A federal judge sided with wild horse advocates this week when she ruled the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) could not remove wild horses from the West Douglas Herd Area in northwest Colorado as planned.

The BLM had planned to remove the 175-horse herd from the 120,000-acre range area in July 2008. The gather was postponed after The Colorado Wild Horse and Burro Coalition Inc. and other wild horse advocates sued to halt the plan because would unnecessarily remove the wild horses from their traditional ranges