BLM to study Pickens’ wild horse plan
Excerpted from an article by Scott Sonner for the Associated Press.
RENO — Federal land managers agreed Thursday to spend the next two years studying a proposal by the wife of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens to establish an eco-sanctuary for nearly 1,000 wild horses across more than 900 square miles of Nevada.
The Bureau of Land Management will conduct a formal environmental assessment of proposal offered by Madeleine Pickens and her non-profit group, Saving America’s Mustangs, as a way to minimize the need to round up excess animals on the public range, BLM Director Bob Abbey said.
The agency also will analyze potential economic and social effects of the reserve that would stretch across more than 580,000 acres of mostly public and some private property Pickens recently bought south of U.S. Interstate 80 between Wells and the Utah line.
Under the proposal, Saving America’s Mustangs would improve and maintain fencing and water wells and oversee management of the eco-sanctuary horses, which would remain under federal ownership.