An unflattering two-year review of the Bureau of Land Management’s removal of wild horses from public land was released on June 5, 2013. The review was conducted by a 14-member panel of scientists from the National Academy of Sciences.
It concluded that the U.S. government would be better off investing in widespread fertility control of the mustangs and letting nature cull the herds. It said that removing the horses encouraged a much higher population rate in the wild, as depleted herds built up their numbers again.
The review and other reports of the BLM’s treatment of wild horses raise troubling questions about who has been running this agency. Let’s look at the particulars:
1) The BLM has been using helicopters to chase, round up and remove the wild horses, often leading to fatal injuries and deaths among the horses.
2) Over the past decade, the agency has rounded up nearly 100,000 horses, which it has placed in overcrowded holding pens. We are not talking about Kentucky Horse Park accommodations here. The horses stand around and do nothing but rot.
3) The agency has spent millions to feed these imprisoned horses, which used to graze for free on public lands, while spending millions more to run an adoption program that sees only a small percentage of horses get adopted each year.
“What?” you say. “Who thought that was a good idea?”
Don’t make me say it.
There is nothing but testosterone in this whole plan.
I can only imagine the hooting and hollering going on in that helicopter during these chases.
I applaud the many people (Madeleine Pickens) and groups trying to turn this abuse around and remove horses from the holding pens.
But the basic premise of the BLM setting a maximum number of appropriate horses on public lands seems flawed.
That maximum currently is set at 26,500 horses.
The BLM manages the wild horses on 26.9 million acres of public land.
I’m not great at math, but even I can do this calculation.
According to the BLM, the federal government needs 1,015 acres per horse.
I’m a lifetime horse owner. By no stretch does it take more than a thousand acres to feed a horse, even if the acreage is crowded with cattle and wild animals.
The BLM says the current free-roaming population, as of February 2013, exceeds the target number by nearly 11,000. Are the horses all starving as a result? I’ve seen many photos of wild horses, and I have yet to see an emaciated one in the group.
In fact, the review panel noted that it found little scientific basis for how the BLM set its cap on the horse population.
The BLM’s website says it has 49,472 horses in holding pens. It has to feed, trim and provide veterinary services for all of those horses.
Seriously? Who thought that was a good idea?
The review panel suggests contraception as the best way to alleviate overpopulation.
Contraception for wild horses usually is delivered by dart by people who are very quiet and unobtrusive so as not to scare the horses. The horses probably wouldn’t be able to distinguish the dart entry from a horse fly bite. They certainly wouldn’t take off running into a barbed wire fence, bloodying themselves or breaking limbs, after being terrified by a helicopter.
Last time I checked, contraception was dirt cheap.
Here we have a humane idea that involves contraception, is cost effective and is based on science rather than impulse.
Who thought up that idea?
Should I note that President Barack Obama just put a woman, Sally Jewell, in charge of the Department of the Interior, which oversees the BLM? I can’t tell if she’s a horsewoman by her official biography. However, I’m putting great stock in her ability to lead with her brain.