Finding Collaborative Pathways and Promoting Effective Fertility Control for Wild Horse Management

AWHC team spoke at the 2025 Bureau of Land Management Advisory Board meeting. Nicole Hayes, AWHC's Conservation Scientist, delivered impactful comments about the need for fertility control before the BLM's arbitrary population limits are reached

Hello, my name is Nicole Hayes and I am a conservation scientist with American Wild Horse Conservation. We were recently invited by the BLM to a discussion on fertility control methods, and they asked for our input and thoughts on each proposed methodology. We sincerely appreciate this collaborative step, and through this we were able to explain our criteria for evaluating all these methodologies which I wanted to share with the board, since the BLM found them helpful. 

We specifically are looking for humane, effective, reversible, minimally disruptive, cost effective and scalable solutions. I think it is crucial to note that as the science stands now, there is no humane, effective and scalable mare sterilization technique. The science that has been proven to work and has been proven to be humane, effective and scalable is immunocontraception.

I want to stress that fertility control is scalable, the Virginia Range program in Nevada has 3500 horses over 300,000 acres, and has a proven successful fertility control program AND has resulted in population reductions.

The first 4 years of data from this program was peer reviewed, published, and presented at the World Veterinary Association Congress last April. It is very simple mathematics, every foal not born is one that does not need to be managed, or potentially cared for in long-term holding its entire life.

I ask the board to recommend the BLM start fertility control programs at the 45+ HMAs already at or below AML and switch the focus to humane, effective, reversible, cost effective and scalable solutions.

As someone so astutely put, we need to get off the treadmill. This is a solution that does not require room at long-term holding facilities or an increased appetite for horse adoptions. And I want to thank and recognize the board for their time and all of your hard work, and support for fertility control, I think collaborative solutions are truly the way forward. Thank you.