Colorado Governor and Sierra Club Oppose Wild Horse Roundup in Sand Wash Basin

The Colorado Chapter of the Sierra Club joins Governor, wild horse advocates in calling for halt to Sand Wash Basin Roundup Operation

DENVER (August 31, 2021) — The nation’s leading wild horse protection organization, the American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign), praised Governor Jared Polis and the Colorado Chapter of the Sierra Club after they made public their opposition to the scheduled helicopter roundup of wild horses in the Sand Wash Basin. The Sierra Club issued a statement yesterday reiterating its clear opposition to helicopter round-ups and calling for the elimination of private livestock from wild horse habitat as an alternative to the removal of a beloved wild horse population in the northwestern part of the state. Governor Jared Polis, joined by husband, First Gentleman Marlon Reis, in a letter to the Secretary of the Interior and the BLM also called for a 6-month postponement of the roundup.

The Colorado Sierra Club is reacting to a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plan to conduct an emergency helicopter drive operation that would result in the permanent removal of over 730 federally-protected wild horses from the popular Sand Wash Basin Herd Management Area (HMA) on public lands west of Craig, as early as Wednesday. While the agency is citing lack of water, monsoons in the region over the last 30 days have nullified the concerns about water.

The BLM claims that the Sand Wash Basin HMA can only support 163 wild horses, meanwhile, the agency permits thousands of privately-owned cattle and sheep to graze across three allotments in the horses’ habitat. According to the Colorado Sierra Club, an evaluation done by environmental watchdog organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), shows that none of these grazing allotments are meeting BLM’s Land Health Standards.

“No wild horses should be removed from Sand Wash Basin until livestock have been removed and the range has recovered sufficiently to enable a scientific determination of the wild horse Appropriate Management Level,” the Sierra Club statement reads. “In the interim, and until natural population controls are reestablished, wild horse abundance should be moderated by the application of PZP fertility control.”

Currently, a local nonprofit organization, the Sand Wash Advocate Team (SWAT) already implements a robust management program for the Sand Wash mustangs using the proven safe and effective fertility control vaccine PZP, which has been shown to reduce wild horse populations humanely over time.

"I remain extremely concerned with the historic scale and condensed time of the BLM’s proposed round ups at Sandwash Basin,” the Governor expressed in his letter. “I believe that, through Colorado’s unique position as a state with a long history of innovation and care for public lands and wildlife, we can work more collaboratively with the BLM to effectuate more scientific and humane outcomes to herd management.”

“By rounding up thousands of iconic wild horses under the guise of an emergency, the BLM is continuing its longstanding pattern of not only skirting the public process, but ignoring the impacts of cattle and sheep which are top contributors to range degradation, desertification, and riparian damage,” said Ellie Phipps Price, president of AWHC and part of Colorado’s legacy Phipps family. “The agency must fulfill its mandate to protect wild horses and that starts with removing privately-owned livestock that outnumbers them during these summer and fall months.”

About AWHC

The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign) is the nation's leading wild horse protection organization, with more than 700,000 supporters and followers nationwide. AWHC is dedicated to preserving the American wild horse and burros in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. In addition to advocating for the protection and preservation of America's wild herds, AWHC implements the largest wild horse fertility control program in the world through a partnership with the State of Nevada for wild horses that live in the Virginia Range near Reno.

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