A local lawmaker has volunteered to serve on a legislative subcommittee exploring the potential to seek federal compensation for rangeland damage caused by wild horses in Wyoming.
The subcommittee was formed after the Wyoming Legislature’s Agriculture, State and Public Lands, and Water Resources Committee heard from Wyoming Stock Growers Association Executive Vice President Jim Magagna last week about past efforts to “seek compensation for forage consumption by horses on state trust lands.”
Those attempts “didn’t move forward,” Magagna said, but the WSGA “would be very supportive” of the state taking another look at the issue.
Federal law
The federal Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act includes a provision allowing private landowners to request the removal of wild horses from their property, Magagna explained – but the Bureau of Land Management doesn’t “have the resources” to accommodate any such removal requests.
“So from a perspective of private landowners who are impacted – and state lands as well – I think there’s still some value in giving some thought to saying, ‘If the law says the horses should be removed off of my private land, (and) they can’t be removed, then I should be entitled to some compensation for that forage until such time as they are removed,” Magagna said. “It would be part of the answer to the impact that they’re having on private land and on state trust lands.”
Wyoming Sen. Larry Hicks, R-Baggs, said the first step might be to try to document “the amount of lost forage associated” with wild horses on private and state lands, as well as the resulting “economic impact.”
“(We can) document that lost amount of money,” Hicks said. “The state needs to start billing the BLM for (that). It’s a federal horse issue. The federal government ought to be financially responsible for those losses incurred.”
Hicks proposed forming the subcommittee to work with the WSGA and “develop a conceptual bill to address this issue, on at least state lands, for the next (Ag Committee) meeting in September.”
“(Let’s) look to that as potential legislation,” he said.
Wyoming Rep. John Winter, R-Thermopolis, who represents a portion of Fremont County, said he would serve on the subcommittee.
Lander gather
During this week’s meeting, the Ag Committee also heard from BLM Wyoming State Director Andrew Archuleta, who reported that there are currently about 9,500 wild horses in the agency’s 16 wild horse herd management areas in the state – more than twice the “appropriate management level” of about 3,800 wild horses.
As a result, he said, “we are making an effort to increase our gathers here in Wyoming,” with two events planned for 2024 – including one at the North Lander HMA Complex that will “kick off in July.”
“We have a gather plan for North Lander, (where) we are shooting for removing about 2,500 horses,” Archuleta said. “There will be some reproduction control associated with that gather, and then we will continue to follow up.”
Adoptions
In addition to the wild horses in herd management areas in the state, Archuleta said BLM Wyoming also has about 2,200 horses “that we are caring for in off-range corrals.”
Each off-range horse costs about $22,500 to care for, BLM Wyoming Deputy State Director of Communications Brad Purdy said.
“That’s one of the reasons (we are) so supportive of the adoption program,” Purdy said. “If we can get those horses adopted out, then … they’re no longer cared (for) with taxpayer dollars.”
The BLM nationally was able to place more than 8,000 horses through adoptions, sales and transfers last year, Archuleta said, and “we’re really trying to beef that up” – but the agency also has about 65,000 horses and burros in off-range corrals and about 73,500 “out on the range” throughout the country.
“I don’t think that there are as many people wanting to adopt horses as there maybe used to be,” Winter said, encouraging the BLM to turn their attention instead toward changing “the way that the wild horses are managed.”
“The only way we’re going to solve this problem is if we get a slaughterhouse in the USA,” Winter said. “That’s a very emotional issue, I know, but it’s the fact. And unless we do something pretty quick, the range resource out there is not going to hold up. …
“Somebody’s got to take the bull by the horns and get something done, otherwise the range resource in the United States is going to be decimated.”
Archuleta said most wild horse managers agree that the BLM will likely lose “complete control” of the situation if the number of on-range wild horses exceeds 100,000 nationally.