BLM begins rounding up 100+ wild horses
The Bureau of Land Management removed 31 wild horses from the West Douglas Herd Area in its first day of operations Friday.
The agency plans to remove all of the 122 animals it found in the area during a recent count.
It is the first removal of horses from West Douglas since August 2021 when BLM gathered more than 400 and transported them to holding pens at its facility in Cañon City. There, 144 died over the course of several months due to an outbreak of disease. BLM attributed the deaths to a lack of staffing which delayed vaccinations.
Horses removed during the current West Douglas operation will be taken to the same facility.
The BLM has four wild horse management areas, and West Douglas is not one of them. But it does share a boundary with one. A faint one.
West Douglas and the Piceance-East Douglas Herd Management Area are divided by State Highway 139 south of Rangely in northwestern Colorado. There is little to no fencing along the approximately seven miles of highway dividing the open ranges, so horses are free to cross from one area to the other.
The BLM claims there are sufficient natural resources in the 190,000-acre Piceance-East Douglas area to support a herd of 135 to 235 wild horses, in addition to the deer, elk and other native wildlife that also rely on food and water there.
That's not the case with West Douglas, according to the BLM.
"The appropriate management level for the West Douglas Herd Area is zero wild horses," the agency stated in an announcement of the planned roundup. "The BLM has determined that the West Douglas Herd Area and other areas outside the Piceance-East Douglas Herd Management Area are not to be managed for wild horses because of the complex terrain and lack of summer range."
West Douglas's horses have instead started foraging and drinking water on adjacent private lands. That, coupled with overuse of the public range, requires their removal, the agency stated.
A helicopter is being used to drive the horses.
In Cañon City, BLM stated the horses would be evaluated and treated by veterinarians. Some would be selected for adoption. Those which were not chosen for adoption would be pastured.
RELATED New bill aimed to minimize controversial wild horse roundups and removals in Colorado to become law
Following the 2021 deaths in Cañon City, the Colorado legislature passed bill SB23-275. That created the Colorado Wild Horse Project. The organization is slated with supplementing federal efforts at wild horse and burro management, most notably through contraception.
Other than that, it is not known how the project's efforts will mesh the federal ones. The first meeting of Colorado Wild Horse Project's management group is in October.
Three of BLM's wild horse herd management areas - Piceance-East Douglas, Sand Wash Basin and Little Book Cliffs - are in northwestern Colorado. The fourth, the Spring Creek Basin HMA, is located in southwestern Colorado. That herd was created in the early 1900s by a rancher who abandoned stolen horses as law enforcement caught up to him, per the BLM.
