Judge denies horse advocates' appeal

By BRETT FRENCH Of The Gazette Staff | Posted: Saturday, January 23, 2010 11:50 pm

photo credit: Billings Gazette

DAVID GRUBBS/Gazette Staff
Stallions playfully fight, a precursor to more dangerous battles for mares as stallions seek to start their own band and breed. Until then, the males wander in small bachelor groups.

The construction of water sources for wild horses in the Pryor Mountains could begin as early as this spring after a federal judge denied an appeal of the plan guiding management of the horses.

The ruling, issued by the Interior Board of Land Appeals late last week, clears the way for the Bureau of Land Management to implement its 2009 horse management plan for the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range. Until the appeal was overturned, the BLM was required to work under its old management plan, written in 1984 and revised in 1989.

“We think this allows things to move in a good direction,” said Matt Dillon of the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Center, a nonprofit group in Lovell, Wyo. “We were always very supportive of the (plan).”

Dillon said that with the construction of the “guzzlers,” which capture rainwater, the wild horses will spread out across the 38,000-acre range, lessening damage to wetter areas atop the mountains and possibly allowing more horses to remain on the range.

Dillon said there are now 156 horses on the range, 21 of them less than a year old.

Still fighting

The horse range, about 50 miles south of Billings, has received worldwide exposure through films made by Ginger Kathrens. Kathrens established The Cloud Foundation to help protect and advocate for the herd as well as other wild mustangs.

Kathrens, The Cloud Foundation and Front Range Equine Rescue had appealed the BLM’s horse management plan, as well as last fall’s roundup and auction of some of the Pryor horses. The groups still have a federal suit against the roundup pending; if they win, the BLM would be required to return the captured horses to the range.

Despite the setback, Kathrens said she and other wild-horse advocates are devoted to pursuing improvement of the BLM’s wild-horse program in the Pryors and across the West.

“We’re very committed to making sure the Pryor herd is self-sustaining into the future,” Kathrens said. “We’re hopeful that the public’s wishes will be carried out.”

Hard labor

The nine water guzzlers, most of them in wilderness study areas, will have to be constructed by hand. The BLM’s work will be aided by the Montana Conservation Corps and volunteers from the wild-horse center.

“As soon as it’s logistically possible to install those things, we’re ready to go,” Dillon said. “The sooner they’re in, the sooner the horses will start using the range more uniformly.”

Other work that can continue under the new horse management plan is the repair of a fence along the border of the horse range on Custer National Forest property. The BLM also advocated prescriptive fires, but those would require further study before being implemented, said Jim Sparks, BLM’s Billings Field Office supervisor. The wild horses would also be managed for a population of 120 horses for five years, not including the current year’s foal crop.

In its plan released in May, the agency also called for removing an average of 30 horses a year at a cost of $18,000 to $21,000. The herd would also be managed for an even ratio of males to females to a slightly higher ratio of males, 60 percent, to reduce the need to remove animals.

The 2009 plan is also designed to preserve the horses’ Spanish characteristics, rare colors and bloodlines. The old plan managed for size and conformance.

National attention

In recent months, wild-horse advocates have been successful in raising the BLM’s wild-horse management plans and wild-horse roundups and removals to national prominence with the backing of celebrities including singer Sheryl Crow and actor Viggo Mortensen.

“There have been protests from New York to California,” Kathrens said. “Over 190 organizations are asking for a moratorium on roundups.”

Although Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has moved to create new holding areas for horses that are rounded up and not adopted, the federal government still ends up corralling an estimated 33,000 horses at taxpayer expense.

“The program is clearly broken,” Kathrens said. “It’s a fiscal train wreck for the taxpayers.”

Contact Brett French at french@billingsgazette.com or at 657-1387.