Bachelor stallions playing on the Sand Wash Basin Herd Management Area. Photo by Meg Frederick.
Return to Freedom applauds Colorado Reps. Monica Duran and Ty Winter and Sens. Janice Marchman and Larry Liston for taking a bipartisan approach to passing proactive wild horse protection legislation. Thank you to Gov. Jared Polis for signing the bill and continuing his active support for his state’s wild horses. We have long advocated for the use of proven, safe and humane fertility control as a key tool for slowing herd growth in order to eliminate management by capture and removal. We urge the Bureau of Land Management, which has oversight of Colorado’s Herd Management Areas on federal land, to embrace the state’s support for fertility control and help create a model program that can be replicated elsewhere.
As published by Colorado Politics
Thursday was bill-signing day for animals in Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis signed measures addressing bison, wild horses, and animals threatened during emergencies, such as wildfires.
But the star of the day was Jewel, a 13-year-old American miniature horse who joined in the signing festivities at the CSU Spur at the National Western Stock Show grounds. According to her handler, she’d just had a bath and a good roll in the dirt and was ready for the rest of her day.
Jewel is a therapy horse, one of 14 housed at the Spur as part of its equine therapy program. Clients brush, groom, and handle Jewel for occupational, physical, and psychological therapy.
With Jewel at his side, Polis signed House Bill 25-1283, which continues the state’s efforts to help the Bureau of Land Management with Colorado’s wild horse population. Colorado’s efforts include fertility treatments rather than rounding them up and sending them to Cañon City. In the past, those roundups have led to outbreaks of equine influenza, which in 2022 killed 146 horses at the Cañon City facility.
The bill follows recommendations from a wild horse working group from 2023 and repeals the state-owned, nonprofit Wild Horse Project previously under the Colorado Department of Agriculture. Instead, the ag department will take on a more active role, including hiring eight professional “darters” who will administer contraceptives to wild horses to help reduce the population in the four BLM-controlled Herd Management Areas and other parts of the state.
While the bill identifies gifts, grants, donations, and money from the federal government as the primary funding sources for the program, the General Assembly approved $1.5 million for the project in 2023, and it still has about $500,000 left.
Polis noted he’s been critical of the costly and sometimes inhumane federal roundups in the past. “We know if we have the ability as a state, we can do better” in successfully managing the population and in a less expensive way.
House Majority Leader Monica Duran, D-Wheat Ridge, said, “Wild horses embody the essence of Colorado.” She added that HB 1283 represents extensive collaborative work involving diverse interests: ranchers, wild horse advocates, conservation groups, federal agencies, and state departments to address the complex challenge of managing these iconic animals. The bill was co-sponsored by House Assistant Minority Leader Ty Winter, R-Trinidad, and Sens. Janice Marchman, D-Loveland, and Larry Liston, R-Colorado Springs.