Editor’s note: This story was originally published by Grand Junction Daily Sentinel and was shared via AP StoryShare.
On sagebrush-studded slopes and in sometimes-verdant valleys southwest of Meeker last week, wild horses calmly grazed, kept a watchful eye on young foals and occasionally raced after one another.
Mostly they seemed focused on eating, putting back on pounds after coming out of a difficult winter. The horses were oblivious to the very different future that soon likely lies in store for many of them, thanks to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s plan to remove hundreds of them from a landscape the agency says can’t support so many of them, especially in this time of drought.
The BLM wants to gather and remove 750 horses from its roughly 190,000-acre Piceance-East Douglas Herd Management Area, which generally lies southeast of Rangely, extending east to Piceance Creek outside Meeker.
It also hopes to treat another 200 with temporary fertility control drugs and release them back to the herd management area.
The plan is a controversial one, made more complicated by recent events. People on all sides of the issue of the BLM capturing and removing wild horses long have debated whether that’s best for the horses.
Now critics of such operations raise an additional argument, pointing to the deaths from disease earlier this year of 145 horses at a BLM holding facility in Cañon City, involving horses removed from west of Colorado Highway 139 southwest of Rangely last year.
Wild horses “are safer in the wild than they are being moved into a system that is clearly not coping with the horses it has,” said Scott Wilson, a Denver-based photographer who is a spokesperson for the American Wild Horse Campaign.
The BLM says that as of last year nearly 1,400 of the horses were in a herd management area where it has determined that 135-235 horses is the appropriate level.
With persisting drought and poor forage conditions, the BLM estimates that 45% of the animals came out of this winter malnourished or otherwise in poor health and, as a result, it accelerated its planned removal operation this year, which originally was scheduled for September. It already has launched an effort to use water/food as bait to trap horses in corrals for removal and, come mid-July, it hopes to begin using a helicopter to round up animals.
SUFFERING HORSES, LANDSCAPE
“We’re seeing suffering horses on a suffering landscape and we have to take action,” said Elijah Waters, Northwest District manager for the BLM in Colorado. He was speaking at a recent webinar on the gather operation and the Cañon City situation.
BLM officials worry about how the horses might fare next winter given their population level and the current forage and water conditions, especially if the winter is not a mild one.
Bill Mills, manager of the BLM’s White River Field Office, said during a tour of the horses’ terrain Tuesday that the BLM wants horses in the management area.
“We just want them to have a great chance of living happy, healthy lives,” he said during the tour, which included two journalists.
The Piceance Mustangs, a nonprofit group formed to work on behalf of the Piceance-East Douglas herd and help the BLM’s efforts there, supports the gather.
“We’ve seen our range deteriorating over the last two to three years because of the drought conditions,” said Kathy DeGonia.
She works as a nurse in Grand Junction, spends a lot of time at her daughter’s place in Meeker, and single-handedly put in nearly a third of the 3,300 volunteer hours the group has contributed over the last half year on fencing, water and myriad other projects.
“All you have to do is look at this dirt,” she said as she kicked up dust while visiting one of several wells in the herd management area during the tour.
The wells are a big draw for horses in a range with limited water. Some are operated by ranchers with permits to graze on the range, and Mills said permittees have been willing to operate wells for longer durations to benefit the horses.
DeGonia said her group also has gotten a few grants from the Clough Foundation in Rifle to refurbish some wells and install solar panels to power them.
DeGonia said last winter was the first when her group members were able to get out on roads on the herd’s range all year, even in winter, which “is not a good thing.” The roads should have been impassable from snow.
The dry conditions have persisted, she said. On some occasions this spring when Meeker has gotten rain or snow, the range has gotten no precipitation, she said.
She said horses “went from looking OK to looking very thin once the snowpack melted” this year.
Wilson said if 40% of the horses were malnourished in March, that’s not the case today. He toured the range extensively recently, and said he saw about 200 horses and maybe 10 or fewer were malnourished.
“I think the premise for this roundup has lost proportion. I think we need to get that back,” he said.
PEAK RANGE CONDITIONS?
Mills and DeGonia say the horses are benefiting from the annual green-up of the range, which doesn’t last long.
“This is the best you’re going to see (range conditions). It only goes downhill from here,” Mills said.
DeGonia said the horses are in the best shape they’re going to be this year right now.
“I don’t know what they’re going to be like in another month and half if we don’t have rain,” she said.
She said she supports the BLM starting sooner with its removal operation, so horses are removed when they are healthier.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis had called for a delay of the Piceance-East Douglas roundup, citing concerns over the deaths of the horses in Cañon City after an equine influenza outbreak. He told the BLM the roundup “is simply a risk not worth taking until such time as enhanced welfare standards and improved biosecurity measures are in place.”
U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Lafayette, also had called for a delay in the roundup while a review of what happened in Cañon City continues and until more information is forthcoming on how to prevent another outbreak.
The Cañon City facility has been under a quarantine since the outbreak, and the BLM says it plans to transport Piceance-East Douglas horses to a holding facility in Utah instead.
This week, attorneys representing Wilson’s organization wrote to the BLM asking it to conduct more environmental review before launching the helicopter roundup. The group cites concerns about conditions not just at the Cañon City facility but other sites including the Utah one.
And it also says a summer rather than September roundup poses a greater risk to foals because they are younger.
GREENER PASTURES
Dozens of wild horses were visible during the recent tour, but most were ones that had moved onto private land. Mills pointed to differences in forage levels between drier lands in the herd management area and greener private lands, often located in valleys where there also is more likely to be water.
“The horses are leaving the HMA in search of forage,” he said.
The BLM believes horses that appeared to be in the best condition this spring were feeding on private land.
