DENVER—Animal advocacy groups trying to stop the removal of wild horses from northwest Colorado will make their case in court.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said a hearing is scheduled Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New York on a lawsuit seeking to halt the roundup that started earlier this week.
The New York-based group, the Colorado-based Cloud Foundation and two Colorado residents have filed a lawsuit claiming the plan by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to remove an estimated 138 horses violates environmental laws and the federal Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.
The Cloud Foundation also claims a horse was roped, kicked, dragged and then euthanized during the roundup. Makendra Silverman of the foundation said Friday that observers, including a Colorado veterinarian who is among those suing, reported the horse wasn’t having problems before it was roped Tuesday.
David Boyd of the Colorado BLM said the 20-year-old horse already had a bad knee and wasn’t injured during the roundup. A veterinarian with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the horse had an enlarged right carpal joint about “the size of a cantaloupe,” Boyd said.
The contractors roped the horse when it went around a net fence leading to the corral. The horse then fell and didn’t want to get back up, Boyd said. The horse was rolled onto a truck and shot two days later.
“Nobody likes it when this kind of thing happens,” Boyd said. He added a domesticated horse with the same kind of condition likely would have been euthanized a while ago.
Two more horses died Friday. Boyd said a 7-month-old colt whose legs were broken when it was roped was euthanized. An examination of a 3-year-old mare that died after it was roped showed it had a weak heart, Boyd said.
The BLM has said the horses being rounded up are outside a 190,000-acre area of public land designated for wild horses. Horses not sold or adopted will be taken to long-term pastures in the Midwest.
Boyd has said the roundups, carried out in Colorado since the 1980s, are the only effective way of controlling the horse population, which typically increases 20 percent each year.
So far, 28 horses have been caught and corralled. A helicopter is used to herd the animals.
Animal advocacy groups have filed lawsuits trying to stop wild horse roundups across the West, calling them inhumane and unnecessary.
The lawsuit claims the Colorado roundup violates the 1971 wild horse act’s requirement to preserve the horses in their range and the requirement under federal environmental laws to consider reasonable alternatives.
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Online:
U.S. Bureau of Land Management White River Wild Horse Gather,
