Federal judge mostly upholds government roundup of 1,263 western Wyoming wild horses last year

CHEYENNE, Wyoming — A judge mostly upheld a U.S. Bureau of Land Management roundup of hundreds of wild horses in western Wyoming that horse advocates had claimed violated several laws. The roundup was proper under a federal wild horse law and 34-year-old federal court order in which ranchers voluntarily agreed to allow wild horses to roam the area where the roundup occurred, U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled Tuesday. "None of the arguments advanced by petitioners and nothing about BLM's horse management program inspire this court to change the approach sanctioned by the court in 1981," Freudenthal wrote. She ordered the Bureau of Land Management to go back and correct procedural deficiencies in planning the roundup, however. The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign and others tried but failed to persuade judges to block the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from gathering 1,263 horses east and south of Rock Springs in September and October. The horse advocates pressed on with their lawsuit after the roundup, and oral arguments in the case occurred Monday. The federal agency improperly planned the roundup under a legal exemption to an otherwise required environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act, Freudenthal ruled. Freudenthal otherwise upheld the roundup under laws including the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. The act requires the government to maintain wild horses on public land and to round them up from private land when asked to do so by the landowner...more