An international animal rights group, The Friends of Animals (FoA), has filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) decision to reject its petition to list the Pryor Mountain wild horse population under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Montana, Billings Division, names defendants as Ryan Zinke, in his capacity as secretary of U.S. Department of Interior, Greg Sheenan, in his capacity as deputy director of the U.S. Department of Interior, and the USFWS.
The plaintiff, FoA, filed a petition on June 12, 2017 to list the Pryor Mountain wild horse population as a threatened or endangered distinct population segment. It claims the protection is necessary to protect the Old Spanish genetic lineage from going extinct.
The Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range was established in September 1968 and was the first public wild horse range established in the U.S. It covers 38,000 acres and straddles the Montana-Wyoming border including U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land; the BLM oversees horse-related activities.
The horses are believed to be descended from Spanish horses brought to the area by different Native American tribes, especially the Crow. This Old Spanish genetic lineage, the FoA says, was thought to have been temporarily extinct following the last Ice Age, before being reintroduced by Spanish settlers. The lineage is also believed to have been lost in Spain due to domestic breeding.
A press release from FoA says the group, through the lawsuit, is asking that “FWS actually issue a 90-day finding as required.”
Under the ESA, the government is supposed to consider a petition and make an initial finding within 90 days. However, meeting these deadlines is often missed due to a backlog of similar filings.
Ethan Lane, executive director of the Public Lands Council (PLC) and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Federal Lands, speculated that there might be a financial motive behind FoA’s actions. “Maybe the motive behind this is the Friends of Animals needed a fund-raising push and this seemed like a good way to do it.”
As previously covered in WLJ, some activist-type groups will file petitions, with limited timeframes for response and when the deadline passes they file lawsuits and ask for attorney fees to be paid through the Equal Access to Justice Act.
But to the larger issue at hand, Lane referred to the horses as “feral” instead of “wild” and said of the idea of listing them as an endangered species, “It’s the kind of idea that can only be conceived by incredibly misinformed people who are simply outside of the bounds of reality on this issue. So, while there is no such thing as a wild horse anywhere in North America, and the feral horses that we are dealing with are domestic horses—they are not a species that is native to Montana or anywhere else in the West.”
On April 6, PLC and NCBA called the lawsuit misguided. Dave Eliason, president of PLC, said, “The organizations pushing ill-conceived actions on feral horses are willfully ignoring the facts. The science is crystal clear: There are no wild horses in North America, and haven’t been for 10,000 years. If we continue to allow the least informed among us to lead the debate, the plight facing these feral horses will worsen and the health of our rangelands could be lost beyond repair.”
The ESA talks about preserving ecological or critical habitat of a species. With that in mind, WLJ asked Michael Harris, director of the wildlife law program at FoA, if preserving feral horses, which are known to damage habitat was counterproductive to preserving the range. He responded, “As for horses overpopulating the western landscape, I simply disagree. Horses are forced into small niches of some of the most undesirable habitats on our public lands. Why? Cattle of course.” He went on, “The total number of horses on public lands is dwarfed, many times over, by the number of cattle. Cattle of course take the best habitat. So, the overpopulation problem is a human problem.”
Lane also commented on the idea of range depredation due to horses, saying, “The fact is, there is a ton of science on this issue. It’s not a confusing issue; there aren’t two sides to it. The simple fact is, everywhere you have overpopulations of feral horses you have irreparable range damage, and degraded conditions. That is not the case where you have livestock grazing because livestock grazing is carefully managed.”
He added that when activist groups like this talk about the damage being done by cattle they further disconnect their cause from reality. He said throughout the West ranchers are sounding the alarm about the ecological damage the overpopulations of horses are causing. “These are the stewards of the land that have the highest motivation to have healthy rangeland — it’s how they make their living. So, this idea that we’re [ranchers] all out there overgrazing and it’s the majestic feral horses that are the endangered species is just absurd,” Lane said.
Harris also told WLJ he would like to see a better predator-wildlife balance, citing a study regarding the “amazing check” that mountain lions have on horses. He noted, “Of course, it is the ranchers that are opposed to predators as well.”
In an email response to WLJ, the Montana Stockgrowers Association (MSGA) said it is opposed to any potential listing of feral horses under the ESA, noting, “The ESA was created to provide protections for wildlife and these feral horses do not meet that criteria. The petition was rejected once, and we believe the conditions have not changed to warrant any further action.”
Commenting on range conditions, MSGA said, “Range conditions in the Pryor Mountain region have been negatively impacted due to overpopulation. NRCS [Natural Resources Conservation Service] has conducted a range study in that area which reported that the range conditions were declining due to feral horse overpopulation.”
Lane said the FoA’s pursuit of an endangered species listing for feral horses “diminishes the importance of the Endangered Species Act to all of those species that do need protection.”
It’s hard for us to take this seriously since it is so completely detached from reality, but the simple fact is, with these kinds of litigious court actions, you just simply never know what some of these courts are going to do. So unfortunately, we do need to take it seriously.” — Rae Price, WLJ editor
