By David Peck
Officials from the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center made their pitch for an expanded wild horse range during a public scoping meeting for the Bureau of Land Management Billings Field Office Resource Management Plan Monday night.
The open house was held at the Cal S. Taggart/Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area Visitor Center just east of Lovell. The BLM was seeking comments on the Billings Field Office RMP, as well as the Pompey’s Pillar National Monument RMP.
RMP Team Leader Kim Prill explained that the BLM is taking comments as part of a process to write a new plan, noting that the BLM has been working off of a plan written in 1984.
“With the RMP we’re looking at the landscape as a whole,” Prill said. “We’re looking at general land uses and allocations and asking what the landscape should look like 25 years from now…It’s bigger picture thinking from a management framework.”
Prill said the BLM would like to have comments by Aug. 22 but will continue to take comments throughout the process, which should wrap up by the end of 2012.
Preliminary planning issues the BLM would like public comment on include vegetative management, wildlife and fisheries management, special status species, travel management and access, special management area designations, recreation management and commercial uses like energy development, livestock grazing, forest products, rights of way and land use authorization, locatable and saleable minerals and commercial special recreation permits.
Range extension
Matt Dillon said the main thrust of the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center in the RMP process is restoring the boundary of the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range to its 1974-84 boundary. A 4,000-acre strip of land on the south end of the range adjacent to the Crooked Creek Road and known as the Administrative Pastures was included in the range for a 10-year period but was removed in 1984 when the Sorenson Extension at the northeast end of the range was added.
When the Sorensen Extension was closed in 1990, the Administrative Pastures were not added back in, Dillon said.
“It’s technically part of the  horse range, but it’s not able to be used for horses,” Dillon said. “It’s just a matter of taking down a few fences. It would make good winter range, which is a needed component of the range.”
PMWMC President John Nickle, who attended Monday’s meeting, as well, said he is also interested in seeing that the Burnt Timber and Sykes Ridge roads stay open. Years ago, he said, the roads were purposely not included in the Pryor Mountain Wilderness Study Area so that they could remain open.
As for the range expansion, Nickle said there is some opinion that the only way to expand the range is through congressional action, but he said he believes that the range can also be expanded through administrative acts, as was done when the range was expanded in 1974.
For more information on the RMP process, check the Web site www.blm.gov/mt/st/en/fo/billings_field_office.html.