Pain on the Path Forward for Horses and Burros
March 5, 2024
The latest attempt to manage feral horses and burros is failing despite a 2019 agreement for huge increases in the last four annual budgets. WSF joined the 2019 agreement. We supported it as an honest attempt, providing we would withdraw support if it failed to work.
BLM has for decades labored to gather, offer for adoption, or sterilize free-ranging horses. Many people have views on these efforts. Legal skirmishes occasionally flare, people celebrate seeing horses, and others condemn horse overpopulation. In all – even in the celebrations – unhappiness lurks or boils. Once you've heard from more than a few people on this issue, it seems that pretty much everything is wrong with the feral horse program.
You need not look deep, however, to notice one obvious fact. As some people worry about having enough horses, and others worry about having too many, no one knows how to adjust – forget about controlling – how many horses there are. The horse herd – like many horses each of us has known personally – is doing what it wants to do.
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The 2019 agreement is entitled The Path Forward for Management of BLM’s Wild Horses & Burros. Thirteen organizations and coalitions produced it by hard labor to reconcile the views of sportsmen, animal protectionists, ranchers, and others. This noble work, sadly, isn’t working out.
The problem is the hard reality of how special horses are. Horses are special to people. Horses are special to America. They are companions and fellow laborers. They have their own Federal law. (Only eagles share this distinction in US policy.) Because they are so special, we especially dread their deaths.
The unforgiving reality stuns most painfully when a horse must die. As with pets, we delay this decision to the limits of honor and devotion as we and our veterinarians can see, examine, and judge the case. But the feral horse population, its condition, and effect on the land are out of sight to most people, and examined and judged at a distance, which precludes consensus.
Even with firsthand information, one person grieves to decide the end of life for an animal in their care, two adults mourn to decide together, and families anguish together. What does an entire country do without firsthand information? The country avoids deciding, which is, of course, a decision itself.
As a result, the number of horses on BLM lands is three times above sustainability and beyond affordability. The 82,000 head running free have remained around that level for the last few years, but the cost of the program is rising steeply. Another 62,000 horses are now held, fed, and cared for by the BLM. That cost is now two-thirds of the program’s $150 million budget. It’s more than BLM spends on rangeland management and half the entire land resources budget. A 10-year projection takes the cost to $440 million to merely maintain this three-fold overpopulation.
Path Forward endorsed four activities that have accomplished as much as they can, which is not enough. BLM is gathering and removing horses (and a few burros). They are applying contraceptives to horses they release from holding. They transfer horses to long-term holding pens and pastures. They offer horses for adoption with a $1,000 incentive.
The fuss is over these actions, which misses the main point. These activities may be conducted too sparingly or harshly, or incorrectly, inconsistently, or illegally. Pick your point of view, but the one thing not being tried is lethal removal.
Lethal removal is legal but never really used and now prohibited by BLM policy and Congress. The underlying law – The Wild and Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 – directs BLM to “destroy” excess horses humanely and cost-effectively. In 2004, Congress provided for the sale of “excess animals” to private ownership. From 2005-2008, BLM sold 2,744 horses, but required a statement of intent from buyers to discourage slaughter. Then, from 2010 to present, Congress has annually prohibited BLM from destroying healthy excess horses or selling them for slaughter.
Because a solution must reconcile big beliefs and emotions, it must begin with big hearts and principles.
In the heart of every mountain conservationist, and at the heart of all our issues, is a passion for thriving landscapes abundant with life. The same passion fires the people whose main interest is free-ranging horses.
Principles to guide this common passion began to emerge in Path Forward. It called for economic and environmental viability, and humane and feasible practices. These are sound principles, but they may conflict with Path Forward’s commitment to non-lethal practices.
If we cannot be economical, environmental, humane, and feasible without lethal means, then the dreaded decision is upon us.
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