By Phoenix New Times
A year-long saga over who will manage Arizona’s beloved Salt River wild horses has ended. The horses will remain under the care of the nonprofit Salt River Wild Horse Management Group, which has looked after and controlled the population of the horses since 2018.
However, for the first time since 2017, when lawmakers passed legislation barring the horses from being removed from the Lower Salt River without the state’s say-so, horses will now be removed from the herd and placed in sanctuaries around the area. Simone Netherlands, who runs the group that has managed the horses for the past eight years, said her organization will trim the herd “through gradual relocations to pre-vetted sanctuaries, including its own Prescott sanctuary, rather than large-scale roundups.”
The Arizona Department of Agriculture, which awards contracts to manage the horses, has mandated that the herd be reduced to 120 animals. Netherlands said the herd today is down to 274 horses from 450 when her group began managing the population. The group has previously trimmed the herd through a fertility program that ensured natural horse deaths outnumbered births every year. That program will continue, but Netherlands said she expects the group will also remove 25 horses a year to sanctuaries.
