Wild Horse Roundups Face Controversy, Law Suit

By Kathy Smith

Look back at our struggle for freedom,

Trace our present day's strength to its source;

And you'll find man's pathway to glory

Is strewn with the bones of a horse."

- Anonymous.

The website video of terrified, stampeding wild mustangs being rounded up with helicopters by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) contractors in Nevada is a sad example of the distance modern man has travelled from a time, just a few short decades ago, when the horse was mankind’s trusted and irreplaceable partner in work and life. The video shows a reckless chase seemingly without compassion for the ultimate plight of another living creature.

The pace at which wild mustangs are dying or being killed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) contractors in Nevada is alarming wild horse advocates. At least 11 horses have been killed, raising the death toll to 39 of the 1900 wild mustangs that have been forcibly removed from their native habitat in Nevada’s Calico Mountains by the BLM. The horses are chased for miles over difficult winter terrain, some sustaining terrible injuries such as broken legs and necks. Examiner.com reports that at least two foals have had their feet fall off, and upwards of 25 mares have spontaneously aborted due to the stress of the roundup.

The BLM plans to conduct similar wild horse “gathers” throughout the year until it has spent more than $32 million and captured 12,000 horses. The BLM website states that 1922 excess wild horses were removed, and that, “Thirty-nine horses have died since the gather began: seven at the gather site and 32 at the facility in Fallon. Most of the deaths were horses that were in extremely poor body condition because of the lack of forage on overpopulated rangelands.”

Examiner.com, states: “According to Elyse Gardner, one of the few intrepid onsite observers who are battling snow and frigid temperatures to document the suffering, BLM contractors are now making it increasingly more difficult for them to get close enough to really know what is happening to each individual horse. But this much is clear: healthy horses that were thriving in peace and in freedom in the Calico Mountains are being run into the ground. They are dying because men in helicopters are chasing them until their feet literally fall off. They are dying as accident victims when too many of them are herded into cargo holds or corrals.”

In her Humane Observer blog, Elyse Gardner dispels the BLM’s assertion that it is rounding up horses that would otherwise perish because they don’t have enough to eat. On the contrary, she says: “These horses were gorgeous and healthy. Again and again, I see how they know how to live in their habitat. These horses are not even close to starving. They are well muscled and beautiful. I am not close enough to document respirations and detailed sweat patterns or easily see leg or other injuries, but I can certainly see muscles and basic conformation.”

Examiner.com quotes Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of the U.S., describing the deaths from the current Calico roundup as “shameful” and “totally inconsistent with the proper and humane management of these populations.”

Associated Press reported on February 5th that a pending lawsuit will be filed against BLM by In Defense of Animals (IDA), a California-based international animal protection organization. IDA has retained a law firm to sue to “stop the BLM’s planned roundup of nearly 500 wild horses living in the Eagle Herd Management Area in Eastern Nevada.” The IDA says the scheduled roundup would leave just 100 horses behind to roam over 670,000 acres of public land. William Spriggs, lead counsel on the lawsuit, says the US Bureau of Land Management’s roundups traumatize, injure, and kill mustangs, and violate a 1971 law enacted by Congress to protect the horses.  He also represents California-based In Defense of Animals in a suit against the Interior Department over an ongoing roundup of about 2,500 mustangs in the Calico Mountain Complex north of Reno.

- with files from Associated Press, Examiner.com