A contractor’s helicopters drives wild horses toward the trap site at the Sand Wash Basin Herd Management Area in Colorado in 2021. Photo by Meg Frederick.
The Bureau of Land Management is set to begin a helicopter roundup of 182 wild horses in northern Nevada on Monday.
What’s being deemed an emergency roundup will be conducted in an area affected by the Jakes Fire, a wildfire that burned about 82,000 acres northeast of Winnemucca, Nev., last August. Limited forage has resulted to a decline in the condition of horses there, with body condition scores of 3-4 (thin to moderately thin) on a 9-point scale, the BLM said in a press release.
The roundup will be conducted on the Little Humboldt (90% of which burned, according to the BLM) and Snowstorm Mountain (6%) Herd Management Areas.
A BLM-estimated 272 wild horses roam the combined 134,000 acre areas. Snowstorm Mountain and Little Humboldt have a combined “Appropriate Management Level” of 138-220 horses.
That means that the number of horses that BLM intends to remove will put the Herd Management Areas below their agency-set population target.
Fire rehabilitation is listed among the reasons the BLM can reduce the number of horses below Appropriate Management Level, according the agency’s handbook.
Non-emergency roundups intended to reach the population targets and much of the BLM’s Wild Horse & Burro Program has been on hold since at least last fall’s government shutdown. The agency continues to care for and adopt out captured horses in off-range holding. Wild horses captured in the upcoming roundup will be sent to off-range corrals in Paradise Valley, Nev.
A lack of roundups provides only a temporary reprieve for wild herds. Past lulls have been followed by the agency calling for increased removals once funding became available.
Each day that the BLM delays the use of fertility control shown to be proven, safe and humane perpetuates the agency’s failed management by capture and removal. We strongly support the use of fertility control as a key tool to reduce the frequency and size of removals and replace them with minimally intrusive, on-range management.