollution-mitigation properties of buffers ineffective in the most extreme cases.

“If we’re going to put such a large portion of our eggs into the buffers basket, then we want to make sure that they are performing the way we need them to,” Preisendanz said.

“Pennsylvania is relying on forested buffers to meet 49% of its phosphorus-reduction goals and 16% of its nitrogen-reduction goals. If buffers underperform, then Pennsylvania and other states that use them as an integral component of watershed management plans will struggle to achieve load-reduction goals. We definitely need to understand how to make buffers as effective as possible to meet these goals.”

Grant project. Funded by a threeyear, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Preisendanz and colleagues in the College of Agricultural Sciences will evaluate the role that concentrated flow pathways play in undermining the ability of riparian buffers to mitigate excess nutrients, sediments and pesticides. The researchers will also develop solutions for restoring and maintaining buffer integrity.

The study will include both field studies and computer modeling. The team selected two small stream basins that are heavily influenced by agriculture as case study watersheds. They will measure and analyze riparian buffer performance in the headwaters of Mahantango Creek in Dauphin County and in the Halfmoon Creek watershed in Centre County. Both streams are impaired due to agricultural sources of sediment.

Modeling will include new, innovative methods of measuring the volume, intensity and path of runoff using modern GIS tools and drone image mapping. The researchers will evaluate runoff for nutrient, sediment, pesticides and chemicals of environmental concern, determining the extent to which “hot spots” for nutrients and pesticides overlap with concentrated flow pathways drainage areas.

“This will allow the team to identify the most vulnerable locations in the watersheds and offer appropriate solutions for minimizing the impact of these ‘hot spots’ on water quality,” Preisendanz said.

Finally, the researchers plan to conduct farmer surveys to evaluate the willingness of farmers to adopt runoff-control technologies and develop a coupled water quality and socioeconomic model that can inform watershed-scale decision-making regarding adoption of new riparian buffers.

Results of the field-based studies will be used to develop and validate computer-based toolkits that can predict the occurrence of concentrated flow pathways, Preisendanz pointed out. “Overall, the results of this project will provide the data and tools needed to restore and maintain buffer integrity,” she said.

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