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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Federal authorities plan to round up hundreds of wild horses in Utah's west desert.
Officials with the Bureau of Land Management says there are too many horses for the parched range land to support. The plan is to remove about 480 horses and leave about 250 to roam around the Conger and Confusion mountains when the roundup begins Tuesday.
"It's a management tool," BLM spokeswoman Lisa Reid told The Salt Lake Tribune. "We try to provide an ecological balance between horses and wildlife and recreation."
Wild horses and burros roam in 10 Western states, with the largest herds in Nevada and California.
Opponents unsuccessfully sued to stop a roundup in California, but the BLM has vowed to re-examine the practice of roundups.
BLM officials are planning a two-year, $1.5 million study to determine whether the agency is using the best science available in managing wild horses and burros on Western rangelands. The study tentatively set to begin Jan. 1 would focus on population estimation methods, annual herd growth rates and population control measures.
During the Utah roundups, the BLM will capture and release some of the horses, including an estimated 50 studs in the Confusion herd and another 20 in the Conger herd. Plans call for 10 mares in the Conger herd to be treated with fertility control and returned to the range.
Adjusting the male/female ratio in the herds should slow the population growth, the BLM said.
Opponents say the BLM is targeting wild horses to keep lands available for livestock grazing.
"It's all about money," said Suzanne Roy, director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign. "And it's all about the power of the livestock lobby."
The BLM hopes to capture nearly 31 percent of the wild horse herds roaming the west and make about 11,800 animals available for private adoption or sent to pasture in the Midwest. The plan calls for no wild horses to be slaughtered.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
