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 Yet the Bureau of Land Management insists the area can sustain just 235 wild horses based on BLM’s outdated “aappropriate management levels” or population targets.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/