BLM will use helicopters in quest to gather 1,000-plus horses in Northwest Colorado
BLM seeks to reduce herd sizes
John F. Russell/Steamboat Pilot & Today
The Bureau of Land Management plans to gather 1,111 horses in Northwest Colorado late this summer as part of its larger mission to reduce herd sizes across the West.
“Piceance-East Douglas currently has more than 1,045 horses in a herd management area with an appropriate management level of 135-235, meaning the East Douglas-Piceance horse management area is currently 345% over the upper appropriate management level,” said Steven Hall, with the Department of Interior Communications/BLM team. “Sand Wash, thanks to our partnerships with local wild horse friends’ groups, is much closer to appropriate management levels and a bait-trap gather can be used to help maintain a healthy population.”
Independent conservation photographer Scott Wilson said he had heard hints of roundups on the horizon, and that the advocate community has been waiting with bated breath for the government announcements that came out March 13. He said normally those types of announcements are made at year-end, but he believes that budget cuts and other factors may have delayed the announcements this time.
“It’s a huge number of horses,” Wilson said. “I think it’s the third biggest roundup scheduled in the nation this year.”
The announced horse gathers in Colorado include planned helicopter operations in East and West Douglas herd management areas in the Piceance Basin, roughly 20 miles southwest of Meeker. Those operations begin Aug. 1 and will feature drive trap operations where helicopters are used to drive horses into traps hidden in the landscape. The BLM hopes to gather 911 horses in the East Douglas herd management area as well as another 100 horses in the West Douglas herd management area.
Support Local Journalism
“Helicopters provide the most efficient, safe way to gather large numbers of horses in difficult terrain,” Hall said.
About 18 miles northwest of Maybell in the Sand Wash Basin, the BLM will use bait-trap operations where the horses are lured into the traps. Those operations will start in July to collect 100 additional horses, and at the same time the operations will target 150 additional wild horses as part of a PZP darting operation. The BLM hopes these fertility-control darting efforts will help control the population of wild horses in that area.
“The BLM has two goals with this summer’s wild horse gathers,” Hall said. “One, to achieve a sustainable wild horse population using best practices for managing domestic livestock. Two, to manage the public’s land in a sustainable manner that allows the BLM to achieve its legally mandated multiple-use management of the public lands, ensuring healthy wild horses, healthy public lands, and the continued public use of their public lands — like grazing, recreation or hunting — that communities in Colorado depend on.”
Wilson feels there are better ways to manage the wild horse population in Colorado and across the West. In 2023, the Colorado legislature passed Senate Bill 23-275, providing the resources and support efforts to ensure the long-term sustainability of Colorado’s wild horse herds and rangelands. As part of the law the 23-member Colorado Wild Horse Work Group, which includes a BLM representative, was created to make recommendations on humane, non-lethal alternatives for wild horses that are taken off range in Colorado or held in federal holding facilities.
The organization’s goals include growing partnerships and networks to support wild horse management and provide state-level coordination and support for the existing work of local nonprofit groups in delivering immunocontraceptives through darting, as well as installing and maintaining infrastructure needed to support the well-being of rangelands and wild horses.
“Even if you think about being there three or four years ago, it’s tragic that we’re effectively back where we were in 2022 despite earnest efforts by various stakeholders to bring people around the table with the formation of the Colorado Wild Horse Working Group,” Wilson said. “That group, which needs time to kind of bed in and ensure that we get conservation front and center, rather than using these sorts of cruel, inhumane roundups that just continually cycle through. It’s just such an awful, expensive way to manage things.”
Wilson said there are currently more than 66,000 horses that are being held and planned gathers across the West this summer could add another 14,000 to that number. Northwest Colorado saw helicopter trap operations in Sand Wash in 2021, East Douglas in 2022 and West Douglas in 2023. There was also a bait trap gather in 2025 where 42 wild horses where gathered.
“The number of horses in holding will be well in excess of the number in the wild, and that’s just not an equation I think is acceptable to America,” Wilson said. “These wild horses are a great symbol of freedom, and they belong in the wild. The notion that we’re just stockpiling them in holding is costing the taxpayer millions upon millions of dollars … and that bill is going to continue to rise.”
This story is from SteamboatPilot.com.
