Antelope Triple B Ten-Year Plan: A Legal Challenge

February 5, 2018

AWHC Contributor

February 6, 2018 - The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign) and photographer Kimerlee Curyl have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Nevada. They challenge the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) ten-year plan to round up and remove nearly 10,000 federally-protected wild horses from the Antelope and Triple B Herd Management Area (HMA) complexes in southeastern Nevada. The plan includes castrating stallions and using an unproven birth control vaccine on mares.

AWHC and Curyl argue that the BLM must prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) due to the scope and scientific controversy surrounding these management decisions. The proposed gelding and use of the fertility drug GonaCon may impair the wild horses’ natural behaviors and disrupt the social organization of the herds.

The BLM intends to reduce the breeding population of wild horses in both complexes to near extinction levels—227 in Antelope and 272 in Triple B—by gelding 50% of the returned stallions, skewing the sex ratio to 60% male/40% female, and treating all returned mares with fertility control, either PZP or GonaCon. The National Academy of Sciences has stated that GonaCon requires further research before implementation on wild horse herds.

“This is the quintessential agency action that cries out for an Environmental Impact Statement,” said attorney Katherine Meyer of Meyer, Glitzenstein and Eubanks, representing AWHC and Curyl. “There is no question that an EIS is required.”

Last week, the BLM began implementing the plan by rounding up 900 wild horses from the Triple B Complex. Each horse removed faces the risk of being killed if Congress approves BLM’s request to destroy or sell for slaughter tens of thousands of wild horses in holding facilities and on the range. A significant majority of Americans, including 83% of Trump voters and 77% of Clinton voters, oppose the BLM’s lethal plan.

“With the pending roundup of 8,000 additional wild horses from these complexes over the next several years, and the castration of wild stallions and use of an unproven birth control vaccine on the line, it’s important to take a stand now,” said Suzanne Roy, Executive Director of the American Wild Horse Conservation. “BLM must not be given carte blanche to implement a ten-year plan that will destroy these unique, federally-protected wild horse populations.”

Photographer Kimerlee Curyl stated, “The wild horses of the Antelope and Triple B Complexes in Nevada are a magnificent natural resource and historic symbol of the wild West. Our government should be protecting and nurturing these incredible national treasures, not destroying them with a ten-year plan that will reduce their population to extinction levels.”