Bureau of Land Management Begins Busy Season of Horse Roundups in Utah

Federal land managers are embarking on the busiest wild horse roundup season in years for Utah. Helicopter-assisted wranglers will gather around 1,500 horses this winter from three herds in the West Desert, starting with the 150 roaming the Frisco Herd Management Area outside Milford. This roundup, which began Saturday, is part of a research project in which 100 horses will be fitted with GPS tracking devices and returned to the range.

Challenges and Controversies

For years, federally protected wild horses have irked rural county commissioners and ranchers who say the Bureau of Land Management is failing to keep horse populations within appropriate levels, displacing cattle and damaging the range in the process. And yet the agency is spending millions of dollars warehousing 45,000 horses for life—a practice that the National Academy of Sciences has called "expensive and unproductive."

BLM officials acknowledge that the current system is unsustainable, but Congress has given them conflicting mandates. An advisory panel suggested killing captive horses last year, but the public quickly shouted down that idea, which the BLM vowed was not an option. Fertility control is now taking center stage at this year's Utah gathers.

Evolving Management

Free-roaming horses in Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, and other western states are descended from domesticated horses turned loose by Spanish explorers and pioneers. Some are feral runaways. They have become icons of the Western spirit, and many Americans are disturbed at the specter of land managers herding them into corrals while taxpayers subsidize cattle grazing on public lands.

Horse advocates say removing the animals spurs reproductive rates among those that remain on the range. Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation), decries the BLM's roundups as contrary to scientific recommendations and public opinion. "Meanwhile, the agency continues to underutilize humane birth control as an alternative to cruel and costly roundups," she said.

All three of Utah's roundups this winter, however, entail treating mares with fertility vaccines and returning them to the range with an equal number of unsterilized males. "The program itself is changing, it's evolving. We are coming up with better tools for managing the horses," said Lisa Reid, spokeswoman for the BLM's West Desert district and the agency's horse program.

The Frisco horses will be taken to the BLM's contract corral at Axtell, where they will mix with 113 Frisco horses gathered in July 2015. A U.S. Geological Survey research team will select 50 mares and 50 studs that will be sent back to their home range, 15 miles northwest of Milford. The mares will get a fertility vaccine and will be fitted with a radio collar that records their movements. GPS units will be braided into the studs' tails because collars are likely to get chewed off the males as they compete for dominance. The researchers will select animals that represent a diversity of ages. Those not returned to the wild will be available for adoption.

An End to Warehousing?

None of the Frisco males selected for the research will be sterilized. Gelding is common for captive males, but is controversial when administered to horses that are returned to the range. Horse advocates argue it is inhumane and ineffective at checking population growth because ungelded studs can impregnate numerous mares.

However, the BLM has authorized the experimental gelding of studs that will be gathered from the Conger herd in Millard County. That roundup has yet to be scheduled. Researchers will record and compare data from Conger and Frisco herds over the next four years.

Originally posted by The Salt Lake Tribune