Biggest US holding pen planned for wild horses faces suit

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Advocates for wild horses are accusing federal land managers of illegally approving plans for the largest U.S. holding facility for thousands of mustangs captured on public rangeland in 10 Western states.

Friends of Animals said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday up to 4,000 horses would be held captive inhumanely for months or years at a time in dusty, manure-filled pens without shade or wind-breaks in Nevada’s high desert.

At a cost of of millions of dollars annually to U.S. taxpayers, the lawsuit says it's part of the government's misguided effort to appease ranchers by accelerating roundups of mustangs competing with their livestock for public forage across much of the drought-stricken West.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. district court in Reno says the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management broke multiple environmental and animal protection laws when it “rushed through the approval process without considering the impacts of the unprecedented facility on wild horses and burros or the local community.”

Interior Department spokesman Tyler Cherry said in an email that neither the department nor the bureau had any comment.

The bureau said in announcing solicitations for bids for the corral in late 2020 that more space was needed to facilitate roundups of what it says is an overpopulation of wild horse herds causing ecological damage to the range.

The bureau wrongly concluded a full-blown, year-long environmental impact review wasn't necessary for JS Livestock Inc.'s holding pens on 100 acres (40 hectares) of private land near Winnemucca, about 170 miles (273 kilometers) northeast east of Reno, the lawsuit said.

Jennifer Best, director of Friends of Animals Wildlife Law Program, said agency officials who approved the project in November failed to...