Critics say feds using fire damage as excuse to round up horses

Scott Sonner

Thursday, Oct. 28, 1999 | 10:05 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - Animal protection activists are accusing federal officials of using wildfire damage as a smoke screen to evict hundreds of wild horses from their traditional rangeland in central Nevada.

The Bureau of Land Management says the herds of up to 1,500 mustangs and wild burros being rounded up by helicopters could starve because the fires burned up their food supply - more than 1 million acres of grass and brush.

But activists say enough grass survived to feed the herds, and the BLM just wants to get rid of the horses because ranchers see them as competition for livestock grazing forage.

"We're hoping the BLM will do the right thing and back down," said Jeanne Stuart McVey, a spokeswoman for the Petaluma, Calif.-based Animal Rights Defense Fund.

BLM officials said they would work with leaders of the defense fund but didn't plan to suspend the roundups.

About 400 horses have been rounded up so far.

Valerie Stanley, a lawyer for the defense fund in Rockville, Md., said the BLM appears to be violating the National Environmental Policy Act and the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burros Act. She said Wednesday the group is considering legal action.

The BLM failed to hold a required public hearing before using helicopters on the roundup, she said. The agency also failed to prepare an environmental assessment of the roundups, she said.

"BLM is not taking the requisite hard look at the environmental impacts of its proposed action," Stanley said in a letter to the BLM this week. "It is not at all clear that there is a biological need for BLM to respond to these fires by immediately removing very large numbers of wild horses."

Stanley questioned "whether these horses are being removed due to concerns for their well-being or whether the fires are being used as a pretext for BLM's efforts to pursue a long-term strategy of wild horse elimination from the public lands."

A biologist who examined the area said there was abundant water and forage for the wild horses.

"This prejudicial removal plan is aimed at the practical elimination of wild horses," Craig Downer said in an affidavit attached to Stanley's letter.

In response, Abbey issued a statement taking "exception to the questioning of BLM's motives .... Our goal is to have viable and healthy wild horse and burro herds on public lands in Nevada where resources can sustain them."

An estimated 40,000 wild horses roam the West, about half of them in Nevada. Roundups occur regularly to help guard against overpopulation and some mustangs are sold at auctions.

The emergency roundups began in Nevada last week and are to continue through next week in response to the fire damage. The horses captured in the past week were in Washoe County, Humboldt County and Elko County, as well as the hills surrounding Winnemucca, BLM officials said.

The activists want Abbey to halt the roundups, especially in the New Pass-Ravenswood Herd Management Area, in Lander County north of U.S. Highway 50 along the Churchill County line. About 500 horses are expected to rounded up there, with about 30 left behind to sustain the herd.