SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Questions are being raised after the Bureau of Land Management euthanized two wild horses this week after they got stuck in mud trying to drink from a dried-up pond.
Janelle Ghiorso, vice president of Oregon Wild Horse Organization, said that members of the group’s ground crew were checking on the horses in central Utah’s Muddy Creek Herd Management Area and found they were struggling to find water amid the scorching summer heat.
Video they captured showed a mare and two foals near a dried-up pond. At some point, the mare and one of the foals broke through the sun-baked crust, becoming trapped in the silt-filled mud beneath. They sank deeper as they tried to escape.
“It’s heart-wrenching,” Ghiorso said, describing the video. “You can tell that one of those foals is just saying, ‘Mama, help us, get up mom.’”
WARNING: This video is graphic
Gus Warr, manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s Utah wild horse and burro program, said its crews responded Tuesday to try to free the horses. But the mare was so exhausted and dehydrated it was only clinging to life.
“Unfortunately we did have to euthanize that mare out of humane purposes right there on the spot,” Warr said.
Crews were able to free the trapped foal, and they brought it to a corral facility. However, after a veterinarian examined it, the young animal was also put down due to extreme dehydration. According to Warr, the other foal was spotted walking away from the mud pit with another horse.
Now, the Bureau of Land Management is closely monitoring the area, about 15 miles south of Emery, Utah. The management area is home to roughly 100 wild horses.
“It’s very critical that we watch this going forward, because we don’t want any other animals to succumb [to this],” Warr said.
Yet, Ghiorso questions why the BLM couldn’t bring in water to help the struggling horses. She said that her organization even offered to bring in water, but was met with no response by the BLM.
Warr said that while the BLM will sometimes truck in water for wild horses, it is wary of doing so because the agency doesn’t want them to become dependent on an artificial water source.
“We need to manage the animals, but we don’t need to make pets out of them,” he said. “They are wild animals, and we really need to treat them as such.”
However, Ghiorso’s group and others, such as the Wild Beauty Foundation, say the BLM allows ranchers to graze thousands of cattle in the protected area, sometimes stripping it of water and forage.
”Currently, the agency spends more than 80 percent of its wild horse and burro budget on roundups, removals, and sending horses to holding facilities,” said Ashley Avis, founder of the Wild Beauty Foundation, in a statement.
She added: ”We are not asking for the removal of the Muddy Creek wild horses, but rather for our tax dollars to be used fairly and efficiently to provide emergency life-saving measures for these animals … Our world is changing, and the compassionate American public demands the BLM act in a humane fashion.”
Under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burro Act of 1971, the Department of the Interior, which includes the BLM, is tasked with protecting wild horses from “capture, branding, harassment, or death.”
This is an important obligation, Warr said, but he noted that his limited staff must work to manage millions of acres across Utah. He said he appreciates the people who came forward this week to alert his agency about the horses in crisis.
“We thank the public for their eyes and ears,” he said. “We continue to ask for their support.”
Currently, no horses are near the pond-turned-mud pit, Warr said. A trail in the area leads the BLM to think the horses are watering from the Muddy Creek stream, a permanent water source. Warr said that such movement is part of the herd’s natural migratory patterns.
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