Nevada Federal Judge Blocks BLM Death Stampede

 

July 15, 2010

By Steven Long

 

HOUSTON, (Horseback) - Horseback Magazine was informed late Wednesday by activist author R.T. Fitch that a Nevada federal judge has enjoined the federal Bureau of Land Management from further roundups of the Tuscarora gathering of wild horses in northwestern Elko County, Nevada.

 

The order follow an initial status conference on a lawsuit filed by longtime animal welfare advocate Laura Leigh on her lawsuit filed against the BLM. After an initial roundup there in which more than 200 horses were stampeded by helicopter, 12 of the animals died, most of heat stroke. The agency temporarily halted the roundup. An avalanche of bad press followed.

 

U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, (D) Louisiana, has given the agency one year to clean up its act or face losing its Wild Horse and Burro Program. During its last Nevada roundup in the remote Calico Mountains of northern Nevada in the dead of winter, the 150 horses and unborn foals died after a helicopter stampede. Two foals shed their hooves in an excruciatingly painful death.

 

The one day Tuscarora roundup was held in Nevada's searing July heat.

 

At the preliminary hearing, the BLM told the judge that there would be no roundup of the Tuscarora horses until Sunday at the earliest. Yet late Wednesday afternoon, Judge Larry R. Hicks of Reno was told that BLM Director Bob Abbey authorized an emergency "gather" of wild horses to begin the following morning at 6 a.m. prior to the court's scheduled hearing that day on the motion for the temporary restraining order.

 

The judge granted an immediate injunction preventing the Tuscarora roundup until further orders from the court. In the injunction, Hicks prohibited the agency from rounding up wild horses from within the Owyhee, rock Creek, and Little Humboldt Herd Management Areas in the northwest of Elko County, Nevada.

 

The BLM carried out the Calico "gather" against the advice of Washington federal judge Paul Friedman who held that holding the wild horse in captivity was probably illegal in an earlier suit.