Partnership | Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Congratulations!

2 12 2012

The Tres Rios Field Office in Dolores, Colo., has honored Pati and David Temple with an award that recognizes their dedication during the last 15 years to the mustangs of Spring Creek Basin.

In 1997, Pati and David joined the board of the newly formed Colorado chapter of the National Mustang Association. They have served continuously on the board since then.

Some major projects have been completed in Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area at Pati and David’s urging:

* The water catchment in the basin was funded by NMA/CO – about $18,000. Although there are several ponds and seeps/springs, the catchment provides the horses with the only clean water source in Spring Creek Basin (the others being, at the least, very salty because of the alkaline soil).

* About a decade ago, NMA/CO raised $40,000 to buy cattle AUMs from a rancher who held grazing rights in the basin and, after a five-year struggle, succeeded in retiring those AUMs. Not only that, a grazing EA was prompted, which reduced the remaining AUMs and changed the grazing season to dormant-season grazing only (Dec. 1 until Feb. 28). The National Mustang Association, based in Utah, was instrumental in finally accomplishing this goal.

* Because of Pati and David, magazine subscriptions, horsemanship training videos and countless pairs of boots have been donated by NMA/CO to the inmate training program at the Canon City prison facility, where BLM has a short-term holding facility.

* Pati and David have assisted with the removal of old fences and wire from within the basin as well as construction of new boundary fences and the repair and maintenance of fences.

* For close to a decade, San Juan Mountains Association has hosted University of Missouri students during alternative spring break, which has included projects in the basin. David is an arborist, and NMA/CO regularly has funded chemical spray (Garlon) for tamarisk removal. David (pictured below at right) also has volunteered his time and expertise to help with eradication efforts.

* Because of Pati’s single-minded determination and her refusal to give up on him, when Grey/Traveler was sent to Canon City at the end of the 2007 roundup, we got him back. Pati and David hosted him at their ranch for three weeks (quarantine) until he could be returned to Spring Creek Basin (pictured below). Long-time readers of this blog will know that he not only rebuilt a band, he has the largest band in the basin at the tender age of “aged,” as aged at the last (2011) roundup.

* Pati and David represent NMA/CO in our coalition advocacy group Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners. They bring to Wild Bunch – and BLM – all their historical knowledge of BLM management of Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, as well as modern visions that fit with our advocacy goals, which they use to encourage new projects to benefit the horses. With the previous herd manager, one project Pati and David suggested and we convinced BLM to undertake was digging out ponds to increase storage capacity. Some hadn’t been dug out since the 1980s. In 2009, two ponds were dug out. In 2010, three ponds were dug out. In 2012, three ponds were dug out. All but two ponds in the basin have been dug out, and at least one of those still is on the priority list to BE dug out. Currently, in a desperately dry year, all but three ponds have water. To further illustrate how impressive this is – how visionary – ranchers throughout the region are hauling water to their cattle because water sources on their grazing allotments are dry.

* Also as members of Wild Bunch, Pati and David are an integral part of the partnership with BLM that resulted in the Tres Rios Field Office being awarded $25,000 as part of the Director’s Challenge this year.

* NMA/CO always has championed the use of fertility control. In 2007, NMA/CO paid for five doses of PZP-22 to be administered to the released mares. In 2010, NMA/CO signed on to the proposal submitted to BLM for the implementation of a program to use native PZP in Spring Creek Basin to slow population growth and reduce the need for frequent roundups. Also in 2010, NMA/CO paid for my PZP training at the Science and Conservation Center in Billings, Mont. Then they paid for the darting rifle. When fertility control using native PZP was approved for the Spring Creek Basin herd ahead of the 2011 roundup, we were ready to volunteer.

* Pati and David have adopted several mustangs over many years (including those they’re riding in the photo of the plaque above). In 2011, they adopted yearling Rio (Grey/Traveler or Twister x Two Boots) and renamed him Sherwood, in honor of one of the founding members of NMA/CO. Pati is a genius at groundwork, and at 2 years old, Sherwood loads readily into a trailer and accepts a cinched saddle, among other things.

* In 2012, Hollywood and Piedra had a filly. She was named Temple in honor of Pati and David.

Pati and David are true mustang angels in every sense of the words. Their passion about and commitment to mustangs, particularly Spring Creek Basin mustangs, is legendary in our part of the world. Personally, I am grateful to Pati and David a million-fold for their support and friendship. Their work has laid the foundation for the excellent health of the herd today and into the future. This list hits just the highlights, but I hope it conveys how inspiring they are and should be to mustang advocates everywhere. In addition, they are two of the nicest, most generous people you’ll ever know.

