3 large corrals approved for western US wild horse roundups

RENO, Nev. (AP) — The federal Bureau of Land Management has approved construction of three new corrals to hold more than 8,000 wild horses captured on federal rangeland to accelerate horse roundups slowed by a lack of space in existing holding pens.

The bureau issued final decisions on environmental assessments of the plans this week for the pens in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

The pens are the next step in plans announced last year by the administration of President Donald Trump to speed up the capture of 130,000 wild horses over 10 years at an estimated cost of $1 billion.

Backers include the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and American Farm Bureau Federation, which have pushed for the slaughter of excess horses that compete for forage with livestock grazing on U.S. lands.

Objecting to the corrals are wild horse advocates who insist the mustangs should remain in the wild and that the money would be better spent on horse fertility controls, like darting mares on the range with contraceptive drugs.

“Expanding capacity to hold captured mustangs is the first step to implementing this administration’s reckless plan to round up the vast majority of the West’s wild horses and burros,” American Wild Horse Campaign spokeswoman Grace Kuhn said.

Her group is considering an appeal, which would have to be filed within 30 days.

The government currently holds about 50,000 horses in off-range corrals and pastures at an annual cost of about $50 million.

About 95,000 remain on the range. That is “more than triple the number of animals the land can sustainably support in balance with other public resource values, including wildlife, recreation, livestock grazing, energy resource development and others,” the bureau said Wednesday.

With virtually no predators, the...