Wild Horse Advocates Blast Feds for Lack of Transparency in Ongoing Wyoming Mustang Roundup

Rock Springs, WY. (September 29, 2017) - The American Wild Horse Campaign today blasted the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for misstating the actual number and fate of wild horses being captured and removed from public lands in Wyoming over the next month. 

The agency is not including foals and weanlings in its official removal tally, meaning that close to 2,000 horses will be removed from the range in the massive helicopter roundup currently underway. That’s hundreds more horses than the BLM has publicly stated it would remove. 

Once removed from the range, the horses are being taken to two holding facilities that are closed to the public, making it difficult to track the condition and fate of the horses captured in this roundup. 

To date, the BLM has captured and removed 298 horses from the range in the roundup, which is targeting three federally-protected Herd Management Areas (HMAs) – Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek and Great Divide Basin. Of that total, 52 are foals who are not being counted toward the overall approved removal tally. 

“The BLM has found a new way to wipe out Wyoming’s wild horse herds by pretending that young horses don’t count,” said Suzanne Roy, Executive Director of the American Wild Horse Campaign. “In this way the agency will remove hundreds more mustangs than were originally approved, without prior disclosure of this fact to the public or analysis of its impacts under as required by the National Environment Protection Act.”

“The BLM is also downplaying the fact that the agency has asked Congress for permission to sell each one of these majestic animals for brutal slaughter in Mexico,” Roy continued. “This is another example of the federal government running roughshod over the public, which strongly supports protecting America’s wild horses. It's pandering to special interests – in this case, a small number of taxpayer subsidized ranchers who graze livestock on public lands where wild horses live.”

The roundup will unfold over the next 4-6 weeks. Photographer Carol Walker with the Wild Horse Freedom Federation and a humane observer from Return to Freedom are filing daily reports from the roundup site.

Background

AWHC has led a years-long legal battle against over the BLM’s plan to eradicate wild horses from a two million-acre area of public and private land at the request of the Rock Springs Grazing Association (RSGA). The RSGA owns or leases the private land blocks in the Checkerboard and views wild horses as competition for taxpayer subsidized livestock grazing on public lands. The legal battle has spanned three separate legal actions (RSGA vs. DOI, AWHC vs. DOI (2014), AWHC vs. DOI (2016). 

Less than a year ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a landmark decision that stops the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from wiping out wild horses from over one million acres of public land in the Wyoming Checkerboard.

This roundup comes on the heels of other roundups, including the removal of approximately 100 horses from the range near Bible Springs, Utah last month. In all cases, the BLM is mum on the impacts of this unprecedented roundup activity on the thousands of wild horses who will be captured and removed from public lands.

These horses are in grave danger of being killed or sold for slaughter if Congress grants the BLM’s 2018 budget request to lift the current prohibition on destroying healthy wild horses and burros or selling them for slaughter. A provision that would allow this practice passed out of the House Appropriations Committee in July and is awaiting action in the Senate.

The American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC) (formerly known as the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign) is dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. Its grassroots mission is endorsed by a coalition of more than 60 horse advocacy, humane and public interest organizations.