A court decision has sided with a wild horse advocacy group, delaying a wild horse roundup that was scheduled to take place last week in an area near Rock Spring’s known as “The Checkerboard.”
In 2013, a state court decision ordered all horses—as many as 950—to be rounded up from the patchwork of private and public property adjacent to Adobe Town in the Red Desert after a judge ruled that private landowners had a right to request the horses be removed from their property.
Bureau of Land Management spokesman Shelley Gregory says they still hope to be able to conduct the roundup by September 1.
“There is only one contractor in the country able to gather wild horses for the BLM,” Gregory says. “And so they are working on a schedule of other gathers around the country. And so if we miss this window where the contractor is available to us, we may not be able to gather this year.”
The wild horse advocates argue that the horses roam on and off public lands and so are protected by the Wild Horse and Burro Act.
The BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board met Monday in Riverton to discuss the ongoing lawsuit.