Emergency steps taken for wild horses during drought

SALT LAKE CITY — Harsh drought conditions in parts of the American West are pushing wild horses to the brink and spurring extreme measures to protect them.

For what they say is the first time, volunteer groups in Arizona and Colorado are hauling thousands of gallons of water and truckloads of food to remote grazing grounds where springs have run dry and vegetation has disappeared. Federal land managers also have begun emergency roundups in desert areas of Utah and Nevada.

“We’ve never seen it like this,” said Simone Netherlands, president of the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group in Arizona. In May, dozens of horses were found dead on the edge of a dried-up watering hole in northeastern Arizona.