BLM Plans to Relocate 167 Horses from West Douglas Herd in September

Colorado standards, Texas Mountain isn’t much — its 8,455-foot elevation ranks it number 3,163 in order of the state’s mountains, according to peakery.com.

Texas Mountain, however, looms up as the heart of the West Douglas Wild Horse Area. Its shoulders provide the most reliable summer range for the 365 wild horses that roam the area west of Colorado Highway 139 near Cañon Pintado National Historic District.

The Bureau of Land Management wants to take 167 horses — as many from the West Douglas Herd Area as allowed — off the area and into long-term holding in Cañon City. The horse gather is set for Sept. 14-25.

The Colorado Springs-based Cloud Foundation has opposed similar gathers in the past and this time could appeal to the Interior Board of Land Appeals or go to federal court. Executive Director Ginger Kathrens didn’t tip the organization’s current strategy, except to say, “Obviously, we’re exploring it.”

The roots of the foundation’s opposition goes back to 1776, when the Spanish explorers Dominguez and Escalante noted meeting Utes riding good horses in what is now the West Douglas Horse Area.

More immediately relevant, however, is the state of the herd in 1971, when Congress passed the Wild Horse and Burro Act and the herd in West Douglas numbered just nine.

That’s about one-third of the number of horses the West Douglas Horse Area could reasonably sustain, said Kent Walter, field manager for the BLM’s White River Field Office.

Texas Mountain is the reason that horses can live in the rough country of cliffs, arroyos, piñon and juniper forest and dry, dry land, Walter said.

The mountain accounts for maybe 10 percent of the 123,000 acres of the area, but its significance grows in the hot months of the summer.

A few hundred feet below the crest of Texas Mountain, dry, dusty game trails bear the evidence of constant pounding by unshod hooves bound for the mountain’s springs.

The temperature crept to 67 degrees on Thursday afternoon on Texas Mountain as the mercury was edging close to 90 in the Grand Valley far below.

Clumps of yellow-crested rabbit brush bright enough to make aspen gold blush in shame exploded in bursts of color over Texas Mountain’s rocky exterior while Indian paintbrush lit up the crusty brown earth in near-Bronco orange. Douglas fir forest carpeted the lower reaches of Texas Mountain, except for the blackened landscape of the Wild Rose Fire that crisped much of its southwest-facing side and its crest.

Horses, though, don’t feed on rabbit brush, they don’t browse on indian paintbrush. They use the fir and pinyon-juniper forests below for shade from the western Colorado summer sun, but not for browse.

“What are they going to feed on?” asked Walter as he searched the rocky ground of Texas Mountain for precious few blades of the grasses on which horses forage.

Texas Mountain sums up the reason for the gather, Walter said.

“It’s about the summer range,” Walter said. “It’s that simple.”

The Piceance-East Douglas area, home to 377 horses, is more appropriate with far more high-country summer range than afforded by Texas Mountain, Walter said.

The fence that lines both sides of Colorado Highway 139 is the obstruction that keeps the West Douglas herd from seeking out better territory to the east.

Whatever Rooster Cogburn’s steed might have accomplished with the venerable Rooster aboard, wild horses generally are flummoxed — usually fatally — by wire fence.

“Occasionally a horse will jump a fence, but it’s really unusual,” Kathrens said.

To be sure, the wild horses of West Douglas are healthy and well-fed now, but it wasn’t long ago, in 2012, that Walter watched them nearly die.

The two springs on Texas Mountain had all but dried up in the drought, leaving many in the herd severely parched.

“Those horses were defeated,” Walter said. “It was seriously life or death for them.”

Even though they dying of thirst, the horses wouldn’t approach water-filled troughs, so the BLM built a 1,600-foot system that delivered water, much as a spring might, with no apparent human intervention, Walter said.

A year later, however, the Cloud Foundation hired a 30-year BLM employee and range specialist, Robert Edwards, who concluded the wild horses need not be removed because forage and water were adequate and in good condition, Kathrens said.

There’s nothing wrong with the range there that eliminating excessive cattle grazing wouldn’t solve, Kathrens said.

The BLM has “never given the wild horses of West Douglas Creek the status they deserve and I think that’s regrettable,” Kathrens said. “I find it dismaying that the White River Field Office is so beholden to energy and livestock and can’t accommodate a small herd of wild horses.”

The BLM’s grazing permittee, however, hasn’t been allowed to run cattle there for five years, BLM spokesman Christopher Joyner said.

And oil and gas facilities are scattered across much of the area.

The agency has no intention of zeroing out the West Douglas herd, Walter said, contrary to Kathrens’ claim that the BLM wants to “annihilate” the herd.

About 30 horses is the appropriate management level for the area, Walter said.

“Any idiot knows you can’t have 30 of anything” and also have sufficient genetic diversity, Kathrens said.

“You can bring in genetics” said Walter, noting that it’s part of how such a small herd could be managed.

There are no plans to reduce the herd to that level, but there is also no guarantee that this year’s gather will collect all of the 167 horses for which it’s designed, Joyner said. Even in the 2012 drought, when the BLM won permission for a 50-horse gather, it got only 20, owing to the roughness of the terrain and the natural suspicion of the horses.

BLM officials will place signs in the West Douglas area, which also is the Colorado Department of Parks and Wildlife’s Game Management Unit 21, warning hunters that a gather, which includes pushing horses toward a trap with a helicopter, is being planned.

For the moment, though, the horses roam West Douglas as they do during summers of relative plenty, finding shade under a piñon grove little more than a mile from Highway 139.

“Who on the planet,” asked Walter, “does not look at that and say, ‘How cool is that?’ ”

Originally Posted By The Daily Sentenial