A contractor’s helicopter pursues wild horses during a 2016 roundup at Devils Garden Plateau Wild Horse Territory. RTF filed photo.
Update: The U.S Forest Service has captured 198 wild horses and killed six in an ongoing helicopter roundup on the Devil’s Garden Plateau Wild Horse Territory in Northern California.
The USFS lists the deaths as “chronic,” meaning that the horses were put down after being captured for unspecified pre-existing conditions.
The agency plans to capture and remove 350 wild horses.
Devil’s Garden is a 258,000-acre territory just north of Alturas, Calif., mainly on Modoc National Forest land.
The recent history of what had been California’s last large remaining wild horse herd is a tragic example of government mismanagement of America’s wild horses through capture and removal:
In February 2016, the USFS estimated that there were 2,246 adult wild horses there based on an aerial survey.
Since then, the agency has removed wild horses every year — just over 3,700 wild horses in all now — in an attempt to reach its own target of 206-402.
By comparison, the USFS permits 26,880 Animal Unit Months of seasonal livestock grazing at Devil’s Garden, the equivalent of 2,240 cow-calf pairs annually, under a federal multiple-use mandate.
There were “more than 700” wild horses living in and around the territory as of last year, the USFS said before the roundup. The first 37 captured this year were lured by feed or water into traps made of livestock panels.
Proven, safe and humane, fertility control can slow herd growth without stopping it, reducing the frequency and size of controversial and deadly roundups — even eliminating removals as a primary management tool — but only if this readily available tool is used properly and robustly.
In 2017, USFS treated 52 Devil’s Garden mares with fertility control, then released them.
It has treated none since.