The Colorado Sun originally published this story on Sept. 10, 2024.
Federal land managers are set to begin Colorado’s fifth wild horse helicopter roundup in about three years Wednesday, part of a major effort to remove tens of thousands of mustangs from public lands across the West.
The operation at Little Book Cliffs near Palisade is expected to last about a week and result in the removal of about 100 wild horses, adding to the 2,100 animals that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has hauled off Colorado rangeland since 2021.
Each of the helicopter roundups — in which a contracted pilot and wranglers on horseback herd mustangs into temporary corrals — has riled wild horse advocacy groups and stretched tensions even further between the federal government and Colorado leaders.
American Wild Horse Conservation said Monday that the federal agency’s decision “rejects published science and persistent calls from the governor and state lawmakers to re-evaluate and delay the roundup in favor of in-the-wild conservation.”
Gov. Jared Polis and state lawmakers who created the Colorado Wild Horse Working Group last year had asked for a delay of the roundup pending “further analysis” and that the BLM at least use a slow-paced “bait and trap” approach, rather than chasing them with a low-flying helicopter.
Federal land managers responded in letters to the governor and state lawmakers that they would meet some of their demands, including allowing the state veterinarian to attend the roundup, to stop operations if there is excessive heat and to avoid roping the horses “unless necessary.”
However, BLM State Director Doug Vilsack rejected the governor’s requests to use fertility control instead of a roundup and, if the federal agency held a roundup, not to use a helicopter. After the agency gets the wild horse population under control, its plan is to “reduce the need for these larger-scale” efforts and control herd sizes through bait-and-trap operations and fertility darts, Vilsack wrote in the letter to the governor, which was released to The Colorado Sun.
The federal agency “is committed to the humane treatment of animals at each stage in this process,” Vilsack wrote. “The removal of some horses from the range this fall is a critical step in ensuring the success of fertility treatment programs. Science shows that wild horse populations can grow rapidly, reducing the effectiveness of fertility treatments in overpopulated areas.”
Hundreds commented on plan to gather 130 horses
The plan is to spend about a week in the rugged plateaus east of Grand Junction, capturing 130 horses. About 20 mares will receive birth-control vaccines. Of the 130 horses captured, wranglers will release about 30 back onto the range, giving consideration to genetic diversity and male-to-female ratio.
The BLM said it would consult with Friends of the Mustangs, a volunteer group that makes sure the horses have enough water in times of drought, as it determines which horses to haul off the range and send to holding pens. The BLM initially planned to remove 120 horses, but the final plan is to take 100.
The goal is to have a herd population that grows only 2% to 5% per year, stabilized between 90 and 115 horses, the BLM said. Horses that are 20 years old or older and not physically fit enough to survive the roundup would remain on the range.
More than 420 people, many of them advocacy groups and individuals who love wild horses, submitted public comment on the BLM’s plan during a 30-day public comment period this spring. The public is allowed to view the helicopter drive, from a distance.
Little Book Cliffs, one of four herd management areas in the state, is 36,000 acres of bunchgrass and sagebrush with limited water. Federal officials have determined it can support a maximum of 90-150 horses, though it now has an estimated 215.
The roundup at Little Book Cliffs is one of 13 operations in California, Wyoming, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado to remove 17,330 mustangs and burros from July to September. All of the operations involve helicopters except for an ongoing bait-and-trap effort to capture 45 animals from Sand Wash Basin in far northern Colorado near the Wyoming border. The federal agency removed more than 600 horses from Sand Wash with a helicopter three years ago.
Other recent helicopter roundups resulted in the removal of about 570 horses on West Douglas rangeland in 2021 and 2023, and about 820 horses from Piceance-East Douglas in 2022.
The West Douglas area is unsuitable for wild horses because of a lack of food and water, according to the BLM, which removed horses there after a wildfire in 2022 that destroyed much of the forage. On the Piceance-East Douglas, wild horses have moved onto adjacent private property in search of food and water, BLM spokesperson Steven Hall said.
And in Sand Wash, wild horses were devastating wildlife habitat, particularly for the greater sage grouse, he said. Greater sage grouse numbers have rebounded since the 2021 wild horse roundup, which also helped big game herds that share grasses with the mustangs, Hall said.
The BLM seems geared toward holding another helicopter roundup in the near future at Piceance-East Douglas, which has more than 600 horses. The appropriate number for that land is 130 to 230 animals, according to the agency. “Fertility control darting efforts alone will not result in a sustainable population, and rangelands and wildlife will continue to be impacted if herd size is not reduced,” Vilsack said in his letter to Polis.
Large sums are spent on the issue of wild horses
Polis and state lawmakers, frustrated after previous attempts to stop helicopter roundups, created the 23-member Colorado Wild Horse Working Group through Senate Bill 275. The group was given $1.5 million in state funds and a mandate to recommend “humane, nonlethal alternatives” for wild horse population control, including birth control.
The funds are helping pay for an expansion this spring of a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to shoot mares with fertility darts, including at Little Book Cliffs. “I am confident that we can succeed together in implementing the most robust fertility control darting program in the nation,” Vilsack said.
Among the state group’s other goals is to establish a permanent sanctuary for wild horses removed from Colorado rangeland.
The BLM’s Vilsack said he was confident the state working group “will soon make recommendations to address this issue in the future.” As for the mustangs removed from Little Book Cliffs, they will go to temporary holding pens on state prison grounds in Cañon City and then up for adoption during a June event in Grand Junction, the agency said.
Colorado, which has four mustang herd management areas on about 400,000 acres, should have no more than 827 animals, the BLM says. The current count is more than 1,300.
The federal agency says that 0.4% of wild horses die during roundups because of acute causes and that the mortality rate is slightly higher for bait-and-trap operations than it is for helicopter drive-and-trap operations.
Wild horse advocacy groups question why the federal agency wants to add more horses to its holding pens, which now have 63,000 mustangs nationwide. The facilities cost taxpayers $108 million last year, according to American Wild Horse Conservation’s testimony against the BLM roundup.
“The BLM is setting aside a genuine opportunity to act on two years of bipartisan progress made in Colorado to manage wild horses differently and to stimulate an improved and more cost-effective national model,” spokesperson Scott Wilson said via email this week. “Little Book Cliffs wild horses do not share their range with livestock, so there is no immediate need to remove wild horses and take numbers to an unreasonably low level.”
