Stallions on the Salt Wells Creek Herd Area. Photo by Meg Frederick.
The Bureau of Land Management has moved a planned helicopter roundup of 1,922 wild horses in southwest Wyoming to Aug. 25.
The roundup was to take place on July 15 at Salt Wells Creek and Great Divide, two Herd Management Areas totaling 1.95 million acres the BLM took away from wild herds under a disputed 2023 amendment to a Resource Management Plan for the region.
The agency intends to go forward with another helicopter roundup affecting another Herd Management Area in the same region, Adobe Town, on July 15. It plans to capture and remove 1,675 wild horses from their home range.
Under the Resource Management Plan change, the BLM reduced the number of wild horses it would allow on the 478,000-acre Adobe Town HMA from a maximum of 800 to 450.
Return to Freedom, Front Range Equine Rescue and wild horse photographers Meg Frederick and Angelique Rea sued over the Resource Management Plan changes, which benefits private ranchers in the region’s Checkerboard: an unfenced area of alternating blocks of public and private land set up in the 1860s.
The BLM’s stated primary reason for taking land out of wild horse use: it is difficult to create a barrier between public and private lands there.
Last August, a federal district court judge ruled that the BLM did not violate the law when it amended the Resource Management Plan. RTF, Front Range, Frederick and Rea appealed and are now awaiting a decision from 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The BLM does not plan to treat and release any of the Adobe Town wild horses with proven, safe and humane fertility control. Doing so would slow reproduction without stopping it, reducing the frequency and size of future roundups there.