Texarkana Gazette

Drought spurs extreme moves to protect West’s wild horses

- By Julian Hattem

SALT LAKE CITY—Harsh drought conditions in parts of the American West are pushing wild horses to the brink and spurring extreme measures to protect them.

For what they say is the first time, volunteer groups in Arizona and Colorado are hauling thousands of gallons of water and truckloads of food to remote grazing grounds where springs have run dry and vegetation has disappeare­d.

Federal land managers also have begun emergency roundups in desert areas of Utah and Nevada.

“We’ve never seen it like this,” said Simone Netherland­s, president of the Arizona-based Salt River Wild Horse Management Group. In May, dozens of horses were found dead on the edge of a dried-up watering hole in northeaste­rn Arizona.

As spring turned to summer, drought conditions turned from bad to worse, Netherland­s said.

Parts of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico are under the most severe category of drought, though extreme conditions are present from California to Missouri, government analysts say. Parts of the region have witnessed some of the driest conditions on record, amid a cycle of high temperatur­es and low snowmelt that appears to be getting worse, National Weather Service hydrologis­t Brian McInerney said.

The dry conditions have fed wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of buildings across the West. This month, a firefighte­r was killed battling a blaze near California’s Yosemite National Park.

The federal Bureau of Land Management—which oversees vast expanses of public land, mostly in the West—says the problem facing wild horses stems from overpopula­tion aggravated by severe drought. The region is home to roughly 67,000 wild horses.

“You’re always going to have drought issues. That’s a common thing out on the range,” agency spokesman Jason Lutterman said. “What really exacerbate­s things is when we’re already over population, because then you already have resource issues.”

The agency’s emergency roundup in western Utah began a week ago, aiming to remove roughly 250 wild horses from a population of approximat­ely 670. The operation is expected to take several weeks.

Once the horses are rounded up, the government gives them veterinary treatment and offers them for sale or adoption. Those that aren’t sold or adopted are transferre­d to privately contracted corrals and pastures for the long term.

A similar emergency roundup began this month in central Nevada, where officials said some horses in a herd of 2,100 could die from lack of water in coming weeks. The operation was quickly halted, ironically because of extreme rain, but will likely resume.

“The ground’s so dry it’s not absorbing that water. It’s running off,” bureau spokeswoma­n Jenny Lesieutre said. Volunteers are also taking action. Since late spring, Netherland­s’s Salt River group has hauled hay to a dozen locations outside Phoenix to feed a herd of starving wild horses.

Roughly 200 miles north, a couple near Gray Mountain, on the Navajo Nation, have spearheade­d an effort to leave water and food for horses they say would die without human interventi­on.

In western Colorado, volunteers say they’re preparing to bring up to 5,000 gallons of water per day to a herd of 750 thirsty horses.

“Springs are drying up that have never dried up,” said Cindy Wright, co-founder of Colorado conservati­on group Wild Horse Warriors for Sand Wash Basin.

Areas of the basin are low on food due to livestock grazing, so the group is hauling the water to others parts with more plentiful grass, said Aletha Dove, another group co-founder.

Wild horse advocates have balked at the Bureau of Land Management’s insistence that wild horse population­s are too high. Critics say the agency is using dry conditions as a smoke screen to shrink horse population­s in response to pressure from ranchers whose livestock compete with the horses for grazing land.

“I do have a concern about the larger numbers that they’re pulling off, and then a bigger concern about the BLM under this administra­tion using all kinds of excuses to pull off horses,” said Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Campaign, an advocacy organizati­on.

The agency is prohibited from euthanizin­g the wild horses it rounds up, though President Donald Trump has proposed allowing the animals to be killed or sold for slaughter.

 ?? Rick Bowmer/Associated Press ?? ■ Wild horses walk to a watering hole on June 29 outside Salt Lake City. Harsh drought conditions in parts of the American West are pushing wild horses to the brink and forcing extreme measures to protect them. Federal land managers have begun...
Rick Bowmer/Associated Press ■ Wild horses walk to a watering hole on June 29 outside Salt Lake City. Harsh drought conditions in parts of the American West are pushing wild horses to the brink and forcing extreme measures to protect them. Federal land managers have begun...

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