There's a Better Way to Manage Wild Horses
American wild horses are in crisis. Before the end of the Fiscal year, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will remove nearly 19,000 federally-protected wild horses and burros from their homes on western public lands. If not reined in, over the next few years, the agency could add nearly 100,000 wild horses and burros to already overburdened holding facilities. Federal waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars — nearly $1 billion* projected over 5 years — will be spent on a broken system of mass wild horse roundups and removals. We cannot keep piling wild horses into a broken system.
American Wild Horse Campaign operates the largest humane management program for wild horses in the world in Nevada. Its on-range fertility control program, utilizing the immunocontraceptive vaccine known as PZP, has reduced the foaling population by 60 percent without a single removal of a horse.
The BLM spends less than 1% of its operating budget on curbing population growth on public lands humanely through the use of scientifically-recommended fertility control vaccines.
It's unsustainable and irresponsible to continue to remove wild horses and burros in droves and add them to extremely costly and overstressed facilities where they are at increased risk of disease, injury, and death. This broken system costs more than safer alternatives that already exist.
There's a better way. Wild horses belong in the wild. Please take action.
