Federal Judges Hear Arguments Against Wild Horse Roundups

Denver, CO (September 19, 2016)– Arguments on two cases focused on the inhumane and costly rounding up of wild horses will be heard by theU.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver today, Monday, Sept. 19, at 9 a.m.(Courtroom 1 at 1823 Stout Street).

The first hearing regards the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s 2014 removal of 1,263 federally protected horses from the Wyoming Checkerboard area, which includes many acres ofpublic landsallocated forwild horse managementin the Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek, and Divide Basin Herd Management Areas near Rock Springs.

Co-plaintiffs The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation), The Cloud Foundation, Return to Freedom, and photographers Carol Walker and Kimerlee Curyl argue that the roundup leaves the population of all three areas far below the minimum number established and mandated under theBLM’s Resource Management Plans that guide land use policy for thepublic landsin the area.

In March 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled thatBLMviolated the National EnvironmentalPolicyAct (NEPA) by failing to conduct an analysis of the impacts of the roundup on the natural environment and by failing to consider alternatives to the proposed action.

The judge also ruled, however, that theBLMcould use a request by a landowner for removal of wild horses from private lands (Section 4 of the Wild Horse Act) to remove wild horses from adjoiningpublic lands. TheBLMhas used this as an excuse to eliminate wild horses from all Checkerboard lands, both private and public. The plaintiffs are appealing this ruling on the basis of Section 3 of the Wild Horse Act, which requiresBLMto make a formal determination that “excess” wild horses are present onBLMlands and that these horses must be removed in order to maintain a “thriving natural ecological balance.” TheBLMdid not make any such “excess” determination for the Checkerboard roundup.

The second hearing regards a State of Wyoming lawsuit againstBLMdemanding that the agency remove hundreds of horses from federal land within the state. AWHC and others filed a motion to intervene in the case in an effort to stop theBLMfrom carrying out any of the suggestedroundups. In 2015, the federal district court ruled in favor ofBLMand AWHC by dismissing Wyoming’s lawsuit for failing to state a viable legal claim, which Wyoming has since appealed.

“Fewer than 2,500 remain on the range in Wyoming and we can’t count on the federal government to defend them,” said Suzanne Roy, AWHC Executive Director. “This is part of a pattern where rancher and local governments file lawsuits against theBLMand then, in many instances, the agency uses the lawsuits as an excuse to round up and remove federally protected horses frompublic lands.”

“In the case of the Wyoming Checkerboard, the federal government actually invited ranchers to sue as a way to secure more funding forroundups,” Roy said.

According to the groups, wild horses are being scapegoated in Wyoming for environmental impacts that are caused by the vastly larger numbers of cattle and sheep allowed to graze onpublic lands.

Nationwide, wild horses inhabit just 17 percent ofBLMrangelands and are outnumbered on these lands 38 to 1 by livestock.

Why Roundups Don’t Work

According to public opinion polls, three out of four Americans favor preserving wild horses and burros on federal land.

Even so,BLMcontinues to carry outroundupsand removals throughout the West. In fact, the agency spends 70 percent of its annual $80 million budget to round up, remove, and stockpile wild horses.

Theseroundups, in which wild horses are chased down with helicopters, subject animals to trauma, injury, and death, the groups said.

In the last seven years alone,BLMhas removed more than 40,000 wild horses frompublic lands. The agency now stockpiles 45,000 wild horses and burros in captivity, while approximately 60,000 remain free on the range.

The National Academy of Sciences, in a 2013 report, stressed that theBLM’s system of rounding up and removing horses from the range merely exacerbates population growth by “facilitating high rates of population growth on the range.”

The AWHC advocates for a fair and scientific process to determine appropriate levels of wild horses on public land, more equitable allocations of resources to wild horses and burros on the small amount ofBLMland designated as their habitat, and the use, as warranted, of humane fertility control vaccine as a way to manage population levels on the range.

AWHC and its partners will be represented at both hearings by Bill Eubanks of the public interest environmental law firm Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks LLP.

For more information on this case, please click here.