PHOENIX (CN) — A federal judge declined to block the U.S. Forest Service from selling 13 unowned horses found in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in a Texas auction.
Like many places in the West, the Apache-Sitgreaves is home to a horse herd embroiled in controversy. While the forest service says the horses are escapees from nearby ranches and tribal lands, classifying them as feral, wild horse advocates claim they’re descendants of the Spanish Barb horses that have made their home in the forest for centuries.
The Salt River Wild Horse Management Group sued the forest service last Wednesday to stop the sale of 13 horses in an auction the advocates say the service didn't properly give notice of.
U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich, a Donald Trump appointee, issued a temporary restraining order the same day to halt the sale, but a second judge lifted the order Friday evening, finding that the plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their arguments.
"We are disappointed that the TRO was lifted because the fact that the USFS is shipping Arizona wild horses to kill pens in Texas is unconscionable," Salt River group President Simone Netherlands said in a text.
The forest service must follow strict guidelines to round up and sell any livestock found on federal land, according to the Administrative Procedures Act.
It must issue public notice of impoundment at least 15 days before it rounds any horses up, issue separate notice five days before an auction that specifies the time, date and location of the auction and provide specific descriptions of each horse it intends to sell at auction.
The Salt River group says the service violated those requirements, and asked that the auction be halted indefinitely. The group purchases horses in forest service auctions to give them better homes and keep them out of the hands of “kill buyers” that, according to the horse advocates, send the horses overseas for slaughter and consumption.
While U.S. District Judge John Tuchi agreed that the service violated one of the three requirements, he declined to issue a preliminary injunction to keep the auction in limbo.
Rather than publish a notice 15 days before each roundup, the service published a notice on December 15, 2023 to cover an entire 12-month period. Plaintiff attorney Troy Froderman argued Friday morning that the service instead should have issued separate notice for each roundup, but the Administrative Procedures Act doesn’t require that.
Instead, it allows the Forest Service to impound horses any time within 12 months of a notice, so long as it first waits 15 days, which is exactly what it did.
Similarly, Tuchi, a Barack Obama appointee, found that the forest service’s descriptions of the horses, while limited, met the criteria required by statute.
“Horses of both genders and varying age classes and colors,” which is what was written on the Forest Service’s notice of sale “could describe every horse in the world,” Froderman said Friday morning.
“That is true,” Tuchi replied in his order. “But they have not demonstrated that more specificity than the number and type of livestock to be sold is required under the regulation. While the court understands and accepts that more information about the individual horses to be sold would assist plaintiffs in their mission to raise funds to buy and adopt specific horses, with the aim of potentially saving the animals’ lives, they do not show that their unique mission is the aim of the regulation’s notice description requirement.”
Tuchi agreed with the Salt River group that the service’s notice of sale was inadequate because it didn’t provide a specific date and time of auction, but found that the plaintiffs cannot show irreparable harm as a result of the sale, because the forest service now has to give them an additional five-day notice, this time with a specific date and time, before the horses are sold.
"The USFS will be required to issue another notice of sale for the 13 horses in question, so we will be raising funds in a hurry and are looking for good homes for these beautiful Arizona wild horses," Netherlands said.
Since 2022, the forest service has been removing horses, known locally as the Alpine herd, at the request of the Center for Biological Diversity and other conservation groups who say the horses — who disappeared from the fossil record during the last ice age before their return alongside the Spaniards — are now destroying the native ecosystem that evolved in their absence.
Of the 467 horses removed from the Apache-Sitgreaves since 2022, 392 have been purchased by or with the help of the Salt River group. Froderman told Tuchi he believes that most of the 75 horses not purchased by the plaintiffs have been slaughtered, but absent an evidentiary hearing, the claim remains unproven.
Tuchi guessed that roughly 200 horses remain in the herd, given that more than 400 have been removed. But that estimate doesn’t account for rapid reproduction rates that could double a horse population in just four years if left unchecked.
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