Two legislative committees heard updates on wild horse management in Wyoming this week, including statistics about two gather operations that took place this year in Fremont County.
North Lander
The Bureau of Land Management gathered 2,577 horses during a gather operation in July at the North Lander HMA Complex, BLM Associate State Director Kris Kirby said Tuesday during a meeting of the Wyoming Legislature’s Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee.
Out of that total, she said, “the BLM will be treating approximately 58 mares with GonaCon (and) releasing a total of about 118 animals back to the Herd Management Area.”
“That will set the HMA to a current population of about 350 horses – well within the Appropriate Management Level range of 320 to 536 animals,” Kirby said.
Later, she explained that GonaCon – a fertility control vaccine – is used “across all of (our) HMA areas” based upon the makeup of each individual herd.
At North Lander, she said wild horse and burro specialists surveyed the remaining herd after this year’s gather and determined “how many (horses) they could put back out on the range,” including the “mares that have received fertility control.”
The treatment is effective for “at least a year, if not longer,” she said.
The horses removed in the North Lander operation were sent to the BLM’s off-range corral in Wheatland, Kirby said, and “we don’t know when the next gather will be on those specific areas we gathered this year.”
“We’re not gathering at North Lander … next year,” she said. “But we are going to gather in other areas. … Every year we are trying to do a gather.”
Wind River
On Monday, the Wyoming Legislature’s Select Federal Natural Resource Management Committee received a report on the wild horse gathers that took place this year on the Wind River Reservation, with financial support from the state.
Shoshone and Arapaho Fish and Game Director Arthur Lawson “paired” that state support with “other funding that he’s gotten from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other sources” in order to complete “a huge removal of feral horses” this year, Kit Wendtland, Special Counsel to Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, told the committee this week.
“That has greatly helped their ecosystem (and) just general range and forage health overall,” Wendtland said. “So (we) definitely commend Director Lawson on those efforts.”
Lawson said an aerial infrared survey conducted in February and March of this year counted a total of 2,083 feral horses remaining on the reservation after last year’s gather operations.
In June, his agency was able to gather 1,057 of those animals, he said, bringing the total removed from the reservation up to 7,633 and leaving 1,026 wild horses on the range.
The operations have resulted in “a lot of improvements” to the local ecosystem, he said, “especially” within sage grouse and mule deer habitats.
“We’re seeing a lot more mule deer than we’ve ever seen in areas we haven’t seen in the last 10-15 years,” he said. “It’s kind of nice to see wildlife coming back and sage grouse all over the reservation.”
The sheep habitat above Washakie Reservoir has been restored “in full” as well, he continued, with assistance from Fremont County Weed and Pest, which has been “spraying” the area.
“The sheep are staying down lower and actually expanding to more areas,” Lawson said. “So we believe that sheep population is going to increase quite a bit.”
Moving forward, Lawson said he plans to conduct “smaller roundups” in targeted areas on the reservation in order to keep the horse herd from growing too much as the “colt crop” increases.
One of his wardens has been tasked with “keeping count of all the horses in different range units” so the agency can “keep our focus in certain areas where the population is growing faster than others,” he explained.
Wardens are also “out patrolling (and) checking people to see if they’re illegally dumping on the reservation,” he added.
The state still has some money set aside to support wild horse efforts on the reservation, Wendtland said, and “we’re going over ideas outside of just roundups that could be helpful for (Lawson) moving forward, now that he’s gotten his horses down to a more manageable level.”
For example, he said, “we’ve talked a little bit about, is there a way for him to have a position that could help do continual horse counting in Wind River so he could have an idea if (herd) numbers were getting out of control again.”
“(That) would take some pressure off of his existing folks,” Wendtland said. “We can look at efforts like that, or other management activities outside of strict roundups.”