wild horses

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 U.S. District judge said it was “not hard to imagine” that some horses and burros went to slaughter in his ruling that led to the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to shut down the adoption program.

A recent University of Wyoming study that linked free-roaming overpopulation to the decline of sage grouse has received pushback for not factoring in livestock. But the lead researcher said it does – indirectly – and that the goal of the research is to help with the complex puzzle of managing multi-use landscapes.

Current estimates suggest more than 70,000 wild horses and burros roam the American West, about half of them in Nevada. That’s more than three times the number land managers say can safely co-exist with other animals on the open range.

Recidivism rates in the U.S. are some of the highest in the world. And in Wyoming, 33 percent of inmates are back in prison within the first year. But studies show that animal therapy can help reduce that by teaching things like responsibility, nonviolence and empathy. Wyoming has a special program – one of only five in the country – that teaches inmates how to tame wild horses.

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.

The new season of Wyoming Public Radio’s podcast "The Modern West" just dropped its first episode. But the format is pretty different from how we’ve done things in the past. This season, we’re going out in the field with some of the reporters you’ll recognize from "Open Spaces."

Horse trainers will be showing off their skills on formerly wild horses in Rock Springs this weekend.Back in May, 20 people went out to the wild horse holding corrals in Rock Springs and they each picked a horse or burro to train. They have had 90 days and will now put their skills to the test.

The Bureau of Land Management is increasing its efforts to rein in the number of wild horses roaming the Western U.S.

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.