The second summer of a wild horse roundup on Colorado’s Western Slope has resulted in the capture of more than 650 horses, but critics of the roundup program allege the federal government is mishandling the program amid fears that another outbreak of deadly equine flu could be on the horizon. 

The roundup in the Piceance Basin near Meeker beginning June 28 was conducted by helicopter, which wild horse advocates say terrorizes the animals and cans results in deaths. The Bureau of Land Management, which runs the roundup program and targeting the largest capture in Colorado history with a goal of 1,250 horses at Piceance this summer, deny the allegation and say their contractors use helicopters “humanely.” The agency says helicopters “start the horses moving in the right direction and then back off sometimes one-quarter to one-half mile from the animals to let them travel at their own pace.”

The latest roundup was no different, the agency says. Of the 242 stallions, 295 mares, and 120 foals captured through July 24, two have died, on July 16 and July 17. Contractors hired to roundup the horses blocked the view of the trap site with their trailers, according to observers with the American Wild Horse Campaign.

The latest roundup comes after BLM contractors in July and August 2021 captured 632 horses at the Sand Wash basin near Rangely. They left behind fewer than 200, less than half of what BLM’s own estimates said the range could support.

The horses were sent to Cañon City for vaccinations and eventual adoptions. Captured horses were supposed to be vaccinated against the highly contagious equine flu, but 146 contracted it and died at the Cañon City facility beginning in April, according to the campaign. It was the largest outbreak of equine flu at any BLM facility in history, according to U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Lafayette. Of those 146, 22 were foals, less than a year old.

Domesticated horses are routinely vaccinated against the rarely fatal equine flu, though there is no standard treatment once a horse catches it. The horses that contracted the flu at Cañon City were either not vaccinated or “partially vaccinated,” despite having been rounded up at least nine months earlier. 

“This is a tragedy for all involved, but especially for the treasured wild horses who just last summer were running free on our public lands and are now dead,” said Scott Wilson of Denver, who’s on the board of the American Wild Horse Campaign and a wildlife photographer. “We cannot continue to round up wild horses from their native habitats, cram them into holding pens and expect a good outcome for the wild horses or the taxpayers who are funding this broken system. This horrible situation should serve as a wake up call for Congress and our state leaders to demand reform at the Bureau of Land Management, which operates this mismanaged federal program.”

Pleas to the Department of the Interior and the BLM to halt the roundups from members of Congress and Gov. Jared Polis have been so far gone unanswered. 

Polis asked BLM to hold off on the roundup in May, with a letter to the BLM’s Colorado office in Lakewood. 

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The systems established for the benefit of the wild horses once taken off the range are inadequate and require reevaluation to guarantee there will be no new outbreaks, Polis wrote. “The facilities and procedures are ill-equipped to take on the hundreds of additional horses scheduled to be removed from the range.”

Due to the loss of 142 horses from disease, I am calling for a delay to consider more humane options for the Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse roundup. pic.twitter.com/KZHlV9xz6q

— Governor Jared Polis (@GovofCO) May 19, 2022

Following the equine flu deaths, Neguse sent a letter to Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning and acting Colorado State Director Stephanie Connolly, asking that the agency delay and reevaluate Colorado’s next wild horse roundup. 

Neguse wrote that the recent outbreak at Cañon City resulted in “legitimate questions regarding the conditions of wild horses in holding facilities that must be answered before more horses are put into dangerous environments.” He asked that the Piceance Basin horse roundup be delayed until an investigation is completed, “to ensure the biosecurity failures that led to the Cañon City facility outbreak will not be repeated.”

Neguse also cited consensus among veterinarians, animal health experts at the Colorado Department of Agriculture and Colorado State University, that the stress of confinement, coupled with the dusty conditions at Cañon City, “make basic care too stressful to administer vaccines. For the 2,950 wild horses that remain in this facility, preventing the spread of infection will be difficult.” 

An internal BLM assessment released May 24 documented significant mismanagement at the Cañon City corrals, including understaffing, vaccination and other biosecurity failures, poor record-keeping, poor animal management, lack of basic equine care, inadequate shelter, and substandard facility maintenance, the campaign said.

The report documented 13 areas of non-compliance with the BLM’s Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program.

Officials examine environmental factors as outbreak that killed 140 horses slows

On July 18, Neguse, who chairs the U.S. House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, introduced an amendment to H.R. 8294, a fiscal year 2023 appropriations bill, to eliminate funding of roundups of wild free-roaming horses and burros that use helicopters or fixed-wing air crafts.

U.S. Reps. Dina Titus, D-Nev. and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., also wrote to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland on May 5, asking for an investigation into the deaths at the Cañon City facility and another in Wyoming.

“Considering the cramped conditions of holding pens, it should come as no surprise that a deadly disease can spread so quickly. Wild equines are accustomed to roaming freely over 33 million acres, not being held in tight quarters on 50 acres of land,” the pair wrote.

BLM’s plans to roundup at least 22,000 wild horses and burros this summer would be “ill-advised and a waste of taxpayer resources to hold additional federally-protected horses without knowing the impact of current conditions on their health,” the lawmakers said. They asked Haaland to consider halting more roundups until the animals’ safety can be guaranteed, both during the roundups and when they are corralled.

In a statement announcing the 2022 roundup, Stone-Manning said the agency “is committed to the safety of the wild horses and burros entrusted to our care. Our gather efforts, handling standards, and fertility control work are guided by our compassion for these animals and our desire to protect their well-being, as well as the health of our public lands.”

The BLM rounds up the horses on public lands, according to an agency statement, “to protect the health of the animals and health of our nation’s public rangelands. In some locations, the BLM also uses birth control to slow the growth of wild horse herds.” The agency claims that without the roundups, the herds can double in four to five years and outgrow the ability of the land to support them. However, those lands are also used for grazing purposes by ranchers, although the BLM disputes that this is a reason for the roundups.

The American Wild Horse Campaign claims that in Colorado, 7.8 million acres of public land are used for grazing, versus 365,000 acres used by wild horses and burros. 

As of June 2022, 58,517 wild horses and burros are being held in BLM facilities nationwide. The cost to taxpayers in FY 2021 to operate the program was more than $115 million.