RANGEfire! | Wyoming court gives BLM the go-ahead to do its job and manage feral horse herds

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.

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.

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.

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