The plaque reads: Presented to David and Pati Temple. Thank you for your many years of unselfish commitment and dedication to the Spring Creek Basin Wild Horses and the Herd Management Area. The support that you have provided to the BLM has been invaluable to the long-term goal of a sustainable and healthy herd area in Disappointment Valley. Without your devotion to the horses, advocacy, hard work and persistence, many maintenance, enhancement and fertility control projects would not have been accomplished. November 2012. Bureau of Land Management Tres Rios Field Office.

The photo on the plaque, taken by Durango photographer Claude Steelman and featured in his book Colorado’s Wild Horses, shows Pati on Bandolier and David on Concho, their Sulphur Springs mustangs.

With appreciation beyond words and always grateful for you both, thank you, Pati and David, for your generosity, commitment and passion. It is contagious and has infected us all! And thank you, Tres Rios, for honoring Pati and David for all they have done for our mustangs.

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Categories : Adoption, Advocacy, Director's Challenge, Disappointment Valley, Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners, Education, Fence work, Fertility control, Partnership, Ponds, PZP, PZP-22, Sherwood, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple, Water, Water catchment, Work projects

Giving Back Gang

1 12 2012

In Durango, Colo., is a wonderful local bookstore called Maria’s Bookshop.

Now living near Cortez, Colo., (west of Durango) is a wonderful author named Chuck Greaves.

In Southwest Colorado are wonderful nonprofit organizations dedicated to everything from helping people to helping the environment to helping mustangs.

Also in Southwest Colorado – the entire region – are wonderful authors who support the people, the environment and the creatures that call this place home.

On Dec. 7, Maria’s will host the Giving Back Gang holiday party from 6 to 8 p.m. at the shop, 960 Main Ave., right downtown.

From Maria’s website:

“Join us for a fun holiday event celebrating some of our most talented and generous local writers! Maria’s Bookshop will host The Giving Back Gang Holiday Party, a showcase of 18 authors who have each selected a local nonprofit organization to support by donating a share of the proceeds from the sale of their books between December 1st and 7th.

“Please join us for this festive event, which will provide an opportunity to meet the authors, talk with them about their work, and learn about the regional nonprofits they’re supporting. Holiday cookies will be provided by the authors, and the range of titles includes great gift ideas for everyone on your holiday shopping list.

Support local writers as they support local groups working to make our communities stronger and better!”

Now why do you suppose I singled out Chuck, one of those 18 authors?

Because proceeds from Chuck’s book Hard Twisted, a historical fictional account of an actual event (or, really, series of events) that took place in this region in the 1930s, have been designated to benefit the Colorado chapter of the National Mustang Association, which benefits our Spring Creek Basin herd!

Chuck and his wife, Lynda, are long-time supporters of the Spring Creek Basin herd, and Lynda is on our NMA/CO board. Chuck’s first published novel was Hush Money, a fantastic read about murder and lawyers and international show jumping (yes, horses!).

Read a review of Hard Twisted in The Durango Herald.

If you’re in Durango or Southwest Colorado, please consider stopping by Maria’s on Friday evening to meet Chuck and some of us from NMA/CO and buy Hard Twisted to benefit our mustangs!

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Categories : Advocacy, National Mustang Association/CO, Partnership, Spring Creek Basin mustangs

Die, thistle, die!

6 10 2012

To follow up from the knapweed spraying seen at the northwest pond, here are some pix of sprayed musk thistle at the east-pocket pond:

On the western edge of the pond.

On the south edge of the pond – and dying already! (Note the water.)

Dying musk thistle, full pond – what’s not to love?

Did I mention full pond? The east-pocket pond now is one of only two ponds in the basin that have not gotten dug out in recent years. It did go dry this year but rebounded (a couple of times) with rain. And the Sorrel Flats pond, which was dug out in 2010, is just to the south.

Thank you to the Forest Service and BLM for your continued partnership with Four Corners Back Country Horsemen and Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners in managing Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area to the best of its potential! It’s fantastic to come back and see the fruits of our labors – GPS’ing sites in the spring – come to fruition in the fall!

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Categories : Advocacy, Director's Challenge, Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners, Four Corners Back Country Horsemen, Partnership, Ponds, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Water, Work projects

Knapweed spraying

5 10 2012

For two days this week, a Forest Service crew directed by BLM has sprayed Russian knapweed around all the ponds in Spring Creek Basin. In May, Four Corners Back Country Horsemen members and guests GPS’d several sites (including ponds) of weed infestation to help BLM identify sites for future spraying. This is all part of the Director’s Challenge grant, which was awarded to the Tres Rios Field Office based on its affiliation with Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners.

We happened to catch G, with the Forest Service, leaving the basin after his second day of spraying and got the scoop.

After visiting with Duke and Kreacher in the northwest “meadow,” we surveyed the northwest pond and spraying activity.

