Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Baby, it’s hot out there.

The mercury hit at least 100 degrees Tuesday in Disappointment Valley. Might be hotter today.

But we don’t shirk our duties when it comes to assessing the health of our range – which directly affects the health of our mustangs – in Spring Creek Basin. 🙂

Don’t let the long sleeves fool you. This was our last site of the day, and it was toasty out there. We were glad for every bit of brief cloud cover that came our way. On the right is our excellent herd manager, Mike Jensen (rangeland management specialist), and on the left is wildlife biologist Nate West, both with Tres Rios Field Office. In the background, of course, are McKenna Peak and Temple Butte.

Here, Mike and Nate – and our range tech, Justin Hunt – are checking examples of particular things that we were looking for, depending on what kind of site we were assessing – here, “basin shale.”

At each of the five sites we did (we have more to do), we completed a 17-point checklist to assess such things as “presence of water flow patterns,” “bare ground,” “amount of litter movement,” “effect of plant community composition and spatial distribution on infiltration and runoff,” “functional/structural groups” (what kinds of plants – annual/perennial grasses, shrubs, forbs – we should expect to find), “expected annual production” (which we are supporting with actual vegetation monitoring studies) and “potential invasive (including noxious) species (native and nonnative).” Each site has a list of expected standards that we should find according to soil types, including “basin shale,” “clayey salt desert” and “salt flats.”

Pretty fascinating, really! For the most part, my civilian observation is that our range is pretty healthy in Spring Creek Basin.

Our mustangs do seem to support that assessment. 🙂

Thanks to Mike, Justin and Nate for trekking to the basin on the hottest days of the year to perform these assessments that positively affect the good management of our mustangs!