Judge Upholds Permanent Removal of Oregon Wild Horses

In a significant ruling, a federal judge has upheld the decision to permanently remove wild horses from Oregon's Three Fingers Horse Management Area, despite previous violations of environmental law. This decision has sparked debate among conservationists and government officials.

Although an emergency roundup of wild horses in Eastern Oregon violated environmental law, a federal judge has allowed the government’s permanent removal decision to stand. Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon ruled that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management didn’t thoroughly review an “emergency gather” of about 150 horses after a 2016 wildfire, violating the National EnvironmentalPolicyAct.

However, the judge has now found thatBLM’s mistake wasn’t grave enough to warrant overturning the decision to permanently remove the horses from the 62,500-acre Three Fingers Horse Management Area in Malheur County.

Friends of Animals, a nonprofit that suedBLMover the roundup, had asked Simon to vacate the permanent removal decision, which would have opened the way for horses to eventually be returned to the area. Instead, the agency will be able to conduct an environmental review of the decision while it remains in place.

Wild horses are a concern for ranchers in Eastern Oregon, where cattle often depend on grazing resources onpublic lands. The judge issued his ruling on Aug. 9, a day after holding oral arguments in Portland over possible legal remedies for theBLM’s violation of NEPA.

Michael Harris, attorney for Friends of Animals, argued theBLM’s error was serious because the agency ignored the environmental impact of removing most horses from the northern pasture of the horse management area.

Wild horses have a great deal of “site fidelity,” so those in the HMA’s southern pasture are likely to stay there rather than migrate across rugged terrain to the north, he said.

Lucinda Bach, attorney for the government, disputed the argument that horses don’t move between the pastures, noting that 11 were sighted in the northern pasture during a recent aerial survey, up from seven a year ago.

By the time the northern pasture is expected to recover from the fire in the spring of 2019, the horse population will likely have naturally grown closer to the maximum “appropriate management level” for the area, Bach said.

Harris countered that horses will primarily multiply in the southern pasture, concentrating the population to that segment.

Originally posted by Capital Press