Colorado Wild Horse Gather Halted By Judge

A federal judge sided with wild horse advocates this week when she ruled the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) could not remove wild horses from the West Douglas Herd Area in northwest Colorado as planned. The BLM had planned to remove the 175-horse herd from the 120,000-acre range area in July 2008. The gather was postponed after The Colorado Wild Horse and Burro Coalition Inc. and other wild horse advocates sued to halt the plan because would unnecessarily remove the wild horses from their traditional ranges. On Wednesday (Aug. 5), U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that the gather plan violated Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971 because federal law only allows the BLM to remove excess horses from overpopulated ranges. The agency had not declared the range overpopulated before proposing the gather, Collyer said. More than 175 horses currently reside on the West Douglas range. However, the area can only support 50 horses, said BLM Public Affairs Specialist Vanessa Delgado...TheHorse