Devil's Garden: Follow the Money Behind Wild Horse Roundups

Devil's Garden wild horse roundups have become a significant source of income for the Modoc County economy, driven by federal funding and local initiatives. This article explores the financial intricacies behind these operations, shedding light on the roles of various stakeholders and the impact on wild horse management.

Rounding up and removing Devil’s Garden horses and warehousing them in holding corrals is a lucrative source of income for the Modoc County economy. The endless supply of mostly federal money appears to have begun in 2011 and continued at least into 2017. Admittedly, it’s a tangled and not very transparent web.

According to repeated statements by Mr. Curtis, who is a board member on the Modoc County Farm Bureau and the Modoc County Natural Resource Analyst, because the Modoc National Forest lacked the funds and resources to carry out a management program for wild horses, the local community needed to step up to provide both.

And it did – mostly by the Modoc County Farm Bureau employing retired federal and state employees for its Retired Workers Program. Ultimately, these employees would take control of every phase in the development of the Environmental Assessment (EA) of the 2013 Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Management Plan, including setting the arbitrarily low AML of 206-402 horses and not authorizing the use of fertility control until that AML has been reached.

The majority of funding for the plan was Resource Advisory Committee (RAC) money secured through the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, a federal program that compensates rural counties for declining payments due to reduced logging on USFS lands. Funding was also supplemented by the Modoc County Farm Bureau, Modoc County, the Modoc County Cattlemen Association, and ranchers with grazing permits on the Territory.

Funding Breakdown

• In June 2011, Mr. Curtis successfully lobbied the Modoc County Board of Supervisors to fast-track $50,000 in RAC money to 1) begin a Retired Workers Program Pilot Project that would employ retired federal and state workers to begin data collection and environmental documentation for the wild horse roundup and removal ($10,000) and 2) contract for a wild horse and burro specialist to develop the 2013 EA and conduct an aerial census of wild horses inside and outside the Territory ($40,000).

• During the summer of 2011, the focus of the Retired Workers Program was “to collect monitoring data necessary to allow the Forest to make a determination of excess wild horses within the Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory, and to validate the appropriate management level.” The Modoc County Farm Bureau oversaw all the work.

• The Modoc County Cattlemen’s Association also contributed $10,000 for the wild horse and burro specialist and aerial census, and one of the wild horses and burro specialist hired was Susan Stokke, Mr. Curtis’ wife at the time. Ms. Stokke is a former BLM employee who was the subject of several KLAS-TV, Channel 8 I-Team reports for her abysmal record, including low adoption and high removal rates of wild horses, as Nevada’s Wild Horse & Burro Lead.

• From a partial set of records provided by the Modoc National Forest, it appears that the Retired Workers Program received $35,000 in 2011, $65,000 in 2012, and $20,000 in 2013 in RAC funding. To determine how much of this money was designated for wild horse projects, AWHC was directed by the USFS to contact Mr. Curtis. We have done so, but have yet to receive a response.

• Between 2012 and 2016, 990s filed by the Modoc County Farm Bureau show that it distributed $368,631 “to hire federal retired employees and employees to go into the field with GPS cameras to record data on wild horses and the impacts they are making on allotments.” While some of this money most likely came from the RAC funding mentioned above, the source of the rest of it is unclear.

• In 2017, the Modoc County Farm Bureau received a boost in RAC funding -- $141,075 to supplement the Retired Workers Program so that employees could “continue to do work such as monitoring required by the Wild Horse Territory Plan, collect data necessary for grazing permit renewals, write NEPA documents and other critical tasks as determined by the Forest and the applicant” from 2017 to 2019.

• Also in 2017, the USDA awarded the Modoc County Farm Bureau a four-year $501,396 contract for “Devils Garden Wild Horse Management.”

In an 11/20/2018 email, Amanda McAdams, Forest Supervisor for the Modoc National Forest, wrote, “The agreement with the Farm Bureau was to help construct and provide for supplies and management of the facility due to the FS inability to obligate funds late in our fiscal year.”

This agreement also placed Ms. Snell, the University of California Cooperative Extension Agent for Modoc County, in charge of hiring and supervising staff at the Modoc corrals. Ms. Snell has no experience handling, managing, or caring for wild horses, and the decision to put her in charge of the corrals has led to serious animal welfare concerns.

Through this arrangement, the USFS has ceded control to the Farm Bureau to such an extent that the USFS needed Mr. Curtis’ approval to pay for the transport of captured Devil’s Garden horses held at the Modoc corrals to a rescue in Colorado!