Episode #46: Overview of the Wild and Free-Roaming Horse Issue in the American West

It's become apparent that the status quo is not working for American wild horses.

Their numbers exceed BLM management targets.

Livestock can be moved seasonally, but wild horses remain on the range year-round, which has negative impacts on vegetation, soil, water resources, and the overarching health of rangelands.

These same rangelands support iconic western species like elk, pronghorn, mule deer, and sage grouse.

Because an introduced grazer is allowed to be this abundant without any seasonal restrictions or movements, they are destroying habitat for native wildlife.

Unlimited population growth is often presented as the humane thing to do.

But eventually the numbers become so big that there isn't enough food or water.

Simply allowing horse populations to grow without effective management is not necessarily the humane alternative.

Eventually, populations can exceed available forage and water, resulting in declining body condition, starvation, dehydration, and death.

Protecting wild horses therefore also means keeping herds and the landscapes that sustain them healthy.

Managers should have access to a broad range of humane, science-based management tools, including removals and adoption, fertility control, sterilization, and where other approaches are inadequate, consideration of humane lethal removal as a last resort management tool.

Managers can use fertility control and sterilization.

However, these tools have not yet been deployed at a scale sufficient to control population growth across most large western herds.

Fertility control is particularly difficult and expensive in large remote herds and works best once populations have already been brought closer to management targets.

In other words, contraception alone can't solve a herd that's already twice the desired population.