Arguments Set for Monday in Wyoming Wild Horse Roundup Case

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Arguments in a federal lawsuit contesting the roundup of hundreds of wild horses in western Wyoming last fall will focus on a federal law that carries different rules for private and federal land.

The 1,263 horses gathered in late September and early October roamed both types of land in a vast area of sagebrush desert featuring square-mile sections of private land interspersed with equal-sized sections of federal land.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal will consider Monday whether the U.S. Bureau of Land Management violated the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act with the roundup in the Checkerboard area east and south of Rock Springs.

The act requires the BLM to maintain sustainable populations of wild horses on public land and to round up wild horses from private land when a landowner requests it.

The problem is few fences separate the Checkerboard’s public and private lands. Wild horses — descendants of domestic horses that have run loose since the days of the Spanish explorers — crisscross the public-private land boundaries at will.

The BLM went ahead with last year’s roundup after the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block it at the request of wild horse advocates.

The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation) and others continue to press a lawsuit they filed last summer against Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. They claim the roundup violated several federal laws.

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