Action Alert: Protect the Wild Horses of Wyoming’s Red Desert

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is accepting public comments on an environmental analysis (EA) of a massive helicopter roundup and removal of nearly 2,000 wild horses living in Wyoming’s Red Desert Complex, which includes the Antelope Hills, Crooks Mountain, Green Mountain, Lost Creek and Stewart Creek Herd Management Areas (HMAs). The action would leave behind just 480 horses on this 700,000-acre (more than 1,000-square-mile) public lands area!

The EA ignores over 6,000 public scoping comments submitted earlier this year calling for the humane management of Red Desert wild horses on the range with PZP fertility control, and for humane capture methods, instead of using helicopters to chase horses into holding pens. Alternative 2 — the Proposed Action in the EA — calls for removal of over 1,700 wild horses from the Complex — that’s 45% of the total estimated mustang population in the entire state — and includes the token application of PZP fertility control to just 23 mares. Alternative 1, a second alternative analyzed but not proposed in the EA, would more fully utilize fertility control and return more wild horses to the range, but would still permanently remove approximately 830 wild horses from the Complex. Both alternatives call for using traumatic helicopter capture methods.

It’s time to take a stand for Wyoming’s wild horses.  We must insist that the BLM stop ignoring the public andstart humanely managing the Red Desert wild horses on the range, allowing the horses within the HMAs to remain where they are on our public lands! The BLM should raise the “Appropriate” Management Levels (AMLs) for the Red Desert Complex wild horse populations. The BLM must fairly allocate range resources to ensure that wildlife — including wild horses — have a fair share of the forage on our public lands, rather than giving exorbitant resources to the privately-owned cattle and sheep operations.