Federal Government Plans to Eliminate Wild Horses from 2 Million Acres of WY Public Land

[teaser]Excerpted from an article on the Cloud Foundation.[/teaser]

A federal court in Wyoming is expected to rule imminently on a proposed settlement agreement between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Rock Springs Grazing Association (RSGA) that, if approved by the Court, would wipe out wild horses from the Wyoming Checkerboard, a two-million acre swath of public and private land in the southern part of the state. The settlement agreement, or Consent Decree, is in response to a lawsuit filed by the nation’s largest grazing association against the Interior Department. The settlement is vigorously opposed by the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, The Cloud Foundation and the International Society for the Preservation of Mustangs and Burros, who were granted intervenor status in the case.

“The Consent Decree, if approved, will have extreme consequences for the wild horses that are currently roaming free on the public lands of the Wyoming Checkerboard,” wrote attorney Katherine Meyer, of the public interest law firm Meyer, Glitzenstein and Crystal, in opposition to the proposed consent decree. “[T]he Decree proposes to entirely eliminate more than one-third of the current allowable wild horse population in the state. These are extreme measures that will not only negatively impact the Intervenors’ interests but will have long-standing and devastating consequences for Wyoming’s wild horses.”

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