Nevada’s controversial plan to find private owners for wild horses may not come to fruition.
The Department of Agriculture announced this week it hasn’t received any responses to a call for private groups who might be interested in taking ownership of the horses living on the Virginia Range.
With no one willing to take ownership of the animals, the decision for how best to manage them will go back to the state’s Board of Agriculture.
The plan involved about 2,500 free-range horses and drew ire from wild horse advocates, who maintained sending the horses to private groups was essentially sending the horses to slaughter.
The Reno Gazette-Journal reports the Virginia Range horses are unique to the wild horses in the rest of the state, because they are considered feral livestock, which means they aren’t protected by federal regulations.