Judge Blocks Controversial Plan to Sterilize Wild Horses in Oregon
November 5, 2018
A federal judge has temporarily blocked a controversial plan by the Interior Department to surgically sterilize wild horses in Oregon after animal rights groups filed a lawsuit. This decision marks a significant victory for animal welfare advocates and highlights ongoing concerns about the management of wild horse populations.
Legal Intervention
U.S. District Court Judge Michael W. Mosman issued a preliminary injunction on Friday that stops the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from moving forward with its plan to surgically remove the ovaries of wild mares in the Warm Springs Management Area of Hines, Oregon, according to court records.
“We thank the court for preventing the BLM from proceeding with a reckless and inhumane surgical sterilization experiment that would endanger the welfare and lives of federally protected wild horses,” Joanna Grossman, equine program manager for the Animal Welfare Institute, said in a statement.
Grossman added, “Today’s ruling is a decisive victory for animal welfare and for the American people, who not only cherish wild horses but have a First Amendment right to understand how the federal government is treating and managing these herds on public lands.”
The judge's decision means the agency cannot proceed with the experiment until a final decision is made in the case. No date has been set for that yet.
Lawsuit Details
The Animal Welfare Institute, American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign), The Cloud Foundation, and other animal-rights groups sued in September, claiming the government project violated the First Amendment by not allowing groups to observe and document the experiment. They also cited violations of several laws, including the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
A Bureau of Land Management spokesperson stated that they cannot comment on pending litigation.
Background and Concerns
The bureau has struggled with managing herd populations. In 2016, it issued a report to Congress stating that since receiving federal protection in 1971, “wild horse and burro populations on public lands have dramatically increased, far exceeding what is healthy for the land and the animals.”
In June, the bureau put forward a proposal aimed at herd size management, seeking to evaluate the safety, complication rate, and feasibility of using the sterilization surgery, called an ovariectomy via colpotomy, on wild horse mares in conjunction with Colorado State University. The experiment aimed to assess the impacts of the procedure on those horses and their behavior compared to horses without the surgery.
The study would involve 200 horses from the Warm Springs Herd Management Area in southeastern Oregon, with 100 horses receiving the procedures and 100 serving as a control for the experiment, according to the proposal.
In August, following a public comment period, CSU withdrew from the project, but the bureau decided to move forward with its plan anyway, according to the bureau’s website. The bureau issued its final assessment on the proposal in September.
Animal Welfare Concerns
Grossman told NBC News that the decision to “move forward regardless without an academic institution to provide expertise on equine welfare” greatly raised concerns for animal rights groups. With the university out of the picture, the bureau was going to greatly restrict “public access to monitor, observe and document the mares as they were going through this procedure,” she added.
The animal rights groups then decided to file suit, claiming the experiment violates their First Amendment rights as well as environmental laws, Grossman said.
The surgical procedure involves a veterinarian removing both of a mare's ovaries by making an incision and putting their hand inside the horse’s abdominal cavity and “looking for the ovaries blindly” and then severing them using a tool, she said. That surgery can result in complications, trauma, and even death for the mares, especially once they’re returned to the wild without follow-up treatment.
The animal rights group believes such a procedure is “widely viewed as being out of date” and inhumane, and that there are other methods that can help successfully control populations without being so invasive, she said. Grossman added that the surgical procedure “was not common at all” for wild mares and in domesticated horses would usually only be performed if the mare needed it for medical reasons, such as to remove a malignant growth.
Grossman said she and other animal rights groups have been advocating for immunocontraceptive vaccines or pellets that prevent the horses from being fertile as more humane alternatives. “It’s a far more humane way of managing wild horse populations that doesn’t involve a risky invasive surgery that puts the lives of these animals on the line,” she said.