Nevada Senators Advocate for Wild Horse Contraception Funding
Nevada’s U.S. Senators Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto have joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers urging the inclusion of funding to provide contraception to control the growth of wild horse herds.
Nearly half the nation’s wild horses are in Nevada.
The lawmakers, led by Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., argued that the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) use of mass roundups to remove horses is a failed system. This approach has resulted in approximately 48,000 horses being held in short or long-term corrals across the nation.
They called on leadership to include $11 million in the Wild Horse and Burro budget to pay for PZP, a contraceptive that can be administered to mares via a dart fired from a tranquilizer gun.
The proposal was applauded by the American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign) as a much more humane and effective way to control the size of the herds. AWHC currently operates a major PZP fertility control program in the Virginia Range north and east of Carson City.