At times that can result in situations such as horses grazing on land meant for livestock. When asked to do so by private landowners, the BLM is responsible for addressing issues involving wild horses on private land, and it has received requests to do so in the case of Piceance-East Douglas animals this year.
DeGonia said some people who visit the area don’t realize that a lot of places that are lush and green are private property.
“We’ve had people come out and say, ‘the range looks great, the horses are fat, there’s no need to gather.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, you’re not really looking at the range.”
But Wilson said there is a lot more green forage on public lands in the horse area than the BLM says is the case, and the unhealthy horses seen this spring were a normal seasonal phenomenon.
“It is normal for horses to look thin coming out of winter,” he said.
He said he’s not suggesting there is only healthy forage in the area now.
“I absolutely agree there are dry, arid areas,” he said.
Wilson said his group would support the humane baiting and trapping of unhealthy horses, but not the wholesale removal of healthy ones using helicopters.
GRAZING CONSIDERATIONS
The BLM says those holding grazing permits in the area have voluntarily reduced their grazing from 40% to 60% because of current conditions. Wilson said that’s a step in the right direction, but the grazing allocations there are disproportionately not in favor of wild horses and the range conditions all get blamed on them.
Mills, during the tour, stopped to point out one of at least 11 monitoring stations that were put up by the BLM in partnership with the White River and Douglas Creek Conservation districts. Cameras at the stations take pictures of horses, livestock and wildlife using the range, and information from April through November of last year showed that horses were consuming 80% of the forage, he said.
The BLM also notes that the horses, unlike livestock, use the range year-round.
Deirdre Macnab, a Rio Blanco County rancher who holds grazing permits in the horse area, said the issue isn’t cows versus horses.
She has begun pursuing the practice of regenerative agriculture, quickly moving her cows from one patch of land to the next so forage can recuperate and regrow. She said the year-round grazing by the current number of horses, particularly during these drought conditions, isn’t sustainable and the reduction in their numbers is necessary.
“Even if you took off all the livestock, the land would turn into a dust bowl if it was grazed by that number of horses every day of the year,” she said.
Macnab’s ranch is along Colorado Highway 64, the northern border for the horse range, and she said she primarily uses grazing acreage north of there rather than in the horse range because of how much that range already is being stressed.
Macnab has worked with the BLM to adopt wild horses, including an orphaned foal that showed up across the highway from her property this winter. She also is president of the Meeker Mustang Makeover, an annual contest involving people working to train wild horses that are then put up for auction/adoption.
It’s possible that horses used in next year’s contest could come from the Piceance-East Douglas area. Macnab emphasized that she loves having wild horses on the landscape.
“They just have to be managed according to what the wildlife biologists say is the correct number that the land can sustain,” she said.
Driving on her property Tuesday, Macnab stopped to chat with Jeremy Olsen, who oversees her cattle operation. He talked about seeing horses in poor condition on the range and coming across dead ones that don’t survive winters.
He said he also likes to see horses on the range, but reducing their numbers would benefit animals, the range, and people who use it, including recreationists and wildlife enthusiasts.
“When there’s too much of anything, it’s not good for anybody,” he said.
Tracy Scott helped found Piceance Mustangs and still is a dues-paying member, but these days she keeps busy running the Steadfast Steeds Mustang Sanctuary on Glade Park. She joined Wilson in recently visiting the Piceance-East Douglas horse area and said she thinks the BLM is jumping the gun with its removal operation.
“I think they need to take more time to process what’s happening up there because it’s not as bad as they make it look publicly,” she said.
Scott said wild horses don’t need as much feed as domestic ones. She said that in starting the sanctuary, she learned both from Colorado State University and a BLM official that a wild horse being adopted needs 20 acres to graze when not receiving supplemental feed.
That is some seven times less than how much acreage per horse is on the Piceance-East Douglas range, she said.
Even with some of that range being rock and dirt, it’s still a lot more acreage per horse, she said.
The BLM says it also manages that range for other purposes, such as grazing, habitat for wildlife such as big game and greater sage-grouse, and oil and gas infrastructure.
Scott is upset that the BLM simply is moving forward with the removal operation rather than trying to work with the state and wild horse advocates to collaborate on management approaches.
She also pointed to the possibility that range and water conditions soon could improve, which would work against the BLM’s argument for moving fast to remove horses.
“We could get rain and the water could fill up and the grass could grow. It could happen that quick,” she said.
She said that last year, by the time the BLM began removing wild horses from the Sand Wash Basin west of Craig, ponds there were full again from recent rain, which “caused a huge uproar” among horse advocates. The BLM removed hundreds of horses there, citing drought and lack of forage.
So far, this year’s removal operation at Piceance-East Douglas, which began June 16, is moving slowly. None had yet been captured as of Thursday.
When Mills stopped Tuesday at a trap station that had been set up with fences around a water site used as bait, he was surprised to see no horses in the vicinity, where they previously had been congregating.
“This is not good,” he said.
But by Thursday, the trap site was showing more promise again. BLM spokesman Chris Maestas said Thursday that horses had returned to the area. BLM crews have slowly been adding corral panels to let the horses acclimate to them. Maestas said the hope is to start trapping operations by Monday.
Mills said that would involve someone watching horses and remotely triggering a gate that would close when horses are inside. Care would be taken to prevent situations such as separating foals from their mothers, and crews would move in quickly to process captured horses.
Bait-trapping is by its nature a deliberate, slow-moving process that’s likely to net horses numbering in the dozens in total, not the hundreds, as is typical with helicopter-based operations.
Operations using helicopters also tend to draw more opposition from wild horse advocates, and the closer the BLM gets to sending ’copters up into the air at Piceance-East Douglas, the more the debate over its plans to sharply reduce horse numbers is likely to heat up.
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