Wyoming Checkerboard III: Legal Battle for Wild Horses

November 13, 2018

AWHC Contributor

The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign) continues its fight to protect wild horses in Wyoming's Checkerboard region. This ongoing legal battle challenges the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) controversial strategies for removing wild horses from public lands. The case highlights the importance of adhering to federal laws that safeguard these majestic animals.

In 2014, we successfully challenged a decision by the BLM to treat land currently used for wild horses as private lands in order to permanently remove 1,263 federally-protected wild horses from the Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek, and Great Divide Basin Herd Management Areas (HMAs) in southwestern Wyoming. In 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit invalidated the BLM’s illegal approach to wild horse removals and issued a ruling criticizing BLM’s disregard of clear statutory language.

Instead of following this ruling, the BLM has devised a new, unlawful approach that refuses to count foals in determining how many wild horses may remain on the range, which greatly increases the number of horses that the agency removes from public lands.

Therefore, on September 27, 2018, AWHC, joined by Kimerlee Curyl and Carol Walker, filed our Opening Merits Brief asking the court to vacate BLM’s August 2017 Decision Record and August 2017 Final Environmental Assessment (EA) and to remand the decision back to the agency.