Volunteers remove barbed wire from mustang area
A dozen volunteers have spent a weekend removing barbed wire from a wild horse area in Colorado.
The volunteers rolled and removed 780 pounds of old barbed wire from three separate areas in the Sand Wash herd management area on June 15-16.
The effort was supported by funding under the Bureau of Land Management’s Director’s Challenge, a national program aimed at improving Western rangeland conditions where wild horses roam and engaging volunteers in the stewardship of public lands.
“We really appreciate the hard work of these volunteers, who made this area safer for not only wild horses, but also native wildlife and human visitors,” the bureau’s Snake Field manager, Wendy Reynolds, said.
The first site was a 5-acre area that included a stock pond with an old fence dating to the 1960s around its perimeter.
The second site appeared to be an old wild horse trap dating to at least the 1940s that included barbed wire strung through junipers to create wings to funnel the horses to a corral.
All of the historical integrity was left in place, but the dangerous barbed wire was removed.
Finally, volunteers removed the fallen barbed wire from an old, half-mile fence dating to at least the 1950s.
The barbed wire was taken to a local scrap metal recycling facility and the proceeds were given to the Sand Wash Basin Wild Horse Club.
The 158,000-acre Sand Wash herd area is about 45 miles west of Craig. It is one of four wild horse herd management areas in the state.
The Little Snake Field Office manages the area in the bureau’s northwest district.
