Federal Government Avoids Legal Challenge to Wild Horse Roundup

WASHINGTON (CN) –An animal-rights group lost their court battle to block the U.S. government from removing hundreds of wild horses from Utah’s Cedar Mountains. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a federal agency tasked with managingpublic lands, performs roundups periodically across the country to keep the wild horse population from deteriorating the rangeland.

Though the bureau counted 800 horses in the Cedar Mountain herd in March 2016, an aerial survey this past December showed that the herd had increased to approximately 960. The bureau proposed a plan to round up 600 from the herd, permanently remove no more than 300 of them, and return the rest to the wild after treating them with a contraceptive vaccine calledPZP, or porcine zona pellucida.

On Feb. 7, a day before the scheduled roundup, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington rejected a demand by Friends of Animals for an injunction. Friends of Animals had accused the bureau of violating the National EnvironmentalPolicyAct by failing to conduct a new environmental assessment, something the group said the agency was required to do because it would gather more horses this time than it did nine years ago.

Cooper notes in the 23-page ruling, however, that the bureau’s proposal seeks to permanently remove 150 fewer wild horses than it did in 2008, making the overall number of horses affected about the same this time around. That renders a new environmental assessment unnecessary, Cooper determined.

Friends of Animals also wanted the bureau to review recent studies on possible adverse side effects ofPZPon horse health and birthing cycles. In rejecting this move, Cooper said federal agencies are not required to consider every study that crosses their desks, unless it shows a significant impact on the quality of the human environment the agency had not previously considered. Here, Cooper found the bureau in compliance.

The bureau found studies on consecutive years ofPZPtreatment, for example, irrelevant to the proposed action because Cedar Mountain mares are treated in four to five-year intervals, not in consecutive years or breeding cycles,” the ruling continues (emphasis original).

Cooper also found that theBLMhad already considered older studies with findings similar to those Friends of Animals wanted the agency to review.

In opting not to grant an injunction to the group, Cooper called its claim thatPZPhas long-term and adverse health consequences on the horses “unsubstantiated by scientific literature.”

Cooper additionally shot down the advocacy group’s claim that theBLMfailed to consider range conditions and herd size in making its determination to remove wild horses to maintain an ecological balance. As the bureau said in its final decision, which the ruling quotes, the “gather is necessary to remove excess wild horses and to reduce the population in order to achieve and maintain a thriving natural ecological balance between wild horses and other multiple uses as required under [the Wild Horses Act].” (Emphasis original.)

The logic underpinning that “appears simple and sound,” Cooper found. On whether theBLMshould be required to make a determination of excess before claiming the authority to treat young mares withPZP, Cooper found the bureau to be in compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements.

Originally posted by Courthouse News