Lawsuit Filed to Stop BLM from Sterilizing Idaho Wild Horse Herd

Boise, ID (January 4, 2016)- Today, the American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign), The Cloud Foundation, Return to Freedom, and Virginia Marie Hudson filed a lawsuit in the Idaho District Court against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The lawsuit charges that the agency’s plan to permanently sterilize the entire herd of wild horses in the Saylor Creek Herd Management Area (HMA) violates the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 (“Wild Horse Act”) and the National EnvironmentalPolicyAct (NEPA).

The sterilization plan was approved as part of theBLM’s Jarbidge Resource Management Plan (RMP), which was finalized on September 2, 2015.

TheBLM’s plan to sterilize the Saylor Creek wild horses also harms the interests of American citizens, here represented by Virginia Marie Hudson, as castrating and spaying the entire herd would impair the public’s ability to enjoy and observe the wild horses' natural social behaviors.

The complaint charges that theBLM, through its Jarbidge RMP, authorized the precedent-setting drastic action of removing and sterilizing all the wild horses in the 95,000-acre Saylor Creek HMA without presenting evidence of any damage to the range caused by the Saylor Creek herd and without making a determination that “excess” horses are present, as required by law. Additionally, theBLMfailed entirely to analyze significant impacts that this action will have on individual horses and the herd as a whole.

Originally Posted By Clearwater Tribune