The Failure of Wild Horse Policy: A Critical Examination

The Failure of Wild Horse Policy

The headline for The Bulletin’s June 28 editorial is absolutely right and deserves some all-caps emphasis:“Wild horsepolicyis NOT working.”

This statement is true and has been for many years. The reasons for this are many but can be boiled down to a single underlying reason: We aren’t usingscienceto determine appropriate numbers of wild horses on federal lands, nor to effectively and humanely manage them.

And this disregard forscienceis becoming ever more extreme. Ranchers who graze cattle on our public lands call for mass roundups of wild horses from the wild, using overblown and unsubstantiated claims about the effects wild horses have on the range.

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The BLM vs. Our Wild Mustangs

Seriously, what is the BLM thinking? It is indeed stunning to see federal land managers poised to use the most backwards and inhumane method possible as a way to manage our nation's wild horses (Agency to sterilize mustangs for first time to slow growth, June 26, 2016).

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced this plan during a heated congressional hearing recently, which saw one, sole horse advocate outnumbered by politicians and agricultural interests who would just as soon see every mustang removed from the range.

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