Outdoor Notes : Group Is Seeking to Save 10,000 Wild Horses

The National Wild Horse & Range System, a nonprofit group trying to prevent the destruction of about 10,000 wild horses confined to federal feedlot corrals, has proposed that the animals be placed on some of the millions of acres of privately held rangeland now empty of livestock.

The group, based in Barrington, Ill., has submitted its proposal to Robert F. Burford, director of the Bureau of Land Management. The NWH&RS; maintains that such a move would enable the mustangs to live out their lives in quality surroundings, and would cut by half the government’s cost of maintaining them, estimated at $2.39 a day per horse.

Only those horses too old to be successfully placed by the BLM’s Adopt A Horse program are involved in the proposal.

The BLM has said it will destroy unplaced wild horses in its corrals.

A captive black-footed ferret has given birth to six babies, a development that could mark a turnaround in efforts to save what is possibly North America’s most-endangered mammal, Wyoming biologists said Wednesday.

The ferrets, born last weekend at Wyoming’s black-footed ferret captive breeding facility at Laramie, are about 1 1/2 inches long and weigh only a few grams.

The births were the result of a mating that occurred about 45 days ago, biologists said. About 18 ferrets, all members of the last colony known to have existed in the wild, are housed at the facility. They were all live-trapped and brought there from their wild habitat near Cody, Wyo.

Eight other females mated at about the same time as the female that gave birth last week, and biologists are jubilant over prospects.

“We don’t expect all nine to give birth,” said biologist Tom Thorne. “But we do believe we can double the world population of ferrets this spring.”

Black-footed ferrets, which feed exclusively on prairie dogs in the wild, once numbered in the hundreds of thousands on the North American plains, but went into a decline when ranchers began eliminating prairie dog populations through poisoning.

The Department of Fish and Game says applications for new bighorn sheep and mountain lion hunts will be shipped to license agents--sporting goods stores--in mid-June and must be submitted by August 14.

General hunting licenses and 1987-88 mammal hunting regulations booklets are also about to be shipped to agents, the DFG said.

Briefly

The National Marine Manufacturers Assn. says that American recreation boat manufacturers sold 660,000 new boats in 1986, up 24,000 from the 1985 total, and that Americans spent $14.5 billion on recreation boats and related products last year. . . . Wyoming biologists, in a four-year lake trout tagging program at Flaming Gorge Reservoir, have tagged 1,455 fish and report that most range from 19 to 26 inches, that 24% of them were longer than 30 inches, and that six weighed more than 30 pounds. . . . Redondo Sport Fishing’s off-shore fishing barge, the Isle of Redondo, will open June 19 for Wednesday-through-Saturday night fishing, 6 p.m.-4:30 a.m.

A blind bogey catfish derby at Puddingstone Reservoir in San Dimas will be held from 10 p.m. Saturday to 4:30 a.m. Sunday. . . . The Trailhead Shuttle Service has published its Western Sierra Hiking Guide, available for $9.95 at its office at 340 South Webster St., Independence, Calif., 93526. . . . Fishing in the McCloud River Preserve will be the theme of a slide presentation at next Thursday’s meeting of the Sierra Pacific Flyfishers at the Nob Hill Banquet Center in Van Nuys, starting at 6:30 p.m.. . . . Dave Rice, veteran lake trout fisherman, will present a two-hour lake fishing clinic at Tahoe’s Cave Rock State Park in Nevada June 28, starting at 2 p.m. . . . Application deadline for Nevada’s 1987 general buck or antlerless deer seasons is July 1.