wild horse roundup

The fate of thousands of wild horses in the Rock Springs area is still unknown after 15 years of court battles. A judge just pushed the final decision back to a lower court.

More than half of Wyoming’s wild horses will be removed to appease private property owners on the checkerboard landscape. Herds will cease to exist in the Great Divide Basin and Salt Wells Creek areas, and portions of Adobe Town.

Sections of southwest Wyoming’s iconic sprawling sagebrush landscape could soon look different: No wild horses. That’s because the Bureau of Land Management is planning to remove all of the wild horses roaming a 2.1 million acre area near Rock Springs.

A federal judge in the Mountain West recently ruled in favor of wild horse advocates who sued federal land managers for failing to stick to their own rules.

Funding from Governor Mark Gordon, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and other federal sources helped round up more than 6,500 horses on the Wind River Reservation this year. The efforts have been met with some concerns and questions. The removals were a collaboration between the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes, the BIA, the state of Wyoming, and various wildlife management agencies.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced a proposed update to the Pryor Horse Herd Management Plan (HMP) last month. The herd roams 30,000 to 40,000 acres of land between the southeastern portion of Carbon County, Montana, and southern Big Horn County, Wyoming.

A lot of Wyomingites have horses or at least have ridden a horse. Well, Lisanne Fear of Sublette County took it to the next level. She recently rode her five wild horses, also known as mustangs, across the country on the American Discovery Trail. Fear is a horse trainer who specializes in training wild horses, and she wanted to use the cross-country ride to raise awareness about wild horses in holding corrals across the country. She recently sat down with Wyoming Public Radio’s Caitlin Tan.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is wrapping up its wild horse adoption events in the coming weeks. This is almost a year after one of the largest roundups in state history.

Wyoming Public Media held a live discussion about wild horses in the state as part of the 'I Respectfully Disagree' series. Four panelists representing all sides of the issue joined host Caitlin Tan, who is WPM’s energy and natural resources reporter.

It’s part of our ‘Respectfully Disagree’ series, where Wyoming Public Media brings people from all sides of an issue together to have a productive and respectful conversation.Join us for a live discussion on wild horses this Monday – June 27 at noon on our Facebook page.