Feds plan roundup for 3,500 wild horses, burros

Federal officials plan to round up thousands of wild horses and burros across six Western states starting Monday. The roundups will take place through February on drought-stricken range lands in Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming. Contractors for the Bureau of Land Management will use helicopters plus bait- and water-trapping methods to corral 3,500 wild horses and burros, officials said. In addition, more than 900 other horses will be captured for birth control injections and returned to range lands. The government is already holding 47,000 horses, most of them on green pasture in the Midwest. Bureau of Land Management officials said it was a popular misconception that they send horses to slaughterhouses. The animals are protected under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. In all, there are 37,300 wild horses and burros on public range lands across 10 Western states, the government says. In New Mexico, officials say 102 horses will be rounded up - and 66 later released - on the Carson National Forest. Another roundup will take place for 365 horses in the high desert of the Jiicarilla Wild Horse Territory. Ninety of those horses will be returned to the land after fertility injections...more