Wild horses are pitted against grazing cattle in a battle for survival across the West (Opinion)

DailyCamera.com - Full Article(Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

Stop blaming wild horses for the severe damage the meat and other industries inflict on federal public lands

By Jennifer Best | Guest Commentary
PUBLISHED: August 18, 2025

Colorado does not have a wild horse problem as a recent Denver Post headline states. The real issue lies with the meat industry’s grip on our public lands. The federal government authorizes ranchers to graze an exorbitant amount of cattle in wild horse herd management areas. It is this industrial use of our public land that degrades it.

Instead of confronting the outsized influence of private industry on public lands, the state of Colorado looks the other way and scapegoats wild horses.

Evidence of this problem abounds in the data publicly available from the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) allotment reports. There are four grazing allotments in the Piceance-East Douglas herd management area, where a staggering 10,960 cattle are allowed to graze at various times throughout the year. Yet the Bureau of Land Management insists the area can sustain just 235 wild horses based on BLM’s outdated “aappropriate management levels” or population targets. Only 362 wild horses are allowed to graze in Sand Wash Basin, yet a staggering 12,026 sheep and 300 cattle are allowed to graze in three allotments there at various times throughout the year.

There are a measly 1,516 wild horses left in Colorado on 365,988 acres of land, according to the BLM’s 2025 program data. The fact that the state is now paying the federal government to deploy paid professional darters to expand its birth control darting program in lieu of violent helicopter roundups may make it look like Gov. Jared Polis is listening to public concerns. But the truth is, Colorado’s wild horses are being managed to extinction. A model for the West? It should be anything but...

Read more here:
https://www.dailycamera.com/2025/08/18/wild-horses-grazing-cattle-blm-land-populations/

Feds plan to remove all wild horses from 2.1M acres of Wyoming’s ‘checkerboard’ starting in July

(Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

Wyofile.com - Full Article

Complete removal of nonnative equines from the Great Divide Basin, Salt Wells Creek and the northwest portion of the Adobe Town herd management areas still faces a public review process and legal appeal.

by Mike Koshmrl
April 1, 2025

The Bureau of Land Management’s contentious plans to remove all free-roaming horses from vast reaches of southwest Wyoming’s “checkerboard” region could begin as soon as this summer, although a legal appeal to stop roundups remains in limbo.

On Monday, the federal agency released a 47-page environmental assessment outlining plans to gather and permanently remove several thousand wild horses from 2,105 square miles — an area nearly the size of Delaware — managed by BLM’s Rock Springs and Rawlins field offices. Horses would come off an additional 1,124 square miles of private land within the checkerboard. A public review period is underway with comments due by April 30. If the BLM greenlights the round-ups, they could begin within the next three months and continue for a couple of years, possibly longer.

First to go would be the estimated 1,125 free-roaming horses in the Salt Wells Creek herd and 736 animals in the northwestern portion of Adobe Town, according to BLM Rock Springs Field Office Manager Kimberlee Foster. Then in 2026, horse-removal crews would move on to eliminating an estimated 894 horses in the Great Divide Basin herd...

Read the rest here:
https://wyofile.com/feds-plan-to-remove-all-wild-horses-from-2-1m-acres-of-wyomings-checkerboard-starting-in-july/

Idaho wildfires burned most food in wild horses’ habitats, prompting emergency roundup

MSN.com - Full Article and Video

Story by Nicole Blanchard

The Bureau of Land Management’s Boise office announced Monday that it will gather nearly 100 mustangs from Southwest Idaho rangeland after wildfires burned the vegetation the wild horses need to survive.

In a news release, officials said the Owyhee and Four Rivers field offices would begin an emergency roundup next week. They plan to gather about 40 mustangs from the Sands Basin Herd Management Area near Marsing and about 50 from the Four Mile area north of Emmett.

BLM officials said there is not enough vegetation in either area to support the current mustang populations.

According to the news release, both herd management areas were “nearly completely burned” by lightning-caused fires. The Jump Fire, which ignited near Jump Creek in Owyhee County on Aug. 5, burned nearly 26,000 acres. That include a large swath of the 11,700-acre Sands Basin mustang habitat, which BLM officials said can support between 33 and 64 horses.

The Paddock Fire, which started during the same thunderstorm, burned nearly 190,000 acres. Some of that included the 18,800-acre Four Mile Herd Management Area, which can support between 37 and 60 horses...

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/idaho-wildfires-burned-most-food-in-wild-horses-habitats-prompting-emergency-roundup/ar-AA1p4Oil?ocid=weather-verthp-feeds&apiversion=v2&noservercache=1&domshim=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1&batchservertelemetry=1&noservertelemetry=1

Wild horses' fate is poised for US appeals court showdown

Reuters.com - Full Article

By Jenna Greene
September 16, 2024

Sept 16 (Reuters) - It’s hard not to be moved by the beauty of wild horses galloping across a western plain, hooves pounding and manes flying. Little wonder such images are featured in ads selling everything from beer to homeowner’s insurance. But where some see wild horses as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West,” as Congress put it in a 1971 law, opens new tab protecting the animals, others decry them as pests -- voracious grazers that reproduce rapidly and compete with livestock for forage on unfenced tracts of private land.

