Two Nevada ranches are suing the feds for their failure to remove feral horses from several public land allotments, claiming overpopulation and rangeland damage.
In an Oct. 17 suit, Colvin & Son LLC, and Stone Cabin Ranch LLC, argue the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is in violation of the Wild and Free Roaming Horses & Burro Act of 1971 regarding the Stone Cabin Complex in the state of Nevada. The ranches contend there is an overpopulation of feral horses on the allotments within the herd management areas (HMA), and the feds have a duty to remove the excess horses per a wild horse management plan.
The Stone Cabin Complex contains nearly 890,000 acres and is guided by the Stone Cabin Complex Wild Horse Gather Plan. The BLM’s environmental assessment published in April earlier this year calls for three specific management actions over the next 10 years: gather and remove excess wild horses, apply population growth suppressants and conduct additional gathers to bring population numbers back down if they grow.
The ranches claim the feds have yet to actually implement the plan, therefore violating the Wild and Free Roaming Horses & Burro Act of 1971. This violation, the ranchers say, is causing harm to their operations, public lands, wildlife species and their habitats, and to the wild horses themselves.
The lawsuit contends the Wild and Free Roaming Horses & Burro Act requires excess animals to be removed immediately, and that the complex’s management plan did not include authority to condition the immediate removal of excess horses. BLM claimed horses could not be gathered due to full off-range corrals, but the lawsuit argued off-site conditions have nothing to do with the BLM’s responsibility to immediately remove excess horses.
Complex background
The Stone Cabin Complex is located just east of Tonopah, NV, and includes the Stone Cabin HMA and the Saulsbury HMA, along with some adjacent lands within nearby allotments. The Stone Cabin HMA includes the majority of acreage at 407,705 acres, followed by 135,018 acres in the Saulsbury HMA and the remaining adjacent 343,457 acres.
The Stone Cabin HMA’s appropriate management level (AML) is set at 218-364 head of wild horses, while the Saulsbury HMA’s AML is set at just 24-40 head. The adjacent lands are supposed to contain no wild horses, yet do.
The current estimated population of horses in the Stone Cabin HMA is 179% higher than the set AML of 651 head, and the Saulsbury HMA is 700% higher than its AML of 280 head.
“At the current population size, if a single gather were to be immediately implemented to reach low AML, the BLM would need to gather and remove approximately 689 excess wild horses within the complex,” the lawsuit noted.
The feds collected monitoring data from 2012-22 to assess the horses’ impacts to the public lands and resources, demonstrating “grave resource conditions and wild horse conditions, including other adverse impacts,” according to the lawsuit.
In 2022, BLM considered three alternative management options for the Stone Cabin Complex. The selected alternative proposed three types of management over the 10 years of the plan.
First, the BLM would initially gather and remove excess horses to achieve a low AML, and conduct follow-up gathers if the low AML was not achieved with a single gather. BLM would then apply population growth suppression methods over the next 10 years to gathered and released horses, along with sex ratio adjustment, to slow population growth and maintain the AML. The agency would then conduct additional gathers over the next decade to bring population numbers back down.
The plaintiffs ask for the court to rule the gathering delays as a result of “off-site conditions” unlawful under the Wild and Free Roaming Horses & Burro Act. — Anna Miller, WLJ managing editor