This was a fitting day to get the news about weed spraying; Pat Amthor, who, with her husband, Frank, has honcho’d 13 years worth of wild horse counts in Spring Creek Basin with Four Corners Back Country Horsemen, was visiting. From our vantage with the boys, it was Pat who spied water in the pond.

The vegetation around the pond is the particularly nasty Russian knapweed, noted in a previous post about the pond and it being dug out this summer (also with Director’s Challenge funds). If the green looks a little unnatural, that’s OK – that’s the chemical spray.

Note: Russian knapweed is toxic to horses if ingested in great enough quantity. The good thing is that horses rarely eat it if other forage is available. And we have plenty of other forage available, especially this year.

As we continued around the basin, we did note that all the ponds we saw showed signs of having been sprayed. Yay!

As a side note, we ended up seeing every single horse in Spring Creek Basin, including – again – the elusive Mr. Poco.

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Categories : Advocacy, Director's Challenge, Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners, Four Corners Back Country Horsemen, Partnership, Ponds, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Water, Work projects

Sister, brother

13 09 2012

Always handsome, this pair.

Skywalker with big sister Mysterium.

This band has been relatively elusive lately; this photo is from late August. I last saw them last week, way up high above the northwest valley toward Klondike Basin. A couple of Forest Service folks – H and W – brought Pinch and Jammer and Traveler (!), and we rode some fence and fixed some fence. It was a great couple of days, and the mustangs are safer because of it!

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Categories : Advocacy, Fence work, Mysterium, Partnership, Skywalker, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Work projects

Not-so-big dig

18 07 2012

The Big Dig, it ain’t. But I’m still excited about it!

It represents potentially more water for the horses and increased grazing in an area the horses don’t use a lot because there’s not often water there. And it represents BLM keeping our mustangs’ welfare a priority, especially in this hot and dry year.

We went from this:

To this today:

It’s not done yet! This is looking from the “spillway” across the pond to the west – the same perspective as the photo above. Many thanks to C and J from the Forest Service who are honchoin’g the project and doing the dirt work!

C and J discussing the finer points of pond clean-out. C also was involved in coordinating the contractor hired to dig out the Round Top pond and the one double pond in 2009.

This is what I call simply the northwest pond, it being in the northwestern corner of Spring Creek Basin. This is looking southeastish across the basin. In the middle ground, you can see the twin buttes and part of Flat Top. Just left of the juniper tree in the foreground is the spillway from which I took the first two pix.

J pushing dirt.

There are basically two drainages that feed this pond, and he’s cleaning out in front of the smaller one, which you can see in front of the dozer. The other one is behind him, out of the picture.

Work should be finished on this pond tomorrow! I’ll post another pic or more later.

Also scheduled for dig-out is – at least – the trapsite pond, which is above Spring Creek Canyon (site of previous roundups). The roadside pond, which was about half dug out in 2010 (because it rained before it was completed), will get dug out if there’s time and/or it dries out more. The dirt of that pond, which went dry a month or so ago, is still damp about 4 inches down where the water dried up last. The Flat Top pond, which has been our priority to dig out since 2009, ends up holding some water when the monsoons kick in again. We’ll try to move that up to a June time-frame for next year; if the roadside pond doesn’t get dug out this year, there’s next year.

Director’s Challenge funds, awarded because of the Tres Rios Field Office’s partnership with Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners, are paying for this work!

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Categories : Advocacy, Director's Challenge, Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners, Partnership, Ponds, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Water, Work projects

Looking for – and finding – water

28 06 2012

FS range guy HP and I did some more riding to GPS water seeps in some of the main arroyos, trying to get an idea of water availability for the horses. There is good news to report: Three ponds still have water – though one is much shallower than a week ago. And we have GPS’d at least half a dozen places where water seeps up or percolates down in various arroyos across the basin. The horses continue to be in good condition.

Pix of our pony partners:

Fox trotter Pinch and HP.

HP’s other fox trotter Jammer, my partner for the trek.

Handsome and smart and willing! These guys went everywhere they were pointed. I think the only time Jammer’s pointy ears were less than full forward was during our lunch stop! HP wrangles and rides Forest Service horses in the course of his duties, too, but Pinch and Jammer belong to HP.

These with my cell phone (so I didn’t have to carry my big camera). Sorry about the quality!

HP riding Pinch near the weeping wall. The white is salt from the alkaline soil. Almost everywhere there’s water, there’s salt in abundance. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much salt coming to the surface of the ground. We found water in an eighth- to a quarter-mile stretch through this arroyo. Clearly getting active horse traffic.

Jammer, left, helps HP and Pinch check out the old guzzler. It’s dead dry. We’re not sure why. (Note the shade of cloud cover – ahhh!)

