Huge wild horse roundup facing strong opposition

SPARKS, Nev. – Dozens of wild-horse advocates plan to go before a federal advisory panel here on Monday to try to persuade public land managers to change their plan to relocate thousands of free-roaming mustangs from the West to preserves elsewhere.

They plan to press the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board for alternatives to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s plan to move about 25,000 mustangs to preserves and pastures in the Midwest and East. They insist the plan is based on faulty government data that exaggerates the damage the horses do to the range, as well as the extent to which they are suffering from a lack of forage.

Horse defenders have stepped up their efforts in recent weeks, suing to block a proposed roundup of 2,700 horses in northern Nevada and lining up the support of celebrities such as Sheryl Crow, Lily Tomlin, Bill Maher and Ed Harris.

Crow took her concerns directly to Salazar in a telephone call this past week.

“One of the first things he said was something must be done because the horses are starving. We (advocates) don’t believe it,” Crow said in an interview with the Associated Press.

“Part of the problem is the information he’s getting is skewed,” she said. “My main concern is that the horse numbers not be dwindled down to the point where they can become extinct. I think he’s very concerned about it as well.”

Salazar made no commitment on ending the roundups, but he pledged efforts to have a horse advocate appointed to the advisory board, which has been less than supportive of the cause in the past, she said.

Ginger Kathrens, executive director of the horse advocacy group Cloud Foundation based in Colorado Springs, Colo., said advocates believe the BLM’s figure of 37,000 horses in the wild is grossly inflated.

Kathrens said her group’s own analysis indicates there may be only 15,000 horses on the range, and she fears herds will no longer be healthy and genetically viable if too many horses are removed.

She’s calling for an independent audit to determine the actual number of mustangs both in the wild and in holding facilities.

BLM spokesman Tom Gorey said a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office last year found his agency was undercounting mustangs.

“There’s no evidence for the (advocates’) position. It’s mere speculation,” Gorey said. “We’re certainly open to refining our counting techniques, but there’s no indication an outside audit is needed.”

Gorey said his agency removes horses before they become starving as part of its “proactive management on the range.”

“The fact that there would be horses not in emaciated conditions is not surprising,” he said. “We’re not going to manage them in a way so they can get to that point.”

BLM officials said they plan to remove 11,500 wild horses and burros from the range throughout the West over each of the next three years because booming numbers of the animals are damaging the range.

The agency has set a target “appropriate management level” of 26,600 of the animals in the wild, about 10,000 below the current level. An additional 32,000 of them are cared for in government-funded holding facilities.

Critics argue that the real motivation for ongoing roundups of the mustangs – and Salazar’s proposal to ship thousands to preserves in the Midwest and East – is pressure from ranchers who don’t like the horses competing with their cattle for food.

The animals are managed by the BLM and protected under a 1971 law enacted by Congress. Soaring numbers of horses and costs to manage them – expected to jump from $36 million last year to at least $85 million by 2012 – have prompted a new approach, Salazar said.