Management of America’s wild horses on a long trail of reform

Editor’s note: This story is the second of a two-part series funded by the Aspen Daily News Journalism Fund, which supports in-depth, independent reporting on issues that impact our region. It explores federal policy, political fault lines and the broader implications for wild horse management in the American West. Part I appeared in Sunday’s newspaper and also is available on aspendailynews.com. 

In April 2023 during Colorado’s legislative session, then-state Sens. Joann Ginal, a Democrat, and Perry Will, a Republican — along with Democratic Reps. Monica Duran and Barbara McLachlan and Republican Rep. Mike Lynch — introduced Senate Bill 23-275, “The Colorado Wild Horse Project.”

This landmark bill, signed by Gov. Jared Polis in May 2023, takes a different approach to wild horse management. Monica McCafferty, Colorado press contact for the American Wild Horse Conservation, told the Aspen Daily News the bill was prompted by public outcry after the 2022 West Douglas deaths in Cañon City.

“That was a very visual story that made Coloradans aware that we have wild horses in the state,” she said. “And that we have an understaffed [Bureau of Land Management], overstocked holding facilities and horses not getting care.”

The bill allocated $1.5 million of state funds over two years to create the Wild Horse Management Project and the Colorado Wild Horse Working Group under the auspices of the Colorado Department of Agriculture and the Wild Horse Project Fund. The CDA was allocated $400,000 for a fertility control program available to wild horse herd management areas, or HMAs, statewide. 

The CWHWG was tasked with making recommendations to the state legislature for humane, nonlethal management of wild horses. 

Perry Will, now a Garfield County commissioner, said he wants to see wild horses on the range. “I have nothing against wild horses. They’re an icon of the West and we need to keep them,” he said. “But I ran that bill [as a co-sponsor] because we need to manage them.” 

Will added that he is not in favor of reducing livestock grazing permits because of wild horses. “I see a lot of range damage, but it’s not livestock,” he said. “It’s the horses.”

Many disagree, including Public Employees for Environmental Protection and Western Watersheds Project, whose studies — using BLM data — show where livestock allotments overlap HMAs and how cattle and sheep cause rangeland destruction.

Grazing and which animals get to eat how much forage is probably the most polarizing component of wild horse management. It boils down to this: Livestock producers say the horses eat too much. Advocates say wild horses are blamed for range destruction caused by cattle and sheep. The argument has been ongoing for decades.

The CWHWG did not resolve the grazing issue. In fact, it did not make recommendations for livestock grazing on HMAs, AML, the creation or elimination of HMAs or the use of helicopters for roundups. 

Nonetheless, 23 stakeholders sat down together almost every month for almost two years and eventually agreed on several ideas for future wild horse management in Colorado.

The group was appointed by Polis, state legislators and other state officials, the BLM state director, the U.S. Forest Service regional director and the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes. The appointments comprising the group were equally varied and included the natural resources director for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, ranchers, representatives of conservation and advocacy groups, state government, BLM, U.S.Forest Service and BLM wild horse partner groups. 

It was a hopeful start. Colorado First Gentleman Marlon Reis said in a statement that the bill offered a new management perspective. “Rather than viewing wild horses as a problem to be solved, we are taking proactive steps to elevate them as symbols of the American spirit,” he said.

But six months after the bill was signed in May 2023, the BLM went back to the West Douglas herd area and removed 122 horses. (Previously, in 2021, the bureau used helicopters to round up nearly 500 wild horses from the West Douglas herd in northwest Colorado, a controversial operation that left 11 horses dead and was followed by further fatalities in holding.)

Almost a year after the working group convened, and despite another letter from Polis, the BLM went into the Little Book Cliffs Range near Grand Junction with helicopters and removed 98 horses. Polis doubled down on funding for fertility control for the Little Book Cliffs herd and suggested that the BLM do the same. 

But BLM maintains across the board that roundups must continue until appropriate management level is reached on the HMAs before fertility control will work. 

Not here to say ‘neigh’

During the final CWHWG meeting on May 15 of this year, the group was asked to share some final thoughts. Most agreed that what had happened during almost two years of meetings was amazing, remarkable and historic, that talking on a local level was more effective than trying to get through to the national BLM office. 

Priorities in the group were different — and some did not want to compromise — but in the end, they all came together. Sometimes differing opinions and discussions were uncomfortable. But they agreed that, ultimately, it’s all about the horses.

Group member Tracy Scott said that facilitator Heather Bergman was really good.

“She’s the only reason we did what we did,” she said. Scott pointed to difficulties with consensus about the need for new, off-range pastures or moving BLM away from roundups. “Several people in the group just kept saying, ‘no, no, no, no, no,’” she recalled. 

At the final meeting, Bergman suggested to one naysayer, “Your skepticism about the possibility is getting in the way of supporting people who are exploring the possibility.” 

Scott thought that comment was spot-on. “I commended her for saying it afterwards because it’s exactly what was happening,” she recalled. “It’s, like, we aren’t here to say no; we are here to find a way.”

Scott runs Steadfast Steeds, a nonprofit mustang sanctuary, with her husband. The ranch covers 42 acres of Colorado’s high desert, south of Grand Junction. A visitor gets to drive through part of the Colorado National Monument to get there. 

They started the sanctuary in 2010. Scott said she is a lifelong horsewoman and has always connected with mustangs. 

“I believe the creator of the universe put the mustang horse in my heart before placing me on this planet,” she said, adding that she adopted her first mustang in 2007, which led to Steadfast Steeds. “It was then that I learned about holding facilities — and that Americans pay for it and have no idea.”

