Wyoming, the Cowboy State, where the Code of the West is an integral part of daily life. Wyoming offers vast expanses of territory to meander with freedom, unless you’re a wild, free-roaming horse. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is being pressured by and conceding to the Stock Growers Association to eliminate the protected wild horses from federal land.

Velma Bronn Johnston was the voice responsible for gaining federal jurisdiction over wild horses and burros on public land. On her way home from work, Velma saw a slaughter truck on the road. Out of the back of the truck, blood was dripping. She followed the truck and found wild horses on their way to “processing.” This began her lifelong crusade to save wild horses.

“Mustanging” was a brutal practice of capture and sale to slaughter. This practice outraged the American public at large. However, the law had a huge backlash from those that had profited from running horses, hog-tying them to wait for the kill truck and then grinding them up for fertilizer and chicken feed.

Velma relentlessly documented the horrors of what was happening to wild horses. With her husband, Charlie Johnston, they waged a campaign that spread the truth across the nation.

During the 1950s, Velma, who became known as Wild Horse Annie, led a grassroots campaign that outraged the public. Newspapers published articles about the exploitation of wild horses and burros and as noted in a 1959, Associated Press article, “Seldom has an issue touched such a responsive chord.”

In 1959, Nevada Congressman Walter Baring introduced a bill prohibiting the use of motorized vehicles to hunt wild horses and burros on all public lands. The House of Representatives unanimously passed the bill, which became known as the Wild Horse Annie Act. Wild Horse Annie Act - Public Law 86-234.

 (a) Whoever uses an aircraft or a motor vehicle to hunt, for the purpose of capturing or killing, any wild unbranded horse, mare, colt, or burro running at large on any of the public land or ranges shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

(b) Whoever pollutes or causes the pollution of any watering hole on any of the public land or ranges for the purpose of trapping, killing, wounding, or maiming any of the animals referred to in subsection (a) of this section shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Public Law 86-234 did not include Wild Horse Annie’s recommendation that Congress initiate a program to protect, manage and control wild horses and burros. Public interest and concern continued to mount, and with it came the realization that federal management, protection and control of wild horses and burros was essential. This would result in the enactment of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act.

In 1971, Congress enacted the Wild Horse Act out of concern that wild horses were disappearing from the American scene. Congress declared that the Bureau of Land Management shall protect and manage wild free-roaming horses and burros as components of the public lands.

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act, dated Oct. 21, 1976, amended the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 to allow the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture to use or contract for the use of helicopters and motorized vehicles to manage wild horses and burros on public lands, thus bypassing the Wild Horse Annie Act.

In 2021 and 2022, the BLM conducted the largest helicopter roundups in U.S. history, removing over 3,500 horses. It was clear the agency was setting the stage to permanently wipe out many of Wyoming’s cherished herds.

This directive sets a dangerous precedent for all wild horses across the West, wild horses that, under the law, are protected. Removing wild horses and eliminating millions of acres of their designated habitat simply because they positioned themselves into a troublesome inconvenience to private ranchers, as well as the BLM, is an abdication of the federal government’s responsibility to humanely manage these free-roaming herds.

Currently, in efforts to control equine populations, the BLM is directed to humanely capture wild free-roaming horses for adoption. To assist in the round-up of wild horses and burros, BLM contracts directly with private enterprises to round up equines at rates between $500 and $800 per animal. This includes the use of “helicopter cowboys” to round up horses over prolonged distances.

Scientific research shows that more humane and cost-effective alternatives exist to control equine populations, including fertility controls. However, the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program currently spends less than 1 percent of its budget on fertility controls.

Rep. Dina Titus, a member of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus, introduced the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act of 2022. This would help advance BLM’s directive to humanely capture horses and provide significant savings to taxpayers. 

The Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act of 2022 would eliminate the use of helicopters in wild horse gathers, employ more cowboys and require the Government Accountability Office to explore specific, humane alternatives to protect these icons of the American West. This act has yet to pass.

A new BLM decision recently published approves a land-use plan amendment that would eliminate 2.1 million acres of wild horse habitat in Wyoming and slash by one-third the allowed population of wild horses in the state. The amended plan resolves the ongoing wild horse management conflicts between private and public land sections within the checkerboard land pattern.  

The BLM prepared the amendment per the terms of a 2013 consent decree with the Rock Springs Grazing Association, which required BLM to analyze certain wild horse management options as part of a new planning process. The approved plan amendment removes all checkerboard land from three herd management areas. As a result of this action, two of those herd management areas will revert to Herd Area status and will be managed for zero wild horses. The third will continue to be managed as a Herd Management Area with the checkerboard lands removed.

A coalition of wild horse advocates filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming against the U.S. Department of the Interior over this plan. This amendment would result in the largest-ever eradication of federally protected wild horses and the elimination of 43 percent of designated wild horse habitat in the Red Desert area of Wyoming.

Permit holders graze their livestock on the BLM for around three months, utilizing the best time for grazing, at a fee of  $1.35 per animal unit month, AUM. There seems to never be a consideration for the reduction of AUMs.  Wild horses live and survive on the same open range for 12 months.

I am not as I look, a longhaired extremist looking for an inquisition of the rancher. I am not anti-ranching or public grazing. This way of life has been part of mine from birth. I unite with ranchers, beef and all issues for the West or Western ways. It’s our heritage. So too are the wild horses and they need our help to survive. As people make more demands on the land for human use, their numbers continue to dwindle. A balance that won’t tip the scales has to be found.

The Stock Growers Association see wild horses as an overpopulated invasive species that compete for the public land their livestock graze, but they are wrong. Wild horses are integral to the landscape. They are the living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West and have more right to freely roam the high desert than domesticated livestock. At the very least they can coexist together in the wide open range of Wyoming. - dbA

You can find more of the unfiltered insight and the Art of Dan Abernathy at www.contributechaos.com.