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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

AMERICAN WILD HORSE PRESERVATION ) CAMPAIGN ) 4115 Jalama Road ) Lompoc, CA 93426, ) ) CARLA BOWERS ) 20005 Buckeye Drive ) Volcano, CA 95689, ) ) RETURN TO FREEDOM ) 4115 Jalama Road ) Lompoc, CA 93426, ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) v. ) Civ. No. ) TOM VILSACK, Secretary ) U.S. Department of Agriculture ) 1400 Independence Avenue SW ) Washington, DC 20250, ) ) THOMAS TIDWELL, Chief ) U.S. Forest Service ) 1400 Independence Avenue SW ) Washington, DC 20250, ) ) ANN D. CARLSON, Acting Forest Supervisor ) Modoc National Forest ) U.S. Forest Service ) 225 West 8th Street ) Alturas, CA 96101, ) ) Defendants. )

COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF

1. For more than 140 years, wild horses have roamed a pristine area in northeastern California which, since 1905, has been protected by Congress as the Modoc National Forest

Case 1:14-cv-00485 Document 1 Filed 03/24/14 Page 1 of 42

-2-under the jurisdiction of the Defendant United States Forest Service (“Forest Service” or “USFS”). These bands of wild horses – whose presence in the Modoc National Forest pre-dates its establishment – belong to the larger population of wild horses that has ranged throughout western North America since soon after Spanish explorers first brought horses back to this continent in the late 1400s. American wild horses suffered dramatic reductions in number during the first half of the twentieth century due to competition with livestock for forage and water on public lands. In response, Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act (“Wild Horse Act” or “WHA”) in 1971 to halt such reductions and to secure the welfare of wild horses for posterity. 16 U.S.C. §§ 1331-1340. Under these protections, the wild horse population within a USFS-designated Wild Horse Territory (“WHT”) in the Modoc National Forest – named the Devil’s Garden WHT – grew to an estimated 1,000 horses by 1979. The Forest Service’s most recent estimate, in 2012, estimated the number of wild horses in the Devil’s Garden WHT at 1,124 horses, meaning that the wild horse population has increased little in over thirty years. 2. According to the Forest Service, the most recent estimate of 1,124 wild horses is equivalent to 13,488 Animal Unit Months (“AUMs”) of forage. An AUM is the amount of forage that one horse, one cow/calf pair, or five sheep consume in one month. (The Forest Service does not use the standard 1.0 AUM per horse per month calculation but instead uses 1.2 AUMs per horse.) The 13,488 AUMs used by wild horses at present is far less than the 23,935 AUMs of forage that the Forest Service has allocated to private cattle and sheep that are authorized to graze in the Devil’s Garden WHT, as reported by the USFS. In short, prior to the


-3-decision challenged here, livestock already far outnumbered the current wild horse population in the Devil’s Garden WHT. 3. For over 30 years, the Devil’s Garden WHT has consisted of a single, contiguous 258,000-acre range, which the Forest Service established in the early 1980s and formally incorporated into its 1991 Land and Resource Management Plan (“LRMP”) for the Modoc National Forest. However, on August 29, 2013 the Forest Service adopted a new management plan that eliminated over 25,000 acres, or approximately 9.7% of the overall WHT, from the Devil’s Garden WHT. The areas eliminated by the Forest Service include the important “middle” section of the territory where essential forage and water resources exist, and which has served an integral role in connecting all parts of the WHT with all other parts for genetic interchange, interbreeding, and roaming purposes. The Forest Service asserted in its decision that the eliminated areas consist of portions of the former Triangle and Avanzino Ranch lands that were held privately at the time the WHA was passed in 1971, and therefore (according to the agency) should not have been incorporated into the Devil’s Garden WHT in the early 1980s after those lands became part of the Modoc National Forest. With respect just to the former Triangle and Avanzino Ranch lands, the Forest Service’s elimination of these lands from the WHT after three decades is legally unsupported. Moreover, the majority of the eliminated areas include lands that were

never

part of the Triangle and Avanzino Ranches and were not held privately in 1971 but instead were part of the Modoc National Forest at all relevant times. Thus the Forest Service’s radical redefinition of the boundaries of the Devil’s Garden WHT is not even supported by the agency’s own purported justification for the change.
