Lawsuit To Delay Massive Roundup, Removal Of Wild Horses In Nevada

November 25, 2009 11:56 a.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - The Department of Justice announced Wednesday the postponement of the massive roundup and removal of wild horses from public land in northwestern Nevada due to a lawsuit.

The roundup scheduled on Dec. 1 will be postponed to Dec. 28 with the filing Thursday of a motion for permanent injunction by animal rights group In Defense of Animals (IDA) and renowned ecologist Craig Downer, according to a press release of IDA. The motion stops the Bureau of Land Management from rounding up the horses.

The IDA cited public opposition to the roundup and removal of 80 to 90 percent of the estimated 3,055 wild horses living in the BLM's Calico Mountain Complex.

"We welcome this moratorium on the capture and inhumane treatment of the Calico horses," said William Spriggs, Esq. of Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney, pro bono attorney for IDA and Downer. "The BLM plan for a massive helicopter roundup of these horses is entirely illegal."

"We are confident that the court will agree that America's wild horses are protected by law from BLM's plan to indiscriminately chase and stampede them into corrals for indeterminate warehousing away from their established habitat," Spriggs said. "The magnificent wild horses and burros of the American West are an important part of our national heritage and must be preserved."

In seeking the injunction before Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the IDA is invoking the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act passed unanimously by Congress in 1971.

The said law designated America's wild horses and burros as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West." It also required the protection from capture, branding, harassment, or death of the horses by keeping them in the area where they are presently found and keeping them as an integral part of the natural system of public lands.

Since 1971, the BLM has removed over 270,000 horses from their Western home ranges and taken away nearly 20 million acres of wild horse habitat, according to IDA. Only 37,000 wild horses and burros remain on public lands in the West.

By contrast, millions of cattle graze our public lands, IDA said. Thirty-two thousand wild horses that have been removed from the range are already held in government holding facilities, and the BLM intends to round up 12,000 more horses next year.