On October 3, 2016, the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC), Return to Freedom, The Cloud Foundation, and photographers Carol Walker and Kimerlee Curyl filed suit in U.S. District in Wyoming against the BLM, challenging the agency’s decision to conduct another wild horse roundup in the Wyoming Checkerboard in the southern part of the state. The wild horse advocates are represented by Bill Eubanks of the public interest environmental law firm Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks LLP.

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in an ongoing 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 (RSGS). The RSGA owns or leases the private land blocks in the Checkerboard and views wild horses as competition for taxpayer subsidized livestock grazing on the public lands in the area.

On September 19, 2016 the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on the plaintiffs’ appeal of a lawsuit challenging the 2014 BLM Checkerboard roundup in which 1,260 wild horses were rounded up by helicopters and removed from the range. At issue in both cases is the legality of the BLM’s reliance on a request from private landowners to remove wild horses from private lands as an excuse to eradicate them from the public lands in the area as well. 

Legal

• Complaint
• PI/TRO
• Memorandum
• Exhibit A
• Exhibit B
• Attachment 1 to Exhibit C
• Attachment 2 to Exhibit C
• Exhibit D
• Walker Declaration
• Exhibit F
• Reply Brief
• Proposed Order
• Order and Judgement 
• Final Decision/Opinion

Media

Wild Horse Advocacy Group Announces Checkerboard Lawsuit

Wild Horse Lovers Say Neigh to BLM Roundup

Conservationists challenge planned 2016 Wyoming wild horse roundup

News Release

Wild Horse Groups File Injunction to Stop BLM Wyoming Checkerboard Roundup

New Lawsuit Filed to Stop BLM Wild Horse Roundup in Wyoming Checkerboard