BLM to oust wild horses forever from “checkerboard” part of Wyoming

Bureau of Land Management moves to boot wild horses from public land to keep them from straying into private property

ROCK SPRINGS,  Wyoming—The Bureau of Land Management [BLM] on March 31,  2025 opened a 30-day public comment period on a plan to permanently remove wild horses from “newly converted herd areas of the former Great Divide Basin,  Salt Wells Creek,  and a portion of the Adobe Town herd management areas,”  amounting to about 3.3% of the state.

The horses are to be removed,  the Bureau of Land Management announcement said,  “to protect land health and resolve area management disputes” in a region of southwestern Wyoming stretching north from Colorado.

Boot waiting to fall since 2023

The proposed horse removal follows a May 8,  2023 Bureau of Land Management decision,  tied up in court for most of the time since, “to cease management of public lands for wild horses within the checkerboard land pattern of ownership area,”  meaning a region where about 1,124 square miles of land belonging to members of the Rock Springs Grazing Association are interspersed with 2,105 square miles managed by the Bureau of Land Management offices in Rock Springs and Rawlins.

“Proposed gathers are planned to begin in July 2025,”  the Bureau of Land Management announcement projected.

“Complete removal of nonnative equines from the Great Divide Basin,  Salt Wells Creek and the northwest portion of the Adobe Town herd management areas still faces a public review process and legal appeal,”  explained Mike Koshmrl for WyoFile.

Three-step removal process

The Bureau of Land Management strategy for the wild horse removal is detailed in a 47-page environmental assessment posted by the BLM on March 31,  2025.

“First to go,”  wrote Koshmerl,  “would be the estimated 1,125 free-roaming horses in the Salt Wells Creek herd and 736 animals in the northwestern portion of Adobe Town,  according to BLM Rock Springs field office manager Kimberlee Foster.  Then,  in 2026,  horse removal crews would move on to eliminating an estimated 894 horses in the Great Divide Basin herd.”

Reviewing preliminary information about the Bureau of Land Management wild horse removal scheme,  Koshmerl on August 16, 2024 explained that,  “The White Mountain Herd’s horses,  roaming the northern end of the region involved,  “are well known enough that they are being allowed to persist.  The BLM even advertises a scenic drive that winds through the heart of the herd management area. The plan is to maintain in the neighborhood of 205 to 300 horses in this region, which reaches from Rock Springs northwest to Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge.

15 years of lobbying & litigation

“The Adobe Town Herd, in the Red Desert,  is also being allowed to persist:  BLM plans call for 225-450 horses there,”  about 20% of the present number.

“The expectation is that 3,371 wild horses would be removed,”  Koshmerl explained,  “but the ultimate number could range from 2,500 up to 5,000,  according to the BLM.”

Summarized Koshmerl,  “The push to rid southwest Wyoming’s checkerboard region of free-roaming horses traces back 15 years.  The Wild Free-Roaming Horses & Burros Act of 1971 directs the Bureau of Land Management to “remove stray wild horses from private lands as soon as practicable upon receipt of a written request.”

The Rock Springs Grazing Association submitted such a request on behalf of members in the “checkerboard” area in 2010.

Ranchers won;  appeal pending

“Lawsuits from both the Rock Springs Grazing Association and wild horse advocacy groups,”  Koshmerl recalled,  alternately sought to expedite and delayed the requested wild horse removal,  with the Bureau of Land Management taking the side of the ranchers.

In August 2024,  U.S. District Court of Wyoming Judge Kelly Rankin,  “a Biden appointee,”  Koshmerl noted,  “ruled in the federal government’s favor.”

But the American Wild Horse Campaign,  the Animal Welfare Institute,  the Western Watersheds Project,  and private citizens Carol Walker,  Kimerlee Curyl,  and Chad Hanson in March 2025 appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Expecting to get the go-ahead from the appellate court,  the Bureau of Land Management is preparing to do the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek herd roundups,  the largest on the BLM 2025 schedule,  from July 15 through September 15.

