A BLM research project on the feasibility of spaying feral mares has been halted by court injunction, following opposition from wild horse groups.
Judge Michael Mosman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon granted plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction against the BLM feasibility study ahead of its Nov. 5 start date. Plaintiffs included the Cloud Foundation and the American Wild Horse Campaign.
In written court documents, plaintiffs asserted they submitted “a request for a licensed equine veterinarian to observe and record these controversial experiments” to assess “whether BLM’s experimental wild horse sterilization method is feasible and socially acceptable, through public dissemination of footage and/or first-hand accounts of BLM’s experiments.”
Plaintiffs claimed their requests were denied by the BLM in violation of the First Amendment, and that the denial was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act.
The defendant BLM, in its counterargument, claimed the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights were not infringed because “there is no First Amendment right to access and observe the [spay] procedure.” It also noted that, while not legally required to, “BLM has provided the public with an opportunity to observe the procedures.”
Mosman did not issue a written opinion but ruled in agreement with the oral arguments of the plaintiffs.
Spay study
The study halted by this injunction was a relatively new one. It was proposed Sept. 12, following the injunction of a previous, almost identical study proposed in 2016. That earlier study was also enjoined on First Amendment grounds.
According to court documents, the new study would have gathered all horses from the Warm Springs horse management area (HMA), located roughly 20 miles southeast from Burns, OR. Of the total, 200 horses would be selected for the study. The study horses would be held at the Oregon Wild Horse Corral Facility in Hines, OR. Horses not selected for the study would have been “prepped for the adoption and sale program.” Feral horses made available for adoption are surgically sterilized.
Of the 200 study horses, half of them would be held as the control, and the other half would be the treatment group. Adult mares in the treatment group—estimated at about 28-34 head—would be spayed using the ovariectomy by colpotomy method.
Following the procedure, spayed mares would be observed three times a day for any signs of complications. After a week, the control group would have been returned to one half of the HMA, and after 10 days, the treatment group would have been returned to the other.
The specific spay procedure was a particular sticking point. Plaintiffs repeatedly referred to the study and the spay procedure in particular as inhumane, this being the motivation for the request to observe and record it.
“This highly invasive procedure involves a surgeon reaching into the mare’s abdominal cavity through an incision in the vaginal wall to locate her ovaries by touch—without any instrument to visualize her internal organs—and then severing the ovaries with a loop of chain to remove them.”
The BLM’s description of the procedure differed greatly, saying it “involves placing a mare in a working chute, sedating her, making an approximately 1-3-centimeter incision in the vagina, injecting a local anesthetic near each ovary, and using a mechanical device called a chain ecraseur to remove each ovary.” The BLM additionally described the procedure as “a common procedure performed on domestic mares.” — Kerry Halladay, WLJ editor
