American Wild Horse Campaign Vows to Challenge BLM Plan to Roundup 3,500+ Wild Horses from Wyoming This Fall
Action will decimate 45 percent of Wyoming’s wild horse population
ROCK SPRINGS, WY (July 26, 2021) — Today, the nation’s leading wild horse advocacy organization, the American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC), vowed to challenge a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plan, announced late last week, to conduct a massive helicopter roundup this fall to remove 45 percent of Wyoming’s wild horse population — 3,500+ horses — this fall.
The BLM’s plan would decimate the iconic and beloved wild horse population in five Herd Management Areas (Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek, Great Divide Basin, White Mountain, and Little Colorado) located in and around the Wyoming Checkerboard and encompassing 2.5 million acres of public and private land in the southern part of the state. For a decade, the Rock Springs Grazing Association (RSGA), whose members graze livestock on the public lands where the federally-protected wild horses roam, has lobbied for the elimination wild horses from the Wyoming Checkerboard area even though the animals are an important ecotourism resource for the area.
“The iconic wild horses of the Wyoming Checkerboard belong to all Americans, not just to a handful of ranchers who view them as competition for cheap grazing on our public lands and want them gone from the landscape,” said Suzanne Roy, executive director of the AWHC. “The BLM is legally mandated to protect and preserve wild horses, while livestock grazing occurs on our public lands entirely at the discretion of the government. What’s happening in Wyoming is a perversion of both the law and the public trust.”
Since 2011, AWHC has been involved in litigation against the RSGA to defend the wild horses in this area and has amassed numerous court victories, including at the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals AWHC said it intends to continue legal action to defend Wyoming wild horses and to rally public opposition to this plan.
“I am deeply saddened by the BLM's Plans to roundup and remove most of Wyoming wild horses instead of humanely managing the wild horses in these 5 iconic and unique herds. This is where they belong, wild and free with their families on our public lands not living out their lives in government feedlots or being adopted with an incentive and then sent to slaughter”, said Carol Walker, a co-plaintiff in previous lawsuits and a highly regarded wildlife photographer who has spent years documenting these herds.
The BLM’s plan for the horses would reduce their numbers to 1,500 on 2.5 million acres of land, while further decimating the populations through indiscriminate use of population growth suppression techniques, including unproved IUDs coupled with PZP fertility control. Among the populations that would be destroyed: the wild herds that live along the Pilot Butte Wild Horse Scenic Loop outside Rock Springs, which are heavily promoted by Sweetwater County as evidence that “the American spirit still thrives” in Wyoming.
About the American Wild Horse Campaign
The American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC) is the nation's leading wild horse protection organization, with more than 700,000 supporters and followers nationwide. AWHC is dedicated to preserving the American wild horse and burros in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. In addition to advocating for the protection and preservation of America's wild herds, AWHC implements the largest wild horse fertility control program in the world through a partnership with the State of Nevada for wild horses that live in the Virginia Range near Reno.
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