Mustang mares gathered from the White Mountain/Little Colorado ranges in Wyoming will receive a contraceptive and gathered stallions will return to the range intact under the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) revised plan for the contested gather. The new plan is the third put forward by the agency for this gather.

In June, some wild horse advocates criticized the BLM when the agency announced that it would gather animals from the White Mountain and Little Colorado Herd Management Areas in Wyoming, and spay mares and castrate stallions to reach designated appropriate management levels (205-300 for the former and 69-100 for the latter). Sterile herds would reside on both ranges, said BLM spokeswoman Cindy Wertz.

The BLM later revised its plan to exclude the spaying of mares. Under a revised plan, the BLM would gather approximately 873 animals from the ranges return only 117 geldings to the ranges.

On July 25 the Western Watersheds Project and the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC), along with Donna and Greg Duckworth and Carol Walker, filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia asking the court to prevent the BLM from returning only geldings to the range. Three days later, a Congressional delegation issued a letter asking Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and BLM Director Bob Abbey to abandon the plan to sterilize any wild horses under BLM jurisdiction