Judge rules wild horses to be returned to Alto The judge ruled the state livestock board does not have jurisdiction over the horse herd and is enjoined from any further unlawful possession and selling of Lincoln County wild horses

Dianne L. Stallings | Ruidoso News

Two years from their gathering and temporary removal from Lincoln County, members of am Alto horse herd appear to be on their way back to the status of wild horses, free roaming north of Ruidoso.

Friday, 12th Judicial District Judge Daniel Bryant issued his conclusions on the case and an order declaring that the New Mexico Livestock Board's action of taking possession and selling Lincoln County wild horses is "ultra vires" or beyond the agency's power and therefore invalid.

The judge ruled the agency does not have jurisdiction over the horse herd and is enjoined from any further unlawful possession and selling of Lincoln County wild horses.

Bryant wrote that the wild horses should be released in the vicinity of the remaining stallion, which still is free in the Enchanted Forest on property owned by Diane Martin.

Bryant wrote that the Federal Wild Horse and Burro Act only required the Bureau of Land Management to inventory horses found on BLM land in 1971. "It applied only to 'wild free-roaming horses and burros'(which) means all unbranded and unclaimed horses and burros on public lands of the United States."

Public lands covers any land administered by the Secretary of the Interior through the BLM or the U.S. Forest Service.

"As such, the inventory by the BLM does not include New Mexico lands," the judge wrote.

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Bryant awarded court costs for the action and reasonable attorney fees incurred by The Wild Horse Observers Association, which brought the action for an injunction against the livestock board in 2016 after 12-members of a wild herd were rounded up and transported to Santa Fe.

More: Advocates for free-roaming horse herds north of Ruidoso grow impatient with court and fear one herd is missing

In a release from WHOA announcing the decision, president Patience O'Dowd wrote that Bryant "has upheld the rule of law. He has ruled in favor of the Beloved Wild Horses and their Free Roaming Habitat in Lincoln County."

She wrote that WHOA would like to congratulate and thank "all those citizens who stood strong for justice for these sentient beings, which grace our special neighborhoods and our majestic open spaces in New Mexico, where they long evolved and which was built entirely on their backs."

She also thanked Steven K. Sanders and Pia Gallegos, the attorneys representing WHOA in the action, "who dared to take this precedent setting case, against a rogue state agency, to give voice to wild horses in service to our non-profit environmental group and the grateful people of New Mexico.

"These two attorneys have made New Mexico a better place for our future. They have fought smartly, showing great respect both to the court and to the rule of law. WHOA is so very proud to be working with them."

Shesaid the full ruling will be posted at whoanm.org.

Most of the horses from the herd for many months have been roaming free on a large ranch near Carrizozo after being moved from holding pens and corrals in Alto where they were placed following their return by the livestock board from Santa Fe. The board acted on a complaint by a landowner, who penned the horses for collection.

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In his ruling, the judge touched on many points in the two-year case, He wrote that the Lincoln County horse herd is comprised of wild horses within the meaning of the livestock code and are not estray livestock and are unrelated to the livestock industry in the state.

He noted that there are Spanish colonial horses present in the wild Lincoln County herd and concluded that the livestock board failed to follow statutory procedures for handling wild horses, failed to follow the code for Spanish colonial horses, failed to relocate the hoses to a private wild horse preserve created and maintained for the purpose of protecting Spanish colonial horses, failed to return the horses to public land or to a preserve, and that the board captured wild horses without a determination from the Museum of Southwestern Biology Mammal Division at the University of New Mexico that a wild horse herd exceeds the number of horses necessary for preserving the genetic stock of the herd and preserving and maintaining the range.