Forest Service rescues 24 stranded, starving wild horses near Mammoth Lakes; several die

The Sunday before last, Blake DeBok snowmobiled out to nine wild horses he was told were stranded in deep snow north of Mammoth Lakes.

“As soon as I saw them, it really confirmed that they were in a very serious situation,” the Bishop resident said.

Two horses were dead when he arrived, including a foal that appeared stillborn or miscarried. Christmas storms had dumped 5 feet of snow and he surmised that’s when they got stuck — and hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in the weeks since.

About a mile or two away, another group of roughly 20 horses was in the same situation.

As another week passed, bittersweet news arrived. The U.S. Forest Service rescued 24 of the horses and took them, temporarily, to a corral in Bishop. One later died from “extreme emaciation” and three were euthanized due to what the agency described as “critically poor body condition,” according to a news release. Six more had died in the field.

“Many of the surviving horses were visibly emaciated and in poor health and would not have survived without intervention,” according to the release.

One group of starving horses was found some four miles east of Highway 395, which connects Bishop and Mammoth Lakes.

(Blake DeBock)

Getting them out required cutting a trail through the deep snow, and then luring them into trailers with food and other things, according to Jennifer Roeser, an Inyo County Supervisor who recently sold a mule-packing business.

Given that they’re wild, the horses had never been in trailers, and were exceedingly weak, “so it was a very, very precise and gentle, slow process,” she said.

Federal staffers provided emergency care to stabilize the horses. Then, on Wednesday morning, the surviving 20 horses were taken to a facility on the Modoc National Forest for continued rehabilitation. That’s expected to take up to 10 months.

After finding the horses, DeBok said he had trouble “getting ahold of anyone” to respond. So he posted about the incident online, which he said led to numerous people alerting the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

Although locals such as DeBok are overjoyed that many of the animals pulled through, the incident has stirred heated debate over what’s best for the area’s wild horses and calls for increased transparency in the government’s handling of them.

“I don’t want to attack the Forest Service, but as someone who cares deeply about these animals and spends a lot of time with them — and especially having seen this situation myself — I would have liked to know what was going on throughout this whole situation, and I can’t say that I did,” said DeBok, a wildlife photographer who said the horses figure heavily in his art.

The horses are part of the Montgomery Pass herd, which federal officials say has surged to more than three times what the land can support — a claim fiercely disputed by some in the community and beyond.

Last year, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management approved a plan to round up and remove hundreds of the horses roaming beyond the territory designated for them along the California and Nevada border.

A view of the snowy Eastern Sierra from Blake DeBok’s snowmobile. DeBok, who lives in Bishop and owns an art gallery in Mammoth Lakes, came across the wild horses in trouble this month.

(Blake DeBock)

But in August, a documentary filmmaker, primary care physician and wildlife ecologist sued the government over that plan, claiming it was reneging on its duty to protect the horses.

The roundup, delayed by the litigation, is now paused until at least this summer due to the recent government shutdown, according to a news release from the plaintiffs. Oral arguments in the case were held Tuesday.

Early Tuesday evening, members of two local Native American tribes were digging three deep holes for the horses that the Forest Service had euthanized.

“Here we are as Indigenous peoples doing what we do best, and that’s take care of ours,” said Rana Saulque, vice chair of the Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute Tribe, tearing up. “So we’re burying them.”

The horses that died in the snow will remain there, “so the circle of life can complete like it should in the wild,” she added.

According to the tribal members, Forest Service personnel dropped off the deceased horses with them as an alternative to leaving them at the dump. They said that the agency, however, would not let them get close enough to the horses recuperating in Bishop to count them.

Although the Forest Service rescued many of the stranded horses, some died before and even after the operation. This horse died before agency workers arrived.

(Blake DeBock)

“They’ll hand us three dead horses, which is good, because we do what’s right for them, but they won’t even allow us to see the horses that know us,” said Ronda Kauk, of the Mono Lake Kootzaduka’a Tribe.

Saulque and Kauk are among a contingent of people who don’t want to see the Montgomery Pass horses rounded up as currently planned. They’re hoping for a seat at the table to discuss — and ideally be involved in — their management.

Roeser, the county supervisor, hailed the Forest Service for its recent rescue efforts while acknowledging that the situation is politically fraught.

“They did an exceptional job of organizing an incident command team, bringing together the best of the best in the field and getting those horses out and, frankly, saving almost all of them,” she said.

“A lot of times what the public thinks is the best thing to do, is not, if you understand equine physiology and understand equine health and veterinary care,” she added.

In the midst of the rescue, she said some people went into the forest to feed the starving horses, giving them too much, too fast, without water.

Some died as a result, she said.

“Once the Forest Service got involved, they had more than just a starvation issue,” she said.