Photo taken on the Salt Wells Hard Area in Wyoming’s Checkerboard by Meg Frederick.
Last week, we suffered a heartbreaking setback in our battle for the future of Wyoming’s wild horses.
In a 70-page decision, district court Judge Kelly Rankin ruled that the Bureau of Land Management did not violate federal laws when it stripped 2 million acres from wild horse use in southwest Wyoming’s Checkerboard region.
The judge ruled against Return to Freedom, Front Range Equine Rescue and photographers Meg Frederick and Angelique Rea in a lawsuit that we brought against the BLM.
For well over a decade, Return to Freedom has been standing up for the herds of the Checkerboard against both the BLM and the powerful local ranchers who want the horses gone forever.
We are not giving up! We have appealed the court’s ruling and depend on supporters like you to help us carry on the fight.
The Checkerboard is made up of alternating one-square-mile blocks of unfenced public and private land set up in the 1860s.
The BLM amended its Resource Management Plan for the area in 2023, in large part because of an agreement it entered into with a powerful group of ranchers, the Rock Springs Grazing Association.
The BLM’s primary reason for taking land out of wild horse use: it is difficult to create a barrier between public and private lands there.
In a separate ruling, also issued Wednesday, Judge Rankin denied the ranchers’ request to force the BLM to immediately remove all of the Checkerboard’s wild horses or conduct a new management plan amendment process.
We entered that case along with Front Range, Frederick and Rea to oppose the grazing association’s demands, and successfully defeated the ranchers’ lawsuit.
The BLM began a helicopter roundup of 586 wild horses from the White Mountain Herd Management Area, also located within in the Checkerboard, a day after the court ruled.
Through Sunday, the BLM reported capturing 536 horses and putting down 10 for what it deemed pre-existing / chronic conditions.
The BLM’s goal is to reach the low end of an agency-set “Appropriate Management Level” of 205-300 wild horses within the 393,000-acre White Mountain Herd Management Area.
By comparison, the BLM permits ranchers to graze up to the annual equivalent 9,987 cow-calf pairs or 49,935 sheep on allotments that partly overlap White Mountain. Most are grazed seasonally.
STAND WITH WILD HERDS!
Before even finalizing its management plan changes, the BLM removed 3,502 wild horses from the Checkerboard in a three-month, $1.1 million helicopter roundup ending in early 2022.
The ongoing wipeout is unconscionable — but this battle extends beyond Wyoming.
Federally protected wild horses and burros must not be allowed to be removed from our public lands due to private landowner pressure or whole herds will vanish across the West.