BILLINGS, Mont. (AP)--Wild horse advocates are concerned that the roundup of up to 10,000 wild horses and burros across the West this year will lower their populations drastically and threaten the animals' genetic diversity.

The roundup includes the removal this month of 1,000 mustangs from two herds in Wyoming's Red Desert.

"You cannot preserve this gene pool with such reductions," said Karen Sussman, president of the Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros. "Each herd has a significant historical value."

The Bureau of Land Management, the agency responsible for managing the herds, will hold 57 gathers this year in nine Western states. In the past three years, the agency has removed 10,000 horses each year from federal lands.

The roundups do not include Montana's only wild horse herd in the Pryor Mountains, where the population is being limited through the use of birth control drugs. But if the herd remains at 160 horses, a gather will be considered next fall, according to Linda Coates-Markle, wild horse manager for the BLM in Billings.

Wyoming has 16 wild horse herds. Only two, the Salt Wells Creek and Adobe Town, are scheduled for reduction this month. According to Alan Shepherd, Wyoming wild horse specialist for the BLM, the wild horse population at Adobe Town is around 1,200 animals with the Salt Wells population near 625. Target populations for the herds are 610 to 800 for Adobe Town and 250 to 400 for Salt Wells.

"The populations are so large it's taken a couple of gathers to get down to our target numbers," Shepherd said. "We don't want to do any further damage to the habitat they're in. The area is critical elk, deer and antelope winter range."

Sussman said the notion that wild horses and burros damage rangelands is incorrect. She said cattle grazing more often leads to environmental damage on public lands.

"For the most part, wild animals move more across the range," she said. "If they're going to remove 10 percent of the horses, it has to be commensurate--they should remove 10 percent of the cattle and 10 percent of the wildlife."

Sussman also complained that the BLM keeps revising its numbers for maximum herd size in the West. BLM estimates there are 32,000 wild horses and burros roaming federal lands. But the agency has calculated that the rangeland can support only 28,000 animals.

"Every 10 years the management levels change," Sussman said. "In 1960, the management levels were at 60,000 horses and burros. In the mid-1980s, they pushed to get it down to 36,000. Now, 15 to 20 years later, it's 23,000 to 29,000. What that will do is put these horses in jeopardy."

To help place some of the wild horses that are rounded up, Sussman said her group is working to encourage American Indian tribes to adopt the animals. The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota is managing a herd now.

"Our goal is to see that they are protected on native land," Sussman said.

The roundups are conducted by a BLM-hired contractor who uses a helicopter to herd horses toward portable panels set up to catch the animals.

Of all the roundups this year, Nevada's Buck and Bald Complex and Fish Creek Complex will see the largest reductions, 805 and 896 respectively. Nationwide, Wyoming's Adobe Town herd comes in third with a planned reduction of 675 horses and the Salt Wells Creek herd will be reduced by 325.

Next year, Wyoming plans reductions to six more of its horse herds, the BLM's Shepherd said.

The estimated cost of removing and holding the animals this year will be $39.5 million, $20.1 million of which will go toward keeping the animals before an estimated 6,000 are adopted.

BLM expects to sell "without limitation" 8,400 wild horses and burros this year that are more than 10 years old or have been passed over for adoption at least three times. The Burns amendment, named after Sen. Conrad Burns, R-MT, which passed last December, makes it easier for the agency to send older and unwanted horses to slaughter. The national animal rights group Friends of Animals is pursuing legislation to end all wild horse roundups.

Wild horse advocate Elizabeth Stevens of South Pasadena, Calif., said the BLM has failed for decades to protect and preserve America's wild horse herds.

"It seems like a real conflict of interest between the people BLM serves--ranchers and the oil and gas industry--and the wild horses," she said. "And unfortunately, the horses don't get to speak out."

Date: 8/24/05