In Response to Wild Horse Groups’ Legal Arguments, BLM Withdraws Pancake Complex Roundup Decision

Several weeks after a federal judge ruled that the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) should have considered declarations from four leading wild horse scientists who criticized the agency’s radical approach to wild horse management, which involves castrating male horses and returning them to the range with unknown, and likely severe, impacts to individual horses, their herds, and the public’s ability to view these horses in their natural “wild” state, BLM has filed a motion for voluntary remand asking for an opportunity to reconsider its decision.  Once the request is approved by the court, BLM’s November 2011 roundup decision will be withdrawn, and no management actions can be taken to round up wild horses in the Pancake Complex or to castrate male horses that live there unless and until BLM issues a new decision that fully complies with the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.