“In regions of the Adobe Town herd area where horses are being allowed to persist,  there are plans to remove 2,179 horses — numbers that far exceed the [BLM-set]  ‘appropriate management level,’”  Koshmerl reported.

Possible precedent for wild horse removals throughout the west

But those plans could be stopped by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We have prevailed in the 10th Circuit previously on this issue,”  American Wild Horse Campaign executive director Suzanne Roy told Koshmerl.

“This would be the first time in the 54-year history of the Wild Horse & Burros Act,”  Roy said,  “that the BLM eliminated a herd management area and eradicated entire wild horse herds — two of them — when the agency itself concedes that the area has sufficient habitat for the horses.

“It has implications for wild horse protection across the West,”  Roy explained, “because if private landowners who have land adjacent to or within herd management areas are allowed to dictate the presence of wild horses on the public land,  that’s a very dangerous precedent.”

Wild horses vs. wildfires?

The southwestern Wyoming “eheckerboard region” slated for permanent removal of wild horse herds happens to be among the few parts of the state not ravaged by wildfires in 2024,  the second worst wildfire season in state history.

Altogether,  810,000 acres of Wyoming burned,  markedly more than in the previous bad fire years of 2012 and 2020.

That may attract comment from William E. Simpson II and Michelle Gough,  the wild horse researchers and directors of Wild Horse Fire Brigade,  a small nonprofit organization in the Siskiyou mountains of northern California,  just south of the Oregon border.

Simpson has been advocating deploying wild horses to graze down flammable grass and brush since 2018,  “after experiencing the beneficial results of wild horse grazing during the 38,000 acre,  wind-driven Klamathon Fire,”  he wrote to ANIMALS 24-7 in July 2023.

“Studied the behavior of wildfire in areas of different fuel loads”

“I was on the Camp Creek fire line for nine days as the local knowledge advisor to the California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection,”  Simpson said,  “and studied the behavior of the wildfire in areas of different fuel loads.

“My wife of 47 years,  Laura Simpson,  was killed by toxins in the smoke from the Klamathon Fire.

“Our local herd of wild horses,  the pilot Wild Horse Fire Brigade,”  Simpson argued,  “made the suppression efforts on the Klamathon Fire more effective via the large grazed-in fire breaks and safe zones in areas unsuited for livestock grazing.  The Cascade Siskiyou National Monument and the homes and towns beyond were spared incineration as a result.”

Judge rules against BLM adoption subsidy scheme

Meanwhile,  the American Wild Horse Campaign,  Skydog Sanctuary,  and Denver wild horse advocate Carol Walker on March 3,  2025 won a verdict from Judge William Martinez of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado in Denver which may significantly complicate all Bureau of Land Management wild horse removals by obliging the BLM to suspend a five-year-old scheme that pays adopters of untrained wild horses or burros $1,000 a head.

Program participants are allowed to adopt up to four untrained wild horses or burros per year,  and must keep the horses or burros for at least one year.

The idea,  officially,  is that the $1,000 subsidies encourage adopters to prepare wild horses or burros for use or resale to users.

But an American Wild Horse Campaign investigation,  followed by a New York Times investigation,  reported in 2021 that many participants were simply taking the Bureau of Land Management subsidies and trucking the horses to Mexico or Canada for sale to slaughter,  there having been no operating horse slaughterhouses in the U.S. since 2007.

BLM violated two federal laws

Judge Martinez found that the Bureau of Land Management violated federal law in starting the subsidy program by failing to conduct an environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970,  including public notification and a public comment period as specified by the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946.

The Bureau of Land Management indefinitely suspended the wild horse and burro adoption subsidy program following the Martinez ruling.  It may now either cancel the program or prepare a National Environmental Policy Act environmental impact report,  followed by public notification and a comment period.

Either way,  the subsidy program is likely to remain suspended for at least a year,  unless a higher court overturns the Martinez findings.

That leaves the Bureau of Land Management already holding as many as 70,000 wild horses removed from public lands in recent years,  with many thousands more to accommodate after the planned 2025 gathers.

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