BLM ends mustang fertility project in Northern Nevada

RENO — The Bureau of Land Management has pulled the plug on a public-private partnership in Northern Nevada aimed at shrinking the size of a wild horse herd southeast of Carson City through the use of contraceptives.

Unlike most mustang conflicts pitting protection groups against ranchers, the dispute in Nevada’s Pine Nut mountains is fueled largely by a division among horse advocates themselves over the use of fertility drugs on the range.

BLM approved a pilot project in 2014 working with the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign and a neighborhood group to treat a herd that a federal judge has forbid the agency from gathering.

But an internal email obtained by The Associated Press shows BLM suspended the project Monday after leaders of Friends of Animals threatened to sue. That group says the drug harms horses and violates the judge’s order.

“Administration of PZP to these wild horses is hereby suspended, pending further review,” BLM Sierra Front Field Manager Bryant D. Smith wrote in informing his staff he’d revoked the decision record for the Fish Spring Wild Horses PZP Pilot Project.

While some groups advocate fertility control as a preferred alternative to government roundups, others say scientific research suggests PZP can have long-lasting physical, behavioral and social effects on wild horses. Among other things, they say mares that cannot get pregnant choose to leave their bands, creating instability that affects the health of the entire herd.

“We are extremely happy to have killed the pilot project and to put a stop to the forced drugging of Pine Nut mares with the fertility control pesticide PZP for a second time,” said Pricilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, an international advocacy group founded in Connecticut in 1957.

The BLM maintains the Pine Nut herd is seriously overpopulated, and it intended to round up more than 300 horses last year before U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks sided with Friends of Animals and blocked the effort. He ruled the BLM failed to conduct the necessary analysis required under the National Environmental Policy Act, and soon after the agency voluntarily withdrew its roundup plan.

Meanwhile, the BLM had been stepping up its efforts in concert with the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign — a coalition of more than 60 groups nationally — and the local group to administer PZP to members of the herd that wander into nearby neighborhoods.