In the mid-2000s, she said, Steadfast Steeds was one of three wild horse sanctuaries in the state. But after the big Colorado roundups in 2021 and 2022, horse rescue operations bloomed like the desert after a rainstorm. 

“During the Sand Wash roundup, there were a lot of people that said, ‘Oh, well, I could take on X amount of horses,’” she said. “And multiple little sanctuaries started up at that time.” She said there are roughly 20 in the state now, all competing for the same grants and donations. 

Steadfast Steeds is full these days with 24 animals, including a wild burro, but funding and tourist visits are down. Scott’s husband is working outside of the home to support the venture.

It took a little time during the first year for the CWHWG to settle in and get to know each other, according to Scott. Competition about who knew the most about a number of topics was defused by shared learning experiences, such as group field trips to the HMAs, the Cañon City holding facility and the Wild Horse Refuge near Craig. 

“To me, the Cañon City thing was the most important one,” she said. “I’ve been there before, but we got to go into places where they don’t usually let everyone go.” 

Late last year, the Colorado Wild Horse Working Group issued a report with recommendations that came out of the first year of meetings, including funding a five-year wild horse program administered by the CDA, providing material support for on-the-ground fertility control and adoptions and developing a wild horse advisory committee. 

A new day for wild horses

State legislators responded with HB 25-1283 — titled “Wild Horse Project Management and Immunocontraception” — signed into law on May 22. It repeals the current Wild Horse Project but carries on the work of the CWHWG. 

Scott said it’s a sign of success. 

“SB 23-275 was the first bill that established the [CWHWG],” she explained. “This bill takes it a step further. Instead of having a working group, we’re going to have a Wild Horse Advisory Board, which is based on recommendations from the CWHWG.”

In short, the state Department of Agriculture will now manage Colorado’s wild horses — both federally protected and others — in cooperation with the BLM and other stakeholders. The CDA will not conduct roundups but can help with fertility control darting, rangeland monitoring and adoptions. 

“We made preliminary recommendations in November of ’24, and a lot of that language went into the new SB 25-1293,” Scott said. 

According to the bill’s text, $555,000 remains of the original appropriation. Future state appropriations will be decided during the annual budget process. The program’s nonprofit status opens it up to grants and donations. 

As for CWHWG’s second year, the final report won’t be ready until at least the end of May — but will include several new recommendations. Scott said the one issue everyone in the group agreed on was the overpopulation of wild horses, both on the range and off.  

Fertility control and support for partner groups are fairly easy to agree upon, but range management, creating new pastures or putting more horses in holding are hot-button topics.

So is extermination. 

That’s the one thing the group avoided. “It wouldn’t have even been considered anyway because [SB23-275] states ‘nonlethal, humane,’” Scott said. “But federally, I’m wondering. Some people think the horses in holding are gonna be, you know, shot.”

Protections in the crosshairs

Pages 528 and 529 of the Project 2025 conservative manifesto have become a veritable cactus under the saddle of those who work with, play with or simply appreciate horses.

William Perry Pendley, acting BLM director during the end of the first Trump administration, wrote the chapter about the Interior Department, which manages the BLM. 

Pendley took advantage of Project 2025 to propose moving BLM headquarters out West — again. BLM headquarters were moved to Grand Junction from Washington, D.C., under the first Trump administration, back to D.C. during the Biden administration and now Pendley was suggesting another move West. In Pendley’s mind, the savings from the move could pay for wildfire mitigation, more recreation opportunities, public lands conservation and taking care of “tough issues” such as wild horses and burros.

Pendley cited the BLM’s 2020 Report to Congress — informed by Rep. Chris Stewart’s Path Forward, which initiated the large Colorado roundups in 2021 and 2022. Stewart’s proposal recommended using all means legally allowed in the 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act to manage the bloated long-term holding situation. But Pendley wrote that it wasn’t enough: “Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.”

The Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal threatened to allow the sale of horses in holding without the restriction against slaughter. 

What happens next is anyone’s guess. Congresswoman Dina Titus, D-Nevada, a longtime wild horse and burro champion, submitted an amendment to the 2026 federal  budget bill on May 20 prohibiting BLM from using funds for wild horse and burro helicopter roundups. 

As of May 26, the bill had not made it through the Senate. Titus recently launched the bipartisan Wild Horse and Burro Caucus to work toward humane management and the end of helicopter roundups.  

The former BLM senior official — who spoke anonymously about the policy memo that precipitated the April killing of a stallion in Montana’s Pryor Mountains (see Part 1, “Inside the fight for America’s Horses,” Aspen Daily News, June 8) — said the idea of killing horses in holding will never happen. “The public is too invested,” they said.

But public investment only goes so far, Tracy Scott argues. Not even letters from the governor could stop the largest roundups in Colorado’s history a few years back. 

“How many things have we written or talked about or gone to public meetings or stood up for?” she said. “And [the BLM does] whatever they’re gonna do, anyway.”

For advocates, that lingering sense of futility is what makes the death of that Pryor Mountain stallion — known as Echo — feel like more than a tragic one-off. Scott and others from organizations like American Wild Horse Conservation and The Cloud Foundation see it as a shot across the bow.

Echo, a young stallion from the iconic Pryor Mountain herd along the Montana-Wyoming border, was killed during a BLM roundup in April this year. The Cloud Foundation — named for the famous wild stallion featured in PBS documentaries — has long worked to protect this herd and others like it. For many, Echo’s death epitomized what they see as a broken system.

“We just pray that the Trump administration will not act on William Perry Pendley’s vision for Project 2025,” said Jesse Daly of The Cloud Foundation. “And we sure would love to see the Biden-era policy that resulted in Echo’s murder be rescinded.”