BLM to Remove 200 Wild Horses from Utah's West Desert

May 16, 2014

AWHC Contributor

The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is set to remove 200 wild horses from Utah's West Desert, aiming to address overpopulation and resource degradation concerns. This initiative is part of a broader plan to manage wild horse populations across Utah rangelands.

BLM's Plan and Local Concerns

The Interior Department recently approved Utah BLM's request to gather these horses, responding to pressure from state and local officials worried about the impact of overpopulation on the parched range. This situation could potentially force ranchers to reduce cattle grazing levels.

"It’s a bittersweet thing to me," said Beaver County Commissioner Mark Whitney. "Juan [Palma, BLM’s state director] means well, but it’s only a drop in the bucket in what needs to be done in the West Desert because they’ve let the problem get so out of control, especially in drought conditions."

Details of the Horse Gather

BLM's plan involves rounding up 140 horses in the Blawn Wash herd area, which covers 26,000 acres managed by the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) west of Milford. Blawn Wash has been a point of contention for state trust lands managers who expected horses would no longer graze there.

"This goes beyond revenue generation. This is a severe resource degradation issue that’s attributable to overstocking of horses," said Kim Christy, SITLA’s associate director.

SITLA's Blawn Wash holdings cover 2,000 animal-unit months (AUMs), the amount of forage that supports a cow-calf pair for one month. "For the three grazing permittees, it’s vital for their survival," Christy added.

Additional Horse Removals

Under the new authorization, another 50 "nuisance" horses are to be trapped in corrals on private lands, and ten more are to be removed from public lands in Beaver County due to traffic safety concerns near State Route 21. These numbers include eight horses already trapped on private ranch lands this spring.

The Blawn Wash gather is part of a series of West Desert roundups undergoing an environmental assessment. This proposal envisions the removal of 600 to 700 horses, mostly from the Bible Spring Complex in western Iron County, over the next 10 years.

"Our end goal is to reach AML (appropriate management level) but that’s going to take time, probably years," said BLM spokeswoman Megan Crandall. "This 200 is going to constructively move us forward to addressing that situation."

Criticism from Horse Advocates

Horse advocates remain skeptical about the effectiveness of these roundups in resolving the ongoing wild horse management issues in Utah and other Western states.

"They are continuing the same unsustainable and broken approach," said Suzanne Roy of the American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign). "Removing horses from the range, warehousing them in holding facilities, and not using fertility control. It would be far cheaper to persuade ranchers to not graze in [wild horse] herd management areas."