A federal judge has sided with the Bureau of Land Management in a more than decadelong case involving a plan to drastically reduce the number of wild horses across millions of acres of public-private lands in southern Wyoming.
The court order issued Wednesday by Judge Kelly Rankin of the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming authorizes a plan BLM finalized last year to reduce wild horse populations in the region to comply with an April 2013 legal settlement with ranchers who demanded the bureau remove stray animals encroaching on their private property.
A coalition of wild horse and conservation advocates last year challenged BLM’s decision to remove two herd management areas (HMAs), significantly scale back a third and leave a fourth area intact.
BLM approved the plan last year as part of a legal settlement with the Rock Springs Grazing Association, which had sued BLM demanding that the bureau remove hundreds of wild horses that were grazing on its property within a roughly 2 million-acre federal grazing allotment in southern Wyoming. The checkerboard pattern of land ownership made fencing difficult, and thus BLM could not keep the wild horses on federal lands.
