The Nevada Department of Agriculture (NDA) will sell 175 estray horses at auction that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) removed from a public range on the Nevada-Utah border last month.

The gathered horses are not BLM mustangs. They are either domestic animals turned out onto public lands by their owners or the descendants of those horses, determined by the BLM and state brand inspectors to be estray, that is, belonging to unknown owners, said BLM spokesperson Heather Emmons.

The June 25 removal was necessary to allow the range to recover from fire damage, Emmons said.

Under a memorandum of understanding between the BLM and the NDA, the removed horses came under the department's jurisdiction. Ed Foster, spokesman for the NDA, said the department later relocated the animals to a livestock facility in Fallon