A helicopter weaving over the parched ground and stirring up dust in the Piceance Basin is rounding up wild horses this week in the federal government’s latest effort to thin the mustang herds that roam Colorado.
The goal of the Bureau of Land Management’s roundup in northwestern Colorado is to remove more than 900 mustangs from the Piceance-East Douglas herd management area, which is nearly 200,000 acres of public land outside of Meeker.
In the operation’s first two days, 180 horses have been corralled. The roundup began Sunday and was halted by about 11 a.m. as temperatures climbed toward 100 degrees. Still, the low-flying helicopter contracted by the BLM drove 96 mustangs, including 43 mares, 35 stallions and 18 foals, into corrals in one day.
The operation could continue for up to 30 days, depending on weather, terrain and the safety of the horses, BLM spokesperson Steven Hall said. The plan is to gather 1,025 horses from the Piceance-East Douglas and the nearby West Douglas areas, then return 14 of those horses to the Piceance.
The rest will go to long-term holding facilities or pastures, or become available for adoption.
The BLM’s animal welfare protocol requires that operations stop when temperatures hit 95 degrees. “Horses do quite well in hot weather, as cowboys can attest, but this safety feature ensures the welfare of horses that may be old, younger, or have health issues,” Hall said Monday via email. “Gather operations are off to a good start. Gathers in northwest Colorado historically are some of the safest wild horse gathers in the country.”
Public viewing of the roundup has been limited to three days per week, a change that was necessary because of staff capacity, he said. “The same staff who manage public viewing at wild horse gathers also support other natural resources and emergency services like wildland fire, which has been busy this year, particularly in Colorado,” Hall said.
The BLM wants to remove 911 of the estimated 1,100 horses on the Piceance-East Douglas rangeland, leaving about 200 or so, which is what the land can handle, federal land managers said. Drought has diminished water and forage on the public land, which is shared by wildlife, grazing cattle and oil pumps.
A related roundup aims to remove all 100 or so of the horses on West Douglas, which is unsuitable for mustangs, Hall said. The horses in West Douglas were removed in 2023 following a wildfire, and the horses that have returned to the 123,000 acres southwest of Rangely in Rio Blanco County often leave the federal land in search of forage and water, ending up on private property, the BLM said.
A group of volunteers called the Piceance Mustangs whose members have brought water to the horses, as well as darted wild mares with a birth-control vaccine, said they were “heartbroken” but understood the need to reduce the numbers.
“Even though we, Piceance Mustangs, are heartbroken, we realize the need for this gather,” the group’s board of directors wrote in a letter to members. “Our hope is this will be the last big gather, and we will be able to sustain the population with fertility control and smaller on-range gathers.”
The group put out a call for people to adopt some of the 911 horses captured in the roundup, and to spread the word in hopes of “finding these special horses the best homes for their new beginnings.” They also warned that online conversations about the roundups could get ugly.
“Unfortunately, gathers always bring out the worst in people,” the board wrote. “Please keep this in mind when posting to social media and use this opportunity to educate people about fertility control and range conditions.”
The Piceance Mustangs, along with similar volunteer groups at Sand Wash Basin along the Wyoming border and Little Book Cliffs in Mesa County, are often in the middle of the emotionally charged battle about how best to handle the population of mustangs across the West.
On one side is the BLM, and on the other are mustang advocates who strongly oppose putting mustangs in holding facilities and instead push for expanding fertility control programs. In the center are the boots-on-the-ground volunteer groups that haul water in times of drought and have cataloged mustangs’ names and genealogy for generations.
A mustang advocacy group called American Wild Horse Conservation posted on social media ahead of this week’s Colorado operation, calling for “humane fertility control” and saying wild horses are “living symbols of the American West.” Chasing them with helicopters is inhumane, the group said.
“For these families, it means panic,” the group wrote. “Foals struggling to keep up with exhausted mothers. Bands scattered. A lifetime of freedom replaced by holding facilities, where many horses wait years for adoption, if they are adopted at all.”
The BLM’s summer-fall schedule includes fertility control operations in Colorado, including in Little Book Cliffs near Palisade and Spring Creek Basin in Disappointment Valley near Naturita. Ten of the 14 horses captured and then returned to the land in the Piceance will receive the fertility-control vaccine, the BLM said.
Another mustang roundup at Sand Wash Basin aims to remove 245 horses through a helicopter operation in September.
In all, the goal is to shrink the wild horse population in Colorado to about 600 horses from the current 1,727. The state has four herd management areas — Piceance-East Douglas, Sand Wash Basin, Little Book Cliffs and Spring Creek Basin.
More than 2,200 mustangs have been removed from Colorado rangeland in recent years. Major helicopter roundups have included the West Douglas rangeland in 2023, East Douglas in 2022 and Sand Wash Basin in 2021.