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August 20, 2024

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Around The West

Originally found on RANGEfire!.

BLM wins two lawsuits, clearing way for elimination of two Wyoming wild horse herds

Mike Koshmrl

Wyoming Tribune/Eagle

WHITE MOUNTAIN — “That’s a lot of horses,” lamented Cheyenne resident Robyn Smith from a high-desert ridgeline.

It wasn’t her first exasperated exclamation. “Argh, oh crap,” was her immediate reaction to learning a federal judge had given the Bureau of Land Management the OK to proceed with plans to fully remove two wild horse herds from the landscape in southwest Wyoming.

A retired architect donning a “Return to Freedom” ball cap that featured a bucking mustang, Smith proudly described herself as a wild horse advocate. On this crisp Thursday morning in the hill country north of Interstate 80, she was doing one of her favorite things: Watching mustangs.

Smith’s interest in the equines — an icon of the West, albeit a nonnative one — had evolved organically into activism, stemming from a wildlife photography hobby. “We started doing more horse photography,” she said, “and then we started [wondering], ‘Well, what do you mean you’re going to round them up?’”

Soon, Smith was invested enough that she was sitting through wild horse-related legal proceedings and traveling to observe roundups — government run wild-horse gathers exactly like what was happening in the distance.

While Smith and a dozen or so others watched on for hours, a helicopter commissioned by the Bureau of Land Management herded one band of horses, then another, toward a trap. Once inside, they were sorted and trucked away.

The animals were members of what the BLM considers the White Mountain Herd. It’s vastly overpopulated, at least going by what the federal agency considers an “appropriate” number for this landscape. By day’s end, 144 animals — 52 stallions, 63 mares and 29 foals — had been removed, which meant the crews were almost exactly a quarter of the way to their goal of taking 586 mustangs off the range over the next couple weeks.

The White Mountain Herd’s horses are well known enough that they’re being allowed to persist. The BLM even advertises a scenic drive that winds through the heart of the herd management area. The plan is to maintain in the neighborhood of 205 to 300 horses in this region, which reaches from Rock Springs northwest to Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge.

The Adobe Town Herd, in the Red Desert, is also being allowed to persist: BLM plans call for 225-450 horses here.

The neighboring Salt Wells and Great Divide Basin herds, meanwhile, are slated for elimination.

Wild horses compete with sheep, cattle and native wildlife for forage and other resources. That fact is particularly problematic in the eyes of some, and a prime driver of horse policy in this “checkerboard” swath of southwest Wyoming where private and federal land interchange in square-mile blocks that meet at the corners. The cattle and sheep-centric Rock Springs Grazing Association owns and leases about 1.1 million acres of private land in the checkerboard — and for decades fought the BLM over wild horses.