Frequently Asked Questions About America's Wild Horses and Burros
Frequently Asked Questions About America's Wild Horses and Burros
Wild horses and burros are iconic symbols of the American West, yet they face numerous challenges and misconceptions. This FAQ addresses common questions and provides factual insights into their current status and management.
Where are America’s remaining wild horses and burros?
Today, wild horses and burros can be found primarily on government-designated Herd Management Areas (HMAs) in ten western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. Six states have already lost their entire wild horse populations.
Are wild horses overpopulating and starving?
No. The BLM and its allies who want to legalize the mass killing and slaughter of our wild horses claim that wild horses are overrunning the West and suffering from mass starvation. This is pure propaganda. In fact, wild horses are present on just a tiny fraction of BLM land in the West, and ranchers have access to livestock grazing on over 80 percent of BLM rangelands without any wild horses present. Except in a handful of isolated cases over the last several years, wild horses are fit and thriving in the West. This is evidenced in the vast majority of recent roundups, where the horses and burros being captured from public lands are in good body condition. Wild horses and burros are not starving, and the only thing overpopulating the West is the massive number of cattle and sheep that continue to degrade our public lands.
Are wild horses responsible for overgrazing on public lands?
The main cause of degradation of public lands is livestock use, not wild horses. Cows graze within a mile of water, while wild horses are highly mobile, grazing from five to ten miles from water, at higher elevations, on steeper slopes, and in more rugged terrain. A congressionally-mandated study by the National Academy of Sciences found that, in one year, livestock consumed 70% of grazing resources on public lands, while wild horses and burros consumed less than 5%.
Is it true that wild horse herds double in size every five years?
In its 1982 study, the National Academy of Sciences found “annual rates of increase of 10% or less” in wild horse populations, a far cry from the 20% increase relied upon by the BLM to justify its removal program. Ironically, in areas where higher-than-normal population growth rates do exist, it is the BLM's own management policies that are causing the problem. According to a 2013 National Academy of Sciences report: "Management practices are facilitating high rates of population growth.…Thus, population growth rate could be increased by removals through compensatory population growth from decreased competition for forage. As a result, the number of animals processed through holding facilities is probably increased by management."
Do wild horses have any natural predators?
Wild horses do have predators, primarily in the form of mountain lions. In 2004, for instance, only 1 out of 28 foals survived in Montana’s Pryor Mountain area. Such a low survival rate was mostly due to mountain lion predation. Unfortunately, in many areas, predators that could help keep wild horse herds in check are eradicated via hunting and by government programs that kill predators for the benefit of ranchers.
Aren't wild horses a non-native species?
Wild horses are a reintroduced native wildlife species. Paleontological evidence shows that wild horses evolved on the North American continent over the course of some 1.6 million years. How they disappeared 11 to 13 thousand years ago, if in fact they actually ever became extinct here, is a mystery. When Cortez landed in Mexico in 1519, he brought horses from Spain. Others followed. From these reintroduced animals came the great numbers of wild horses that eventually changed the culture of the Plains Indians. The Spanish horses soon adapted to the same ecological niche their native relatives had once thrived in. Long before the early settlers pioneered the West, they were here as a reintroduced, fully adapted wildlife species, 3 million strong. For more information, please read our Historical Overview.
But isn't the modern horse species a different one from the one that disappeared so long ago?
Most of those early differing species were genetically equivalent. Modern molecular biology, using mitochondrial DNA analysis, has shown that the genetic equivalent of Equus caballus emerged, diverged as a species, about 1.6 million years ago, disappearing from the North American continent presumably 11 to 13 thousand years ago. Even more recent molecular work has shown that the very latest the modern horse could possibly have diverged was about 300,000 years ago. For a detailed review of these recent findings, please explore Wild Horses as Native North American Wildlife.
How are wild horses different from domestic horses?
The result of five hundred years of natural selection, the American wild horse distinguishes itself from domesticated horses by both its morphology and its behavior. Natural selection has preserved the hardy traits of the horses that shaped the American West: a 1998 Kansas State University study found that wild horses are far less affected by bone disease than their domestic counterparts; wild horses also distinguish themselves by the remarkable hardness of their hooves. In addition, a University of Kentucky study has shown that, despite intense culling, wild horse herds are still genetically far more diverse than any breed of domestic horse. Some herds such as Utah’s Sulphur Spring herd are a direct link to the primitive Iberian horse and have been recognized by geneticists as a resource of “truly unique and irreplaceable genotypes, a zoological treasure.” These horses retain many traits of the endangered Sorraia breed, including triple dorsal stripes, zebra-striped legs, and chest barring.
What about burros?
Wild burros’ situation is even more precarious than that of their wild horse cousins. Descendants of the burros used by miners as pack animals in the 1800s can still be found in Nevada, Arizona, and California, where they share their habitat with bighorn sheep, a highly-prized game species that outnumbers them at least 16 to 1 on public lands. Under pressure from the hunting lobby, BLM consistently removes burros from their legally allocated range to increase the number of available bighorn hunting tags; BLM has set the population target for burros at less than 3,000 nationally. Meanwhile, the National Park Service has a zero wild burro policy: burros found on lands managed by that agency are routinely shot in an eradication program labeled "direct reduction." For more information, please visit our Burro page, and for an eye-witness account of a burro round-up, please visit our Witness Reports page.
Why do wild horses have to be managed at all?
Wild horses and burros today live under conditions that are far from natural. They are confined within Herd Management Areas that create artificial habitat boundaries and often cut off the animals' historic seasonal migratory routes. They live on land that is shared by multiple uses, including livestock grazing, and in areas where natural predators like mountain lions are eradicated by hunters and by a government program that kills predators for the benefit of ranchers. Under these conditions, some form of management is necessary, but the BLM's roundup and removal approach is not only inhumane but also completely unsustainable and has brought the program to the brink of fiscal collapse.
How should wild horses be managed?
American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign) supports the use of the PZP immunocontraceptive vaccine on mares to humanely reduce population growth rates. The vaccine can be delivered remotely via darting, or by hand injection after horses have been humanely gathered via bait trapping. The vaccine creates an immune response that prevents fertilization and has no effect on fetuses when given to pregnant mares. The PZP vaccine does not impact the reproductive hormones that drive natural behaviors. It is reversible and has been proven safe, effective, and humane over nearly three decades of use in numerous wildlife species, including wild horses.
Why not just geld the stallions and spay the mares?
Unlike the PZP vaccine, surgical sterilization would take the wild out of wild horses by destroying the wild free-roaming behaviors that distinguish wild horses from their domestic counterparts. The National Academy of Sciences concluded that "A potential disadvantage of both surgical and chemical castration is loss of testosterone and consequent reduction in or complete loss of male-type behaviors necessary for maintenance of social organization, band integrity, and expression of a natural behavior repertoire." In addition, it warned that spaying mares (surgically removing their ovaries) -- a procedure that is rarely done in domestic mares -- was dangerous: "The possibility that ovariectomy may be followed by prolonged bleeding or peritoneal infection makes it inadvisable for field application."