The Fight to Keep Utah’s Cherished Onaqui Horses Wild
The wild horses of the Onaqui Herd Management Area (HMA) are among the most visited and cherished herds in the United States or the world, attracting tens of thousands of visitors each year. This is due in part to the fact that the HMA is just outside Salt Lake City, and as such is more easily accessible than most HMAs. Additionally, the herd has a unique historic and cultural value because these horses are descendants of those that worked on the Pony Express Trail.
The Onaqui wild horses are also extremely popular among wildlife photographers, including professionals and amateurs who travel from around the country and around the world to witness and photograph them. The abiding popularity of the Onaqui wild horses, and the relative ease of access to the HMA, have also enabled local advocates to amass a wealth of knowledge about the herd and its individual horses.
At the end of 2018, the BLM released a plan for managing this herd that unsurprisingly focused on more roundups and removals. Unfortunately, that plan was finalized and the BLM removed 241 horses in 2019. BLM set the “Appropriate” Management Level (AML) at just 121–210 horses and is planning to permanently remove 296 wild horses to achieve this low AML this summer. For context, the BLM’s goal to remove the mustangs to the low AML will leave about one horse on roughly every 1,700 acres!
At the same time, the BLM allows thousands of cows and sheep to graze within the HMA. This plan is also extremely frustrating given that there is a comprehensive humane fertility control program underway in the HMA. Managing the current population on the range with the proven safe and effective PZP vaccine is the best available option for both the Onaqui horses and the American taxpayers.
As an organization, we are taking an approach that works to demonstrate to the BLM how important this herd is and how crucial it is for the agency to re-evaluate how they are managed for the future. AWHC and Western Watersheds Project submitted a new proposal for the management of the Onaqui horses that would not only allow for the current population of horses to remain but would let the horses stay and avoid being chased by helicopters for the foreseeable future. Our proposal focused on the need to allow time, just three more years, for the active PZP fertility program to stabilize population growth in the herd. We also emphasized the need for BLM to give wild horses a fairer share of the resource by decreasing livestock grazing in their habitat. Finally, we asked that the whole habitat be open to their use, as it is currently available to livestock.
Throughout the process, we worked with a coalition of organizations and photographers active in wild horse and conservation issues in the HMA in order to show the BLM that our proposal and call for action has broad support.
The public lands — and the wild horses and burros that inhabit them — belong to all Americans and all Americans should have a say in their management. As exemplified by public polls, 80 percent of Americans — who cross both party and geographic boundaries — want wild horse populations to be managed humanely and cost-effectively on their public lands.
We will keep you updated when we hear from the agency.
