Mounting their most vigorous defense for rounding up wild horses in the West, lawyers for the Obama administration argued Tuesday that leaving the overpopulated herds on public rangeland would do the mustangs more harm than good.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ignacia Moreno said in a court filing that the range cannot support the current population of horses, whose numbers were expected to grow. "The growing population of wild horses will have devastating impacts on the other resources in the area and on the wild horses themselves," Moreno wrote.
Justice Department lawyers were defending the roundup before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the Bureau of Land Management and its plans to begin its biggest roundup of the year on Wednesday — more than 2,000 animals along the California-Nevada border. That number represents up to 80 percent of the existing herd.
The Bay Area-based In Defense of Animals and other horse protection advocates have sought an emergency stay for the gathering about 120 miles north of Reno. The appellate court in San Francisco was expected to rule late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
The advocates say the free-roaming animals have a legal right to remain on the range that is their native home and that the helicopter-led roundups are inhumane, often leading to dozens of injuries and deaths.
They also dispute BLM's population estimates. They maintain that livestock grazing has caused more ecological damage to the federal land that also supports numerous wildlife species, including deer, antelope and sage grouse.
"The BLM proposes a radical and unprecedented plan of gather, removal and manipulation across an 800,000 landscape, risking the potential future of the entire herd," Stuart Gross, a lawyer for In Defense of Animals, wrote in a brief filed Tuesday.
The roundup is expected to last three to six weeks.