Jammer drinks from water in a tire tank near a natural seep. The first time I found this area, a few years ago, the tire was full of water and the seep was producing water. Every visit since then, the tire has been dry. Now, the seep is nearly dry, but the tire is full and trickling over. Hmmmm??

Thanks again to HP for his work and horses! And thanks to BLM’s Tres Rios Field Office management and our herd manager, Kiley Whited, who is spearheading these projects!

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Categories : Advocacy, Partnership, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Water, Work projects

Tackling the trickle

28 06 2012

Clouds = relief.

If it’s not too much to ask … some rain??

At last count, there were 23 wildfires burning in Southwest Colorado (this doesn’t include the fires elsewhere in Colorado). It is supremely, horribly dry. Please be careful, no matter where you are! And please send positive thoughts and prayers to the firefighters and people evacuated from their homes as well as those who have lost their homes (none that I know of in SW Colorado).

Forest Service range guy HP was back in the basin this week to honcho the task at “the trickle,” an overflow pipe at an existing well that apparently used to support a drinking trough. We didn’t quite get accomplished our original goal, which was to dig down and install a drinking trough that would be filled by water from the trickle (just too rocky for shovels). But we did get the water flowing through a hose to fill the existing little pool, which we then dammed to try to hold better water there.

This is the end of the source pipe after we pried off the end-cap filter, which, because of mud and silt, was acting as a solid cap. There’s also mud backed up inside the pipe, and we’ve been playing in the mud to clear as much of it as we can reach, so yes, it looks pretty black and yucky.

The filter that had capped the source pipe. The pipe had been broken above where this fit inside, and the littlest trickle of water was flowing out (hence the name). Despite the poor quality and low quantity, the horses drink here, so we’re trying to make it better.

The water flowed downhill, caught in that little pool at the base of the tamarisk, then flowed on around and down until it just ran out. The light-colored dirt at lower left is what we gathered to pack in around a plastic hose/pipe that we inserted into the source pipe, wedged with rocks and then packed with sand/clay/mud to force the water into the hose to run downhill. The line of rocks covers the hose from hoof traffic, and I’ll keep an eye on it until we can come up with another solution.

The end of the hose, with clear water continuing to trickle out. The water has been tested in the past, and although it’s salty, the horses clearly take advantage of it. (And all the water in the basin – except at the water catchment – is salty because of the alkaline soil.) We’re hoping this mucky little pool will clear up a bit and offer the horses a better source of water.

Apparently, some years in the past, the well fed a drinking trough that has since been removed for unknown reasons. That’s what we’re trying to restore.

Many thanks to HP of the Forest Service in Dolores, who supplied tools, muscle and know-how! He’s using his tamp bar to pry up rocks below the source pipe. The original well is up the hill behind him and the tamarisk you see in the background. Even though someone decided tamarisk is now OK, as it’s habitat for birds, we’re still on a mission to remove as much as we can from the basin, especially near water sources – which is exactly where it likes to grow.

Yours truly, captured by HP, who stole my camera to take this shot. 🙂 I’m shoveling mud into a little dam we made with rocks to hold the water in this little pool. (Note another tamarisk that needs to go bye-bye.) The trickle hose comes out at lower right. The trough we’d hoped to install is behind me.

To come: some poor-quality cellphone pix from riding the arroyos to GPS water seeps. We made some interesting discoveries. While there’s not a lot of water, there IS water, and the horses continue to be in excellent condition.

Rain dances encouraged and welcome.

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Categories : Advocacy, Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners, Partnership, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Water, Work projects

Water delivery, part 2

18 06 2012

Today was the second delivery of water to the catchment – and this time, it went directly into the storage tank.

Cecil Foster of Foster’s Water prepares to carry his water hose up his ladder to pump water into the tank.

Cecil at the top of the ladder.

A closer look at the drinking troughs.

View at the top: the water hose inside the hatch on top of the storage tank. See the glitter? That’s the water! The tank is now nearly full!

I should have taken pix of Chrome’s band on our way in; they were right off the road. They had moved away by the time we headed out. But close enough to take advantage of this good water.

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Categories : Advocacy, Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners, Partnership, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Water, Water catchment, Work projects

Piece of the pie

22 03 2012

“Nearly $US300,000 in funding has been approved by the Bureau of Land Management for 12 projects aimed at improving Western rangeland conditions where wild horses and burros roam.”

“* Tres Rios Field Office, Southwest District, Colorado, Spring Creek Basin HMA: This project is aimed at expanding the ongoing successful partnership with the Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners to include such actions as herd monitoring, fence repairs, invasive weed inventory and treatments, illegal route closures, and travel management sign installation. Funding amount from the Director’s Challenge: $25,000”

The Grand Junction Field Office also was awarded $25,000 for ongoing partnership with Friends of the Mustangs for the Little Book Cliffs herd. Congratulations!!

Spring Creek Basin Mustangs