BLM releases decision to gather wild horses in Iron, Beaver and Millard Counties
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CEDAR CITY, Utah — The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Cedar City Field Office has approved a 10-year plan to achieve wild horse appropriate management levels in the Sulphur Herd Management Area (HMA) to restore a thriving, natural ecological balance on the area’s public lands. The herd is approximately double appropriate management levels. The plan calls for gathering and removing wild horses from the range and employing fertility control. In addition, the agency will collect information on herd characteristics and determine herd health as it seeks to restore sustainable rangelands.
The Sulphur HMA is located in Utah’s western Iron, Beaver, and Millard counties, approximately 50 miles west of Minersville, Utah, in the Mountain Home and Indian Peak mountain ranges. The Sulphur HMA contains approximately 265,675 acres, with elevations ranging from 9,790 feet on top of Indian Peak to 6,000 feet in the valley floors.
The gather decision supports the BLM’s continuing efforts to provide public safety, improve the status of threatened and special species, and manage wild horse populations under the Warm Springs Resource Management Plan and the Pinyon Management Framework Plan decisions. The Sulphur HMA Plan identifies the HMA boundaries in both land use plans as suitable for wild horses and states the removal objective for both land use plans, including a necessity to “remove excess wild horses from the Sulphur HMA when the population of adult horse, those two years old and older, reaches the upper level of 180 horses.” If wild horses of all ages are included in the calculation, the appropriate management level for this HMA is 165 to 250 horses. The current estimated population for the HMA is 497 horses.
The decision record, finding of no significant impact, environmental assessment, and associated documents are available at https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/1505407/510. For additional information, please contact BLM Range Management Specialist Chad Hunter at chunter@blm.gov.
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land located primarily in 12 western states, including Alaska, on behalf of the American people. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. Our mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of America’s public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.