Wyoming roundups will go on this year

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Faced with protests from Wyoming officials, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has agreed to proceed with rounding up wild horses in the state this week rather than waiting until next year.

Alan Rabinoff, acting Wyoming state director of the BLM, issued a statement on Wednesday saying that the agency would proceed with the planned roundups of approximately 725 wild horses in the White Mountain and Little Colorado herd management areas near Rock Springs beginning on Friday.

“We try to balance meeting emergency needs like the critical situation facing wild horses in Nevada and the long-term management of wild horses in Wyoming and throughout the nation,” Rabinoff said.

Rabinoff’s comments mark a reversal for the BLM.

Robert Bennett, director of the BLM in Wyoming, last month wrote to Gov. Dave Freudenthal stating that the cost of taking care of sick wild horses in Nevada would delay planned roundups in southwestern Wyoming.

Bennett noted that federal land managers have shut down temporarily the National Wild Horse and Burro Center in northern Nevada as a preventive measure in response to an outbreak of salmonella among horses there. He said the BLM was faced with removing over 2,200 horses from five herd management areas in Nevada to prevent a recurrence.

Freudenthal and the state’s congressional delegation fired back letters to the BLM demanding that the agency proceed with the scheduled Wyoming roundups this year. The state has long been concerned that wild horses consume forage that would be better used to support wildlife and livestock.

Freudenthal noted in his letter to Bennett that the BLM had signed a 2003 consent decree a few years ago to settle a federal lawsuit brought by the state over wild horse management. The agreement requires BLM to remove horses when herds exceed certain limits. The governor said the state would consider legal action.

Freudenthal spokeswoman Cara Eastwood said Wednesday, “Gov. Freudenthal is pleased that the planned wild horse gather in Wyoming will go forward, and he is glad that the agency is living up to its responsibilities under the 2003 consent decree. Clearly, the drought is impacting all of the Western states, which is why he weighed in so vehemently on the proposed redirection of funding from Wyoming.”

Steven Hall, spokesman for the BLM in Wyoming, said Wednesday that the BLM has been hampered by the fact Congress hasn’t approved a full budget for the fiscal year. He said the agency is limited to spending only a set percentage of what it received in the last budget every month.

Although Hall said the BLM at first believed that it couldn’t afford to stage the Wyoming roundups this year, he said that it has determined that it could afford to stage them. The agency says that it will cost about $300,000 to stage the roundups and another $500,000 to feed and care for the horses through the next fiscal year.

“We certainly heard the governor as well as the delegation and their concerns,” Hall said. He said the agency will also have enough money to address the wild horse situation in Nevada as well.

Hall has said there are about 4,100 wild horses in Wyoming. He said the BLM has set the desired number of horses in the state at between 2,700 and 3,700. Once the BLM rounds up excess wild horses, it puts them up for adoption.