A judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by ranchers who challenged federal land managers over what the cattlemen claimed was an overpopulation of wild horses in Nevada. Judge Miranda Du, sitting in the US District Court in Nevada, today granted a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the Nevada Association of Counties and the Nevada Farm Bureau Federation that sought the removal of thousands of wild horses from the rangeland. The lawsuit asked the court to compel the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to immediately round up and remove thousands of wild horses from Nevada public lands, conduct wild horse and burro roundups every two months in the state, and to auction, sell or otherwise dispose of the 50,000 wild horses and burros currently held in government warehousing facilities. The successful motion to dismiss the case was brought by the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC) , author Terri Farley and photographer Mark Terrell. Judge Du granted the dismissal “with prejudice,” meaning the court action cannot be amended or refiled. Judge Du ruled that, despite the plaintiffs’ allegation that the wild horse program’s administration had rampantly violated applicable laws, they had failed to identify a single agency action for review. She said the plaintiffs had ask the court to ensure that the federal defendants’ management of wild horses and burros in Nevada complied with the Wild Horse Act. “The court lacks jurisdiction to oversee such a sweeping request,” she said. Katherine Meyer, of law firm Meyer, Glitzenstein & Crystal, which represented the AWHPC, Farley and Terrell in the case, said: “We are pleased that the Court declined to allow these grazing interests to use the judicial system to revamp the priorities of the 1971 Wild Horse and Burros Act – to protect wild horses on the public lands as much as possible.” AWHPC director Suzanne Roy said: “This frivolous bid by cattlemen to roundup and slaughter America’s iconic wild horses to clear the public lands for commercial livestock grazing has now been soundly rejected by the federal court. “Public lands management must reflect American values for wild horse and burro protection. The days of preferential treatment of ranchers who receive taxpayer subsidies to graze private livestock on public lands must come to an end.” Leigh, an advocate who monitors wild horse roundups across the West, said she was relieved to see the case dismissed. “We stand at a time in history when mistakes of the past must be recognized. Tools are available to begin to take control of our public land in a sustainable fashion. We must begin to allocate forage for livestock in a way that stops the pounding of our public land into dust. “We must begin to manage our wild horses in a way that preserves rangeland to support healthy, genetically viable herds as intended under law. This ruling may be the beginning of moving out of archaic thinking and into this century.”
