Washington, D.C. District Judge Paul L. Friedman has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the animal activist group In Defense of Animals, ecologist Craig Downer and author Terri Farley to halt the roundups of wild horses in Nevada and the stockpiling of horses in storage facilities according to the Las Vegas Sun.

Friedman dismissed the lawsuit, brought against the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of the Interior, on the grounds that the opposing parties did not have standing to take legal action in the matter of holding the horses in a long-term facility and because the specific roundup addressed, in the Calico area of Nevada, ended in February. Friedman also denied an injunction to prevent the roundup last December.

In a preliminary ruling last year, the same court agreed that the government’s practice of sending wild horses to the Midwest and warehousing them in long-term holding facilities likely was illegal.

“We remain confident in the merits of our case and look forward to pursuing this legal issue in the near future,” said William J. Spriggs, lead counsel for Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney, representing the plaintiff. “The Bureau of Land Management’s practice of removing horses from the Western range and warehousing them in Midwestern holding facilities is flat out illegal, and the judge’s preliminary ruling in this regard was correct.”

The Calico Mountain Complex roundup of 1,922 wild horses was one of the largest in recent years. The BLM removed an estimated 90 percent of the Calico wild horse population and ended Feb. 4, 500 horses short of its target for removal.

To date, 97 horses have died during or after the roundup and more than 50 mares have aborted late term pregnancies.