By Nicole Pollack, Casper Star Tribune
October 18, 2021
Nearly two weeks into a wild horse roundup that will continue for months, the Bureau of Land Management has gathered a tiny fraction of the animals it plans to remove from Wyoming public lands.
Of the roughly 4,300 horses the BLM expects to capture, approximately 3,500 will not be returned to the range. The agency began operations on Oct. 7 and had gathered 285 — 138 mares, 63 foals and 84 stallions — as of Sunday. Four fatalities were recorded during that period.
“The gather is being conducted to address the overpopulation on the HMAs, prevent deterioration of the rangeland due to the overpopulation, remove horses from private lands and areas not designated for their long-term use, and comply with the 2013 Consent Decree between the Rock Springs Grazing Association and the BLM,” the agency said in a Sept. statement.
That 2013 agreement emerged following a federal lawsuit, filed in 2011 by the Rock Springs Grazing Association, that attempted to force the BLM to remove wild horses from private land adjoining federal herd management areas. The BLM’s Rock Springs Field Office sits within a largely unfenced “checkerboard” of alternating federally-owned public lands and private lands owned, in part, by the grazing association.
And while ranchers want the BLM to remove the state’s wild horses, which compete with cattle and sheep for food, wild horse advocacy groups want the agency to expand protections and allow for larger horse populations. Often, neither side ends up fully satisfied.
“From the local community to the ranchers, everybody gets frustrated with the BLM,” said Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Campaign.
The agency agreed in 2013 to “remove all wild horses located on RSGA’s private lands, including Wyoming Checkerboard lands, with the exception of those wild horses found within the White Mountain Herd Management Area.” But the mixture of public and private land ownership complicates management efforts.
Under the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, the BLM is required to maintain wild horse populations at or above the minimums set for each herd management area. It reserves the discretion to decide whether to remove horses that exceed those minimums.
At least 1,550–2,165 horses must be permitted to live within the five herd management areas where the agency is currently gathering horses, including 251–365 in Salt Wells Creek, 415–600 in Divide Basin, 610–800 in Adobe Town, 205–300 in White Mountain and 69–100 in Little Colorado.
The 2013 consent decree also required that the Rock Springs and Rawlins field offices propose a number of changes to their resource management plans, including reducing population minimums to zero in the Salt Wells Creek and Divide Basin management areas, lowering the minimum in Adobe Town by nearly half and preventing reproduction in the White Mountain area.
Last January, the Rock Springs and Rawlins field offices issued a draft amendment and environmental impact statement that would revise their existing management requirements in accordance with the 2013 agreement. The revisions have not yet been approved, and the American Wild Horse Campaign expects to push back if they are.
The group has repeatedly challenged attempts by the BLM to reduce horse populations in the region, including in 2014, when it sued over an attempt to remove wild horses from both public and private lands following a landowner request. A federal appeals court later sided with the campaign, ruling that the agency’s solution, in which it treated public lands as private lands, violated the 1971 law.
“It’s our contention that they don’t have the legal right to eradicate these herds, and that they need to look at solutions for improving the management of horses,” Roy said.
The BLM already has the authority under the field offices’ existing management plans to adopt the 3,500 permanently removed horses to private owners. But at least until the amendments are finalized, it can’t legally reduce populations below the current minimums.
