Four years into an aggressive federal campaign to thin wild horse herds across the West, Colorado officials fed up with helicopter roundups tried something unique — a state-federal working group to collaborate on mustang population control.
Then the U.S. Bureau of Land Management went ahead and proposed its next helicopter roundup.
The announcement in May that the federal agency based in Washington, D.C., plans to remove 85-110 mustangs from Little Book Cliffs near Palisade has set off a fresh round of indignant comments from Colorado officials and run the state-federal collaboration into a wall.
The main question: What is the point of the state working group if the federal government isn’t even listening?
State lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis created the Colorado Wild Horse Working Group last year because they were upset with the BLM’s annual low-flying helicopter roundups that corralled mustangs and shipped them to holding pens. The 23-member task force invented through Senate Bill 275 has $1.5 million in state funds and a mandate to recommend “humane, non-lethal alternatives” for wild horse population control.
Its members — which include a BLM representative — have been meeting for nine months, getting closer to offering solutions that are likely to include a state wild horse sanctuary and a paid team to shoot fertility darts at mares.
The group is a “recommending body only,” according to its charter, but “its recommendations are expected to be highly influential in on- and off-range wild horse management in Colorado.”
So when the BLM announced plans for its next Colorado roundup without consulting the group, it didn’t sit well with state leaders, who are calling the move “disrespectful.”
Now, the governor is requesting that federal land managers delay the roundup, pending “further analysis and discussion.” The BLM says that while the state task force “provides an excellent forum for discussions,” the federal agency did not ask the state group’s opinion about the helicopter roundup because that is “outside the scope of their work.”
“The state working group was not envisioned to be a policy or decision-making group for management of federally protected wild horses. The BLM is responsible for the management of wild horses in Colorado,” the BLM told The Colorado Sun.
The federal government anticipates a long-term collaboration with Colorado regarding wild horses — once it thins the mustang population to an appropriate level. The Little Book Cliffs roundup is likely to happen in the fall.
“I am confident that we can succeed together in implementing the most robust fertility control darting program in the nation, and wild horse populations must first be at sustainable levels to allow that plan to work,” the BLM’s Colorado state director, Doug Vilsack, told The Sun via email.
Polis wants a “bait and trap,” not a helicopter
Polis asked the federal agency to instead allow Colorado’s Department of Agriculture to fund fertility control in Little Book Cliffs, saying the BLM’s roundup plan was excessive. For years, the federal government has paid for fertility vaccines, but relies on volunteers to do the painstaking work of tracking down horses in the wild and shooting darts.
The federally determined “appropriate management level” of the Little Book Cliffs herd is 90-150 horses, and the current population is 203, including 22 foals. That means there are only about 50 animals more than the upper end of the appropriate level, the governor wrote, yet the BLM wants to remove about 100.
“This will be the largest roundup ever in Little Book Cliffs,” Polis wrote. “This is an escalation of roundups for this area rather than my strongly preferred approach of more measured population management, which prioritizes the well-being of these animals.”
The governor also requested that “if” the BLM proceeds with a roundup, the federal agency use a slow-paced “bait and trap” approach, which involves enticing horses into remote corrals with water and hay, instead of using a helicopter. He also asked that wranglers on horseback do not rope any mustangs, saying that has “high potential for extreme stress, injury and death.”
Polis also wants the state veterinarian involved in the roundup and public viewing of the roundup, calling it “vital for the peace of mind of Coloradans.” And he wants “special attention” to keep foals with their mothers.
“As I have shared with you previously, I am concerned about the separation of foals and mares, the long distances that foals and other horses may be required to run in adverse weather conditions, and the length of time that foals may be separated from mares,” Polis wrote.
The main sponsors of the bipartisan legislation that created the state working group also weighed in on the BLM plan, calling it “contrary to the good faith we envisioned” when they passed the law.
The “clear intent” of the new law, which is unique among states across the West with wild horses, was to boost the fertility control program and “avoid the very roundup contemplated in Little Book Cliffs for this fall,” the lawmakers’ letter states. It’s signed by House Majority Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat, as well as Sen. Joann Ginal, a Fort Collins Democrat, Sen. Perry Will, a New Castle Republican, and Rep. Mike Lynch, a Wellington Republican.
The rangeland east of Grand Junction provides a “model opportunity to demonstrate the real potential for state-federal partnerships within our state,” they said. “We are eager to hear back that Colorado BLM will reconsider their plans in Little Book Cliffs to align with our requests.”
In an interview with The Colorado Sun, Duran called the proposed roundup “frustrating” and “disrespectful,” and said she believes the plan is coming from the D.C. office of the federal agency, not local leaders in Colorado.
“Even though I understand that it’s the national BLM that is kind of dictating to the Colorado BLM, it still feels somewhat disrespectful,” she said. “This has kind of put a hold on where things are going because now we are having to deal with this.”
Duran said Colorado needs to “push back” against the federal proposal and show other states that “we lead the way here.”
“We need to respect and honor the systems that are in place. The other way isn’t working and it’s not in any way humane.”
The BLM’s state director testified at the state legislature to help create the working group, and the federal agency said that “management of public land and wild horses in Colorado will always be better with cooperation between the state and federal government.”
So far, the group has discussed “ways to support local wild horse organizations, ramping up fertility control darting efforts, and opportunities for finding off-range homes for horses. Some of these ideas have led to funding proposals and projects to benefit BLM’s management of wild horses,” federal officials said.
50,000 horses removed in four years
The BLM’s public comment period on the roundup ended June 14. The federal agency is expected to announce its decision later this summer.
American Wild Horse Conservation, a national advocacy group, said more than 10,000 of its supporters wrote letters to the BLM protesting a Little Book Cliffs helicopter roundup. The group prefers a fertility control program and says the LIttle Book Cliffs is the ideal place for a test case of a state-federal partnership. “There’s a better approach,” said Scott Wilson, the group’s spokesperson.
Water is often scarce on the 36,000 sagebrush-filled acres of rangeland at Little Book Cliffs, one of four mustang herd management areas on about 400,000 acres in Colorado.
Federal land managers removed about 50,000 wild horses and burros across the West from 2020 to 2023, about twice as many as in the prior four years. Colorado should have no more than 827 animals, the BLM says. The current count is 1,322.
Recent helicopter roundups in Colorado included the West Douglas rangeland in 2023, East Douglas in 2022 and Sand Wash Basin in 2021.