WASHINGTON (CN) – An animal-rights group lost their court battle to block the U.S. government from removing hundreds of wild horses from Utah's Cedar Mountains.
The Bureau of Land Management, a federal agency tasked with managing public lands, performs roundups periodically across the country to keep the wild horse population from deteriorating the rangeland.
Though the bureau counted 800 horses in the Cedar Mountain herd in March 2016, an aerial survey this past December showed that the herd had increased to approximately 960.
The bureau proposed a plan to round up 600 from the herd, permanently remove no more than 300 of them, and return the rest to the wild after treating them with a contraceptive vaccine called PZP, or porcine zona pellucid.
On Feb. 7, a day before the scheduled roundup, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington rejected a demand by Friends of Animals for an injunction.
Friends of Animals had accused the bureau of violating the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to conduct a new environmental assessment, something the group said the agency was required to do because it would gather more horses this time than it did nine years ago.
Cooper notes in the 23-page ruling, however, that the bureau’s proposal seeks to permanently remove 150 fewer wild horses than it did in 2008, making the overall number of horses affected about the same this time around.
That renders a new environmental assessment unnecessary, Cooper determined.
Friends of Animals also wanted the bureau to review recent studies on possible adverse side effects of PZP on horse health and birthing cycles.
In rejecting this move, Cooper said federal agencies are not required to consider every study that crosses their desks, unless it shows a significant impact on the quality of the human environment the agency had not previously considered.
Here, Cooper found the bureau in compliance.
"BLM considered the studies offered by plaintiff in its comments and determined that they did not significantly change BLM’s prior analysis," the ruling states.
"The bureau found studies on consecutive years of PZP treatment, for example, irrelevant to the proposed action because Cedar Mountain mares are treated in four to five-year intervals, not in consecutive years or breeding cycles," the ruling continues (emphasis original).
Cooper also found that the BLM had already considered older studies with findings similar to those Friends of Animals wanted the agency to review.
"Given these reasoned determinations, the Court concludes that the BLM most likely acted within its informed discretion in refusing to find that the 'new information' offered by Plaintiff warranted additional environmental analysis," the ruling states.
In opting not to grant an injunction to the group, Cooper called its claim that PZP has long-term and adverse health consequences on the horses "unsubstantiated by scientific literature."
"Plaintiff points only to the declaration of its photographer-member to support it," the ruling states.
Cooper additionally shot down the advocacy group's claim that the BLM failed to consider range conditions and herd size in making its determination to remove wild horses to maintain an ecological balance.
As the bureau said in its final decision, which the ruling quotes, the “gather is necessary to remove excess wild horses and to reduce the population in order to achieve and maintain a thriving natural ecological balance between wild horses and other multiple uses as required under [the Wild Horses Act]." (Emphasis original.)
The logic underpinning that "appears simple and sound," Cooper found.
On whether the BLM should be required to make a determination of excess before claiming the authority to treat young mares with PZP, Cooper found the bureau to be in compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements.
"It is likely that BLM properly determined that there were excess horses in the Cedar Mountain HMA,” the ruling states, abbreviating herd management area. “And its decision to remove or otherwise manage that excess population does not appear to be in violation of the Wild Horses Act.”
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