A showdown over the fate of wild horses in Wyoming and beyond is looming at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mustang advocates are challenging a recent lower court decision they say will allow, opens new tab the federal government to decimate the free-roaming herds, rounding up nearly 5,000 animals and warehousing those that are not adopted in long-term holding facilities.

The Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, “is trying to pull a fast one” in seeking to remove the horses from vast swaths of public land intermixed with private parcels, said Bruce Wagman, of counsel at 100-lawyer Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila.

Working at a reduced “low bono” rate on behalf of clients including wild horse conservation group Return to Freedom, Wagman told me that given the ever-growing mustang population, “We’re past the point where we can just say ‘Leave them alone...’”

Read more here:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/column-wild-horses-fate-is-poised-us-appeals-court-showdown-2024-09-16/

Wild Horses Find Sanctuary at Skydog Ranch in Oregon

BendSource.com - Full Article

Over 300 wild horses and 50 burros saved after their capture now call 9,000 acres of breathtaking, rugged land in Prineville home

By Tiffany Neptune

Witnessing a wild horse run free is an experience unlike any other, but these sights are more rare as more horses are captured from their lives in the wild. As uncertain fates await those still roaming the American West as well as the mustangs and burros already detained, some, like the hundreds who graze the lands of Skydog Ranch & Sanctuary, are given another chance at life.

Upon learning more about the branded neck of her second horse, a mustang named Buddy, Clare Staples mounted a personal campaign to educate herself about mustangs in the West to understand exactly why the wild horse (mustang), population continues to diminish and what is ultimately happening to them. That led her to found Skydog, creating a wild haven for horses and donkeys (burros), to escape neglect, starvation, abuse and death.

As a child, "I would run away to the stables and take care of these horses and muck all day just to be able to be around them. I would breathe them in and bury my face in a horse's neck and everything would be OK," Staples said, recounting her less-than-happy childhood.

Taking stock of her life at 50, Staples realized she sought more than material grandeur, sharing, "I really felt like being of service and having a purpose were the keys to a happy life and a joy that was more sustainable." She effectively turned away from a glamorous Malibu, California, existence, dedicating everything to reunite wild horse families and save equines in need...

Read more here:
https://www.bendsource.com/news/wild-horses-find-sanctuary-at-skydog-ranch-21079421

Permanent Sterilization of America’s Wild Horses Proposed

Horse-canada.com - Full Article

Leading conservation organization American Wild Horse Conservation has raised alarms about the latest federal budget proposal.

By: American Wild Horse Campaign | March 15, 2024

American Wild Horse Conservation is sounding the alarm over the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Fiscal Year 2025 budget request seeking $170,917,000 to fund its Wild Horse and Burro Program. This marks a $29 million increase over FY 24 appropriated levels, with $15 million allocated toward a mass permanent sterilization program, including 20 new full-time employees for its implementation.

The proposal, outlined in the BLM’s Budget Justification for FY 25, was released days after Congress cut the BLM’s FY 2024 budget by $5.9 million while preserving $11 million in 2024 funding for reversible, humane fertility control implementation.

“Permanent sterilization contradicts the BLM’s legal mandate to protect America’s wild horses in self-sustaining, free-roaming herds. It also disregards Congressional directives to implement a robust and humane fertility control strategy of reversible immunocontraceptive vaccines,“ said Suzanne Roy, Executive Director of AWHC. “The BLM should deliver on existing commitments to expand humane fertility control, rather than waste Congress’ time and taxpayer resources on a far-fetched scheme to destroy the nation’s wild horse and burro populations by mass sterilization...”

Read more here:
https://horse-canada.com/horse-news/permanent-sterilization-americas-wild-horses-proposed/

BLM Announces More Than 8,000 Wild Horses and Burros Found New Homes in Fiscal Year 2023

GoldRushCam.com - Full Article

Published: Saturday, 25 November 2023

November 25, 2023 - WASHINGTON, D.C. — As part of the Bureau of Land Management’s efforts to manage and protect wild horses and burros on public lands, the agency and its partners helped place 8,045 wild horses and burros into new homes in Fiscal Year 2023, saving approximately $181 million in taxpayer money.

“Giving a good forever home to a wild horse or burro is not only a rewarding experience, but it helps support our efforts to keep the wild herds and their habitat healthy on public lands,” said BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning. “I am incredibly grateful and humbled by those who choose to adopt a wild horse or burro.”

Of the wild horses and burros placed into new homes, 6,220 animals were adopted, 1,798 were sold and 27 were transferred to other government agencies. This is the second-highest number of animals placed into new homes in over 25 years...

Read more here:
https://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/index.php/news/local-news/51755-blm-announces-more-than-8-000-wild-horses-and-burros-found-new-homes-in-fiscal-year-2023