by Sofia Saric. Originally published by Casper Star Tribune.
An animal advocacy organization is accusing the Bureau of Land Management of prioritizing for-profit entities over the environment after their recent decision to eliminate or reduce wild horses from over one million acres in southwestern Wyoming.
The BLM approved a resource management plan in May, which would cause the reduction or elimination of hundreds of wild horses from the Adobe Town, Great Divide Basin, Salt Wells Creek and White Mountain regions, the ruling states. By law, the agency isn’t allowed to kill wild horses, but they can capture and move them.
In response, a nonprofit group seeking to free animals from cruelty and exploitation, Friends of Animals, filed a suit against the BLM and the secretary of the Department of the Interior last week, documents show.
This decision to have wild horses “torn from their homes on public lands to serve the interests of private industries ” is “devastating,” Jennifer Best, an attorney representing Friends of Animals, told the Star-Tribune.