Beaver County and Horse Advocates Sue BLM Over Utah's Wild Horses
In a significant legal development, Beaver County has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) concerning the management of wild horses in Utah's West Desert. The lawsuit highlights the ongoing conflict between horse advocates and local authorities over the appropriate management levels of wild horse populations.
Wranglers for the BLM completed a roundup of 655 wild horses from Utah's West Desert in late January. However, the agency's decision to return dozens of these horses to the range has prompted legal action from Beaver County.
In the suit filed in U.S. District Court, the county's lawyers allege that the BLM is neglecting its legal duty under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 to maintain horse populations below certain thresholds, known as "appropriate management levels" (AMLs). This neglect is reportedly degrading the range and displacing livestock.
The failure to control horse numbers "has caused serious damage to public and private rangeland, created a threat to the health and safety of the public and the wild horses, and resulted in significant economic harm to Beaver County," stated the county's lawyer, Jeffrey Bramble.
The county seeks a court order to remove "all excess" horses, arguing that the BLM's plan could result in up to $1.1 million in "opportunity costs" to the local economy. The depletion of forage and water by the extra horses "infringes upon the rights of Beaver County citizens who hold grazing permits and leases," the suit claims.
The BLM declined to comment on the litigation, citing a lack of corral space and funding to accommodate the number of horses that Beaver and other rural Utah counties want removed from the range. The government is reluctant to euthanize healthy horses, and there are insufficient adoption opportunities, leading to many horses being warehoused in contract corrals.
Recognizing the unsustainable nature of the situation, the BLM is experimenting with fertility control as a new approach, hoping to find a solution that satisfies all parties involved. However, this method is also controversial.
Utah's West Desert is the site of three major roundups, known as "gathers," this winter. Two have been completed, and the third is set to begin after a federal judge declined to issue an injunction requested by an animal-welfare group.
The Sulphur gather in Beaver County concluded on January 31. Initially, the BLM planned to return 400 animals to the range but decided to return only 192. Eighty mares in this group received fertility-control treatments, while the studs remained intact.
The agency secured authorization for this gather because Sulphur horses posed a public-safety threat along State Route 21, and the plan heavily relied on fertility control, according to BLM spokeswoman Lisa Reid.
"Removing horses to [appropriate management level] is not on the top of the list of our priorities," Reid said.
During the two-week Sulphur operation, 450 of the herd's estimated 1,150 horses were left on the herd management area outside Milford. This number exceeds the 165 to 250 horses deemed appropriate for this area by the BLM. The agency's plan to return horses defies a legal obligation to keep numbers below 250, the Beaver suit alleges.
Horse advocates criticized the Beaver County suit as a waste of the court's time. Similar arguments have been rejected in other jurisdictions, according to Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation) Campaign. She noted that courts have dismissed ranchers' claims that horse numbers above AMLs equate to "overpopulation."
"They [the BLM] have broad discretion to deal with overpopulation — if they decide there is overpopulation — in a variety of ways," Roy said. "They are just wasting taxpayers' dollars to pursue this claim that has been rejected by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals."
Roy believes the AMLs are arbitrarily set, with little scientific basis, and that livestock, particularly sheep, pose a greater threat to range conditions at Sulphur, one of Utah's 19 horse management areas.
In its environmental review, however, the BLM concluded that wild horses would deplete forage if allowed to proliferate.
As evidence of the depleted range, BLM wranglers observed that the Sulphur horses were in poor condition as they were herded into pens last month, according to Reid. Some 26 horses were so weak they had to be euthanized, and another four were put down after sustaining injuries while being directed toward holding pens or chutes. One horse severed its spine when it panicked and crashed into a gate.
The BLM takes steps to avoid harming the horses, but injuries do occur, and such incidents are cited by animal-welfare advocates in their legal battles against horse removals, which they view as costly, ineffective, and inhumane.
Originally posted by The Salt Lake Tribune