Group under House probe helps block gov't removal of wild horses from wildfire-ravaged range

A radical environmental group is suing to stop the evacuation of wild horses in Oregon whose territory has been ravaged by wildfires and face dwindling food and water.

The Oregon Wild Horse Organization, the Central Oregon Wild Horse Coalition, and the Western Watersheds Project sued to stop the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) removal of hundreds of wild horses on Riddle Mountain to keep them from starving – and a judge has granted a temporary restraining order.

“It’s our responsibility to manage and protect these herds,” said Don Rotell, Burns District Manager, in a press release about the situation. “When fire and severe drought shrinks water sources and reduces forage, it’s the horses and other plants and animals that pay a price.”

Are the wild horses being doomed to starvation by the environmentalists?

“We want healthy horses on healthy rangelands,” Rotell added. “Unfortunately, the practical implication of this delay is that it may not be possible to round up these horses before late fall storms make roads in the area impassable.”

Neither the BLM or most news reports of the situation have named the environmental groups suing to block the rescue, but the Oregon Wild Horse Organization took credit for the order on Facebook, and claimed that their co-plaintiffs included the Central Oregon Wild Horse Coalition, Western Watersheds Project, thanked "Jessica Blome and the incredible team at Greenfire Law."

“HUGE WIN FOR THE RIDDLE WILD HORSES!” the group boasted.

“This temporary restraining order is a critical step—but the fight isn’t over. We’ll keep pushing for a permanent solution that respects these wild horses’ right to roam free,” the group added.

As BLM stated, however, a dry winter and wildfires have destroyed 70% of the herd management area, saying the herd is “under immediate threat from severe food and water shortages.”

The rescue operation was supposed to start September 9, with BLM warning that upcoming autumn storms could make the area impossible to traverse, leaving the horses stranded through the winter.

In an email to Just the News, Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project (WWP), claimed there would never be a rescue and the BLM’s narrative about Riddle Mountain was “false and cynically dishonest,” adding that the horses don’t need to be rescued.

“Instead of a ‘rescue,’ the BLM said they were going to round up 100% of the wild horses on Riddle Mountain and confine them to feedlots for two years, after which they might (or might not) return a maximum of 33 back to the wild, after dosing some of them with brith control [sic],” Molvar said. “That's such a small number that it is well below the genetic minimum viable population threshold established by science.”

Despite BLM's claims, the group alleged in court that enough forage remains to sustain the horses

Molvar said that in court, a judge looked at the evidence presented by both sides, including photos presented by the environmental groups showing healthy horses and enough remaining forage to sustain them, and ruled that the potential harm to the herd outweighed the benefits and ruled against the BLM’s roundup.

“As we assert in our lawsuit (and which the BLM has scarcely contested), the Bureau of Land Management has failed to document the impacts to lands and forage from the cattle that in this case are authorized to graze off the lion's share of the grass in the Riddle Mountain Wild Horse Herd Management Area, and has failed to connect its wild horse herd reductions with any aspect of maintaining a ‘thriving natural ecological balance,’ as federal law requires them to do,” Molvar said. 

“As the conservation group most focused on land health, and we want to reform the agency's mismanagement of cattle and sheep grazing, and we don't appreciate the agency's habitual scapegoating of wild horses for ecological damage that is actually caused by cattle and sheep,” he added.

Profitable litigation machines, Congress alleges

WWP is one of 19 organizations currently under investigation by the House Natural Resources Committee, which alleges it and other tax-exempt environmental groups “coordinated capitalization on misleading and emotive messaging to build powerful and profitable litigation machines funded by taxpayer dollars through the exploitation of statutory fee-shifting provisions.”

The Committee asserted that the 19 groups collected taxpayer-funded reimbursements for attorneys’ fees when they filed lawsuits in front of activist judges to block “pro-growth and pro-natural resource management activities.”

“After American taxpayers pay their legal bills, they use their tax-exempt status to turn their courtroom antics into fundraising appeals,” the Committee said in a press release.

Neither the Oregon Wild Horse Organization nor the Central Oregon Wild Horse Coalition are included in the group that is under investigation.