Wild horse advocates are seeking a federal court order to prevent the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from removing approximately 2,000 mustangs from the Twin Peaks Herd Management Area near Susanville, Calif. The gather is slated to begin in August.

On July 15 attorneys Joseph Cotchette, Stuart Gross, William Spriggs, and Rachel Fazio filed the complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on behalf of ecologist Chad Hanson; Barbara Clarke, founder of the DreamCatcher Wild Horse & Burro Sanctuary; Linda Hay; and the animal advocacy group In Defense of Animals. The complaint alleges that the gather violates the Wild and Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 because it endangers horses. The act protects mustangs and burros from harassment, capture, or death, and places the animals' management under BLM jurisdiction.

The complaint also alleges that the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act. That act requires federal agencies to consider environmental impacts of their proposed actions and offer reasonable alternatives to those actions. The complaint alleges that the BLM failed to prepare an environmental impact study demonstrating that animals residing in the Twin Peaks management area exceed levels appropriate to maintain that range's ecological balance, and that the agency failed to offer alternatives to the gather to maintain such an appropriate ecological balance.

No hearing date for the case has been set