Environmental activist groups – represented by one of Washington D.C.’s largest law firms -- last week filed a motion in federal court for a restraining order in a lawsuit against the U.S., seeking to stop the roundup of more than 800 “wild horses” on private and public land in Wyoming’s Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek, and Great Divide Basin. The plaintiffs include the Colorado-based group The Cloud Foundation, the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, Return to Freedom, among other activist groups, and they are represented by Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal. The laws at issue include the Endangered Species Act and the Environmental Policy Act.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has voluntarily agreed to delay the roundup until Sept. 1 to allow the court time to rule on the motion, filed last Friday. A ruling on the motion is expected by next month.
The lawsuit seeks to permanently stop the roundup of feral horses in the Herd Management Areas (HMAs) of Wyoming, which had been scheduled to begin on approximately August 20.
Herd Size Increasing
The motion is the just latest in the ongoing legal battle about the future of feral horses in the West. The BLM estimates that 49,209 wild horses and burros (about 40,815 horses and 8,394 burros) are roaming on BLM-managed rangelands in 10 Western states, including Colorado and Wyoming, based on the latest data available, compiled as of March 1, 2014, a slight increase from the prior survey’s 40,605 animals. Back in 2013, the BLM entered into a consent decree with the Rock Springs Grazing Association agreeing to remove all the feral horses from RSGA’s private lands on the Checkerboard region of Wyoming, a 2 million acre swath of land, and to consider, through public process, zeroing out the feral horse populations in this area. The BLM states that the environmental activists’ demand that culling of the herds be stopped is not a rational and reasonable proposition, as the herd size grows by 20 percent per year and can double every four years.
“This proposed roundup threatens to permanently remove all of the wild horses from the private and public Checkerboard lands within the Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek, and Great Divide Basin HMAs. BLM authorized this drastic management action without analyzing any of the environmental consequences of a wild horse roundup of this magnitude, or reasonable alternatives to this action, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act,” the motion states.
In language unusually emotional for a court brief, the motion by Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal further states that the government seeks to “permanently extirpate nearly a thousand horses from the range, including from public lands.”
As the lawsuit proceeds, so does a “petition” from another eco-activist group, Friends of Animals, to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to re-brand the feral horses as native to North America, even though genetic tests has confirmed previously that the herds in 10 states, from California to Montana, are the descendants of horses brought to America by the Conquistadors in the 16th Century.
Feral horses are directly descended from domestic horses that strayed, escaped, or were deliberately released by Europeans settlers into the wild and remained there.
Though BLM statistics show that the feral horse population has grown, the activists say the population is dwindling, and that wild horses only went “temporarily extinct” 12,000 years B.C. here in the American west.
“The estimated current free-roaming population exceeds by more than 22,500 the number that the BLM has determined can exist in balance with other public rangeland resources and uses. The maximum appropriate management level (AML) is approximately 26,684,” says the BLM in a statement.
What is more, according to the BLM, off the range, as of July 2014, there are 47,272 other horses and burros fed and cared for at short-term corrals and long-term pastures.
Misguided Special Interests
The Nevada Cattlemen’s Association and the Public Lands Council, and others, are among those who argue the petition is lacks merit because the horses aren’t native to North America. The concern is that liberal activist groups may sway the scientists and policy makers at BLM and Fish and Wildlife.
The federal government is being pressured by “misguided special interest groups that don’t want to see ‘wild’ horses brought off the range,” said Dustin Van Liew, executive director of the council tied to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. “Listing wild horses under the ESA — which is meant for wildlife, not domesticated, non-native animals — would only serve as another demonstration” of the improper use of that statute.
BLM says the agency hasn’t changed its position that today’s American wild horses are not native. “American wild horses are descended from domestic horses, some of which were brought over by European explorers in the late 15th and 16th centuries, plus others that were released or escaped captivity in modern times,” BLM’s website says.
The petition was filed June 11 and claims new research concludes that the modern horse — Equus — originated in North America 3 million to 4 million years ago, spread to Eurasia by crossing the Bering land/ice bridge 2 to 3 million years ago and became extinct in North America no longer than 13,000 years ago.
As an authority, the petition cites the work of Jay F. Kirkpatrick, a leader in horse genetics research who directs Zoo Montana’s Science and Conservation Center in Billings, Mont.
In answer to the factual argument that the wild horses died off before the time of Moses, the liberal activists at Friends of Animals are claiming the Spanish “brought them back” to the Americas.
Presently, the scientific community does not buy into the Friends of Animals’ argument The Journal of Wildlife Management has published numerous peer-reviewed articles calling the beasts “feral” horses.
Mesa Verde
The issue is alive in many Western states, including Colorado. Back in 2011, one of the authors of this report, Chuck Sylvester, had the opportunity to ride the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation south of Mesa Verde on horseback. When he neared the Colorado/New Mexico border, he saw a herd of horses the Ute guide referred to as “wild.” But it had previously been understood that DNA testing revealed these relatively uniform dark bay horses as mostly descendant horses brought to America by the Spanish Conquistadors. So they fit the definition of feral horses.
These feral horses can run in herds of thousands on federal lands, and appear to be a mixture of Paint, Shetland, Quarter, Draft and Arabian, horses, and they vary in size, conformation and color.
Every day, U.S. ranchers and farmers suffer income and property loss due to the pasturing of these feral horse herds, and the problem is compounded by the scarce grass and water resources. Deer and Elk, which are native to the area, adjust to variances in the water. The horses aren’t native to the area, don’t adjust well, and consequently die of thirst.
Blocking the federal government from doing its job and limiting the herd size, will force more horses die long excruciating deaths by starvation. If the federal government is blocked by the lawsuit and the petition, Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo), and other western governors, should use their constitutional power by ordering the roundup of these feral horses. Humane euthanasia and proper disposal of these horses is a better outcome than seeing the lands dotted by the carcasses of dead feral animals.
Governor Hickenlooper would best serve Colorado – and act as a true environmental steward -- by ordering the roundup, humane euthanasia and disposal of feral horses.
Congress appropriated $71.8 million to the Wild Horse and Burro Program in the fiscal year, which ended September 30, 2013, according to the BLM. Of the enacted appropriations, $71.8 million, holding costs accounted for $46.2 million, or 64 percent of the funds. Gathering and removal cost $4.8 million, or 6 percent, of the budget, and adoption events cost $7.5 million, or 10 percent of the budget, according to BLM.
“To help ensure that herd sizes are in balance with other public rangeland resources and uses, the BLM removed 4,176 -- 4,064 horses and 112 burros -- from the range in fiscal year 2013, which ended September 30, 2013. This figure compares to 8,255 animals removed from the range in FY 2012. The Bureau placed 2,311 removed animals into private care through adoption in FY 2013 -- less than half as many as in FY 2005, when 5,701 were adopted out,” according to the BLM. “Since 1971, when Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the BLM has adopted out more than 230,000 horses and burros.”
Gov. Hickenlooper recently narrated a documentary on the history of horses in Colorado called Horse Sense. So he is well-briefed on the issue, and should act accordingly, as the facts of the matter suggest, we respectfully submit.
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BLM Feral Horse Facts
http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/whbprogram/history_and_facts/quick_facts.html
Hickenlooper Horse Documentary
http://csu-cvmbs.colostate.edu/vth/Pages/horse-sense-documentary-film-premiers.aspx |