Roundup brings in hundreds of wild horses

Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2000 | 10:32 a.m.

Bureau of Land Management spokesman Mark Struble said Wednesday the roundup, which began last week, will continue for another two weeks or until numbers of remaining horses in the area are down to about 800.

As horses are captured, some are being shipped to adoption centers and others, typically older horses that aren't likely to be adopted, are going back on the range.

Any mares that are turned loose are first getting injections of PZP, a birth-control vaccine that's supposed to last two years.

Struble said the horse total in the area prior to the start of the roundup had been estimated at more than 1,400. If about 600 are removed, he said that would leave a remaining horse count that the land could handle.

Cattoor Livestock Roundup of Nephi, Utah, is using helicopters to gather the horses in the isolated region, 60 miles east of Fallon, and drive them into temporary corrals.

Two wild fires burned more than 7,800 acres in the Clan Alpine area last summer, and Struble said the roundup is necessary "to reduce the grazing pressures on the non-burn areas ... and to facilitate recovery of the burned areas that will be reseeded with perennial vegetation."

Struble added that the birth-control vaccine is being used as part of a research project under the supervision of major universities. The drug has been used successfully on other species such as deer.