The Boise office of the Bureau of Land Management announced Monday that it would repatriate nearly 100 mustangs from rangelands in southwest Idaho after wildfires destroyed the vegetation the wild horses need to survive.
In a news release, officials said field offices in Owyhee and Four Rivers would begin an emergency roundup next week. They plan to round up about 40 mustangs from the Sands Basin Herd Management Area near Marsing and about 50 from the Four Mile area north of Emmett.
BLM officials said there is not enough vegetation in either area to support the current mustang population.
Both herd management areas were “almost completely burned” by lightning strikes, according to the release. The Jump Fire, which started Aug. 5 near Jump Creek in Owyhee County, burned nearly 26,000 acres. That includes a large swath of the 11,700-acre Sands Basin mustang habitat, which BLM officials say can hold between 33 and 64 horses.
The Paddock Fire, which broke out during the same storm, destroyed nearly 190,000 acres of land, including the 18,000-acre Four Mile Herd Management Area, which can hold between 37 and 60 horses.
Officials believe that no Mustangs were killed in the fires.
The horses will be rounded up and moved to BLM pens near Bruneau while the agency works to rehabilitate the area, which could take several years. It was unclear whether the agency plans to offer any of the rounded up horses for adoption in the future as part of its wild horse and burro adoption program.
The news release said the mustangs would be returned to herd management areas once public lands have recovered. It’s unclear how long that might take, but recovery from wildfires typically takes several years.
Information regarding collection efforts and eventual release will be updated on the BLM website.
The BLM conducted a similar emergency roundup of the Sands Basin, Black Mountain and Hardtrigger herd management areas in 2015 after the Soda Fire burned the area. According to the BLM website, 279 mustangs were rounded up from those areas. About 200 of the horses were eventually returned to their home ranges.
