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/
No comments:
Post a Comment