Federal Court Approves Plan to Remove Wild Horses from Wyoming Checkerboard

Wild Horse Advocates Vow to Continue Fight Against Plan to Reduce Wyoming’s Wild Free-Roaming Horse Population by 46%

Cheyenne, WY (April 4, 2013) – A federal court in Wyoming has approved a consent decree between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Rock Springs Grazing Association (RSGA) that will wipe out wild free-roaming horses from the Wyoming Checkerboard, a two-million acre swath of public and private land in the southern part of the state.

The Consent Decree was vigorously opposed by theAmerican Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign),The Cloud Foundation, and theInternational Society for the Protection ofMustangsand Burros, which weregranted intervenor statusin the case. The intervenors were represented by the public interest law firmMeyer, Glitzenstein & Crystal.

“We are appalled that the court has put a seal of approval on theBLM’s plan to destroy some of Wyoming’s last remaining and most popular wild horse herds,” said Suzanne Roy, director of the American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign). “The court’s decision to prioritize the interests of thelivestockindustry over protection of wild horses is blatantly wrong from a legal perspective. We vow to fight with all legal means available theBLM’s unlawful plans to wipe out wild horses from the Wyoming checkerboard.”

“As a party to the original agreement that protected wild horses in this critical habitat area, we are devastated by this decision, which will have lasting impacts on wild horses in Wyoming,” said Karen Sussman, president of the International Society for the Protection ofMustangsand Burros (ISPMB). “This continues theBLM’s trend of managing our wild horses to extinction.”

Sussman noted that since the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act was passed in 1971, theBLMhas eliminated wild horses from over 20 million acres of designated habitat and reduced the number ofHerd Management Areasfrom 303 to 179 today.

“This is a sad day for wild horses in Wyoming, a state that ironically promotes itsmustangsin the state’s ‘Roam Free’ tourism ads,” said Ginger Kathrens, director of The Cloud Foundation. “The sweetheart deal between the ranchers and theBLMwas put into motion when the Interior Department invited RSGA to file the suit against it, so that theBLMcould capitulate to the ranchers’ demands, and then claim it is under a ‘court order’ to remove the horses.”

Kathrens recentlyphotographedthe Great Divide Basin wild horses, which are targeted for elimination under the consent decree. The backroom dealing involved in this case was recently exposed in an article onAtlantic.comentitled,How the Department of Interior Sold Out America’s Wild Horses.

Also objecting to the consent decree was Lloyd Eisenhauer, a formerBLMmanager in the Rock Springs and Rawlins areas. Eisenhauer submitted a declaration for the intervenors stating the following with regard to theBLM’s plans to zero out the Great Divide Basin and Salt Wells herds:

Eisenhauer also called theBLM’s plan to convert the White Mountain wild horse population to non-reproducing a “slow motion zeroing out of this HMA” that is “inconsistent with any wild horse management approach I am familiar with thatBLMhas implemented onpublic lands.”

Under the now-court sanctioned consent decree, theBLMwill move forward with a plan to reduce the maximum number of wild free-roaming horses allowed in the state of Wyoming by 46%, from 3,685 to 2,070. An additional 205-300 sterilized horses (castrated stallions and spayed mares) would be allowed to remain on the land.

Specifically, the consent decree outlines theBLM’s plans to:

• Zero out (entirely eliminate) wild horses from the Salt Wells and Great Divide Basin Herd Management Areas (HMAs);
• Sterilize wild horses in the White Mountain HMA, thus destroying the federally-protected wild free-roaming behaviors of the mustangs who are a popular tourist attraction;
• Cut by more than half the number of wild horses in the famed Adobe Town Herd Management Area.

The consent decree settles a lawsuit, filed in July 2011 by the RSGA against theBLM, seeking removal of all wild horses from the private andpublic landsof the Wyoming checkerboard. The RSGA is the nation’s largest grazing association and grazes thousands of livestock onBLMlands in the checkerboard for tax-subsidized fees that are approximately 1/16thof market rate.

For more information on the case, please clickhere.

TheAmerican Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign)(AWHC) is a coalition of more than 50 horseadvocacy, public interest, and conservation organizations dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. AWHC is a campaign founded and sponsored byReturn to Freedom.

The Cloud Foundationis a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and protection of wild horses and burros on our Westernpublic landswith a focus on protecting Cloud’s herd in the Pryor Mountains of Montana. Cloud is the subject of Foundation founder Ginger Kathrens’ groundbreaking PBS/Nature documentaries.

International Society for the Protection ofMustangsand Burros, founded over 50 years ago, was instrumental in securing the enactment of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the landmark federal legislation that established protections for wild free-roaming horses and burros onpublic landsin the West.