Land managers say count shows enough wild horses left after roundup along Calif.-Nevada line

BMI: Enough wild horses left after Nevada roundup

RENO, Nev. — Faced with legal challenges accusing the government of rounding up too many wild horses in the West, federal land managers released a new aerial survey Friday, claiming it confirms that they left as many mustangs as they intended after a contentious roundup last winter.

Horse protection advocates complained their own surveys had found nowhere near the 900 mustangs the Bureau of Land Management said it intended to leave on the range when it removed nearly 2,000 of the animals from the Calico mountains about 200 miles north of Reno.

But a new census from an aerial survey the BLM conducted during the last half of June found 1,141 mustangs in the five management areas that make up the Calico complex. The complex covers an area from just north of Gerlach, about 30 miles wide, running 50 miles north through Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge on the Nevada-Oregon line.

The larger overall survey found 4,217 horses in 13 horse management areas in parts of Nevada, California and Oregon.

“We are pleased to get this larger survey because it does reinforce the census and the information we have used in the past to guide our management of these areas,” BLM spokeswoman Jo Lynn Worley told The Associated Press.

Worley said BLM expected to find a minimum of the 600 horses it was required to leave on the range in the Calico complex.

A number of advocacy groups that have filed lawsuits in the past to try to block roundups. In Defense of Animals lost a legal bid to block the Calico roundup in federal court earlier this year. Lawyers for that group said last month they intend to sue over a roundup of about 2,000 and burros planned later this summer in the Twin Peaks area of northeast California.

The overall survey of about 4 million acres released Friday included 60 flight hours from June 19-28 in conjunction with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey. Using a new methodology, three observers independently observed and recorded data on groups of individual horses, BLM said.

Worley said USGS plans further review of the information in search of a better understanding of the movement of herds from one management area to another.

“We knew that when we stop a gather many move into that area,” Worley said. “But we’re not sure how many may leave the Calico complex while a gather is going on and how many come back after.”

“I suspect the results do show the numbers of horses in the overall area are in line with what BLM expected,” she said.