ROCK SPRINGS — The Bureau of Land Management should cancel its planned roundup of hundreds of mustangs from Wyoming’s remote White Mountain area and stop using helicopters to chase them, said about 50 protesters in Rock Springs on Monday.
The BLM said it's simply following the law and carrying out its mission to keep mustang herds at manageable numbers, agency spokesman James Fisher told Cowboy State Daily.
As heated as the debate over mustangs and Wyoming has gotten, the protest was peaceful Monday.
Fisher attended the demonstration and talked one-on-one with several of the protestors.
Later, he addressed the crowd, which had gathered on a bluff overlooking the BLM’s holding corrals just north of Rock Springs, where mustangs captured in roundups are kept. He told the crowd that the BLM recognizes their First Amendment rights and appreciated that those rights were being expressed peacefully.
The protestors had planned to march roughly a mile and a half from the holding corrals to the BLM’s Rock Springs Field Office. But with temperatures already soaring into the 80s as noon approached, the group opted to drive instead.
Rock Springs local Tom Gagnon rode his bicycle to the protest. On his back was a cardboard sign with a message written in large letters, “Yes wild horses!”
He told Cowboy State Daily that he sympathizes with local BLM employees, because the roundups are a job they must do, but “don’t relish.”
A few speakers addressed the crowd as the protest reformed in front of the BLM headquarters. The BLM had put up signs reading “First Amendment Area” to designate a space for the demonstration.
Differing Views
During his brief speech, Gangon said he blamed local Republicans at the county and state level for the roundups, despite strong opposition from across the country.
Another Rock Springs resident who spoke with Cowboy State Daily, Jeff Ramaj, gave a different view. Greater local control over mustang management is the answer, he said.
He said he’s followed debates over mustangs for years, and even helped wrangle some wild horses decades ago, when he was in high school.
Ramaj, a Republican challenging Senate District 12 incumbent John Kolb in the upcoming primary election, said he came to visit with the protestors because he wants to hear as many perspectives as he can.
He added that setting management policy from the top down, via the federal government, down through the state and then regional BLM offices is the wrong approach. Management should be decided from the bottom up, with the BLM working closely with locals, he said, adding that he believed federal policies are influenced by the United Nations.
Protestor Rebecca Hunt, who came from Park City, Utah, pushed back against some of Ramaj’s statements as they had a brief but polite exchange.
The BLM land belongs to all of the American public, and at the strictly local level, some interest groups, such as ranchers, might have too much sway over policy decisions, she said.
A contractor’s helicopter pushes mustangs across the range toward trap corrals during the ongoing mustang roundups in the Bureau of Land Management’s North Lander wild Horse Management Area. People came to Rock Springs from several states on Monday to protest the roundups. (Courtesy Jim Brown) 
Bobbi Shogutsie of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, Wind River Reservation, talks to protestors Monday outside the Bureau of Land Management Rock Springs field office. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily) 
Mustangs that have been rounded up are kept in the Bureau of Land Management’s holding corrals just north of Rock Springs. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily) 
Bureau of Land Management spokesman James Fisher speaks to people who came to Rock Springs on Monday to protest the BLM’s roundup of mustangs. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily) 
A supporter of wild horses in Wyoming rides along a highway near Rock Springs. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily)
An Important Part Of Culture
The event encapsulated the ongoing and sometimes heated debate about the fate of mustangs in Wyoming and across the West.
Some claim that the horses are a feral species that outcompetes mule deer and other native wildlife for forage that ranchers pay for through grazing leases, so it’s the BLM’s duty to keep their numbers at a bare minimum.
But mustang advocates argue that the horses qualify as wildlife. They say the mustangs get blamed for range damage actually done by sheep and cattle, and that the practice of rounding the horses up with helicopters is unnecessary and cruel.
The roundups are also expensive for taxpayers, said one of the protest organizers, Pennsylvania resident Gail Bumsted of Advocates for Wild Equines.
It costs the BLM about $3.50 per horse per day to keep mustangs in captivity, she said. Multiplied by tens of thousands of horses, across a typical lifespan of 20 years, that can add up to billions, she told Cowboy State Daily.
Meanwhile, recent studies have shown that mustangs can actually improve range health, organizer Jackie Oliveri, of Love Wild Horses, told Cowboy State Daily.
And leaving the horses alone to roam free on the range doesn’t cost taxpayers anything, added Oliveri, a resident of New York state.
There’s a current effort to push legislation banning the use of helicopters to roundup mustangs through the U.S. Congress, Bumsted said.
On the Wind River Reservation, the numbers of mustangs has been slashed from about 70,000 to just a few thousand, Bobbi Shonguvtsie, told Cowboy State Daily.
And the BLM and Bureau of Indian Affairs want to remove even more, said Shonguvtsie, a member of Eastern Shoshone Tribe, Wind River Reservation.
Until recently, she and other tribal members kept a long tradition of small-scale, horseback roundups of mustangs, using natural features, such a box canyons, to trap the mustangs, she said.
Once mustangs were captured and tamed, they could be used to instruct Shoshone youngsters in the Tribe’s deep horse culture, she said.
In what she and others see as heavy-handed management, the BLM and BIA is taking away that opportunity to preserve and share culture.
Birth Control Not Effective
Fisher told Cowboy State Daily the BLM’s management numbers are based on the best available science, and according to what allows for “multiple uses” on agency lands.
Mustangs are hardy and have virtually no natural predators on most of Wyoming’s open range, and so they multiply quickly, Fisher said. So the BLM needs to control their numbers.
Fertility control – or shooting mustang mares with darts loaded with birth control medicine – is one method the agency can use, but it isn’t that effective, he said.
“You dart one mare, and the rest scatter,” making it difficult to dart more, Fisher said.
Fertility control is a good way to keep small herds from ballooning in size, he said.
But when herds are many times the targeted levels, roundups are the best option for the BLM, Fisher said.
Starting on Aug. 15, Fisher said, the BLM plans to round up about 500-600 mustangs in the White Mountain area, reducing that herd to roughly 300 horses.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
