Thanks to climate change, blowing up dead horses is no longer an option for Wyoming Forest Rangers

In the dry, fire-prone backcountry of Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest, U.S. Forest Service rangers have temporarily put an end to a controversial method of disposing of dead horses. As drought and rising temperatures combine to increase the risk of wildfires, thanks in large part to climate change, the carcasses of dead horses are no longer being exploded to prevent grizzly bears from hanging around their remains.

To protect hikers, rangers usually use this very delicate tactic of blowing a dead horse to pieces. But recently, after two horses died on a steep trail near Cody, Wyoming, officials decided to forgo using explosives in favor of blowing the dead horse straight to hell to avoid the risk of a wildfire in the surrounding area to reduce dry grass. Officials decided to move the carcasses downhill and reroute the trail, creating a wide buffer zone to avoid encounters with bears.

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The practice of blowing up dead horses as a means of disposal has been around since 1995 in Wyoming, where a manual with the hilariously simple title “Obliterating Animal Carcasses with Explosives” details how to destroy animal carcasses with explosives. It is a two-page manual that you can download here. I highly recommend it.

The first page of the manual presents the reader with an image of a horse with long boards placed around its body. These boards are explosives, and the entire diagram shows you where to best place these explosives to effectively wipe out the dead horse. In the case of Figure 1, where time is not an issue and the horse is not too large, the explosives should be placed in specific locations under the horse, such as the torso, head, and legs.

Figure 2 goes comically over the top with the explosives. It is intended solely for exploding horses in situations where it is impractical to move it or when “the complete destruction of an animal is necessary”, such as if it tips over and dies in a heavily populated area. In this case, almost every piece of exposed horse is covered in explosives and blown up.

As a side note, if you open the link to the document I provided above, it will open in a separate tab with the heading “Fun Stuff.” When you download the document, the AutoSave window appears with a name for the document already populated. The name is “Boom-Boom-Boom.”