"A Study in Mismanagement"

In 1971, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency of the U.S. Department of Interior, was put in charge of implementing the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. When the Act was passed, the U.S. Senate stated: "An intensive management program of breeding, branding, and physical care would destroy the very concept that this legislation seeks to preserve… leaving the animals alone to fend for themselves and placing primary emphasis on protecting the animals from continued slaughter and harassment by man." Sadly, this Congressional mandate was blatantly ignored and over the past thirty years, no strategic plan to keep viable herds of wild horses on public lands was ever developed.

BLM’s herd management policy has translated primarily into a diligent and steady herd reduction campaign and America’s wild horse population has dwindled to less than 25,000. Approximately 36,000 wild horses and burros adopted through BLM’s Adopt-A-Horse program are unaccounted for and feared illegally slaughtered. This is not to say BLM employees are uncaring, but questioned off the record, they routinely acknowledge rampant mismanagement and disregard for the 1971 Act.

In 1992, wild horses and burros were left out of BLM’s revised mission statement altogether.

“Excess Animals”: a Very Flexible Concept.

By law, only “excess animals” should be removed from the range. The requirement that “excess” be determined based on population monitoring and inventory has been circumvented by allowing the BLM to determine “excess” based on whatever information is in its possession at the time a decision is made, rather than requiring that relevant information (such as actual census numbers) be obtained.

The fact is that censusing wild horses is still an inexact science and historically has been fraught with error, depending on the size and distribution of a herd. Large, dispersed herds are often tallied through aerial, eyeball analysis. Bands can easily be double-counted if observers are not meticulous. One of the BLM’s stated goals is to improve censusing techniques, a statement that, unto itself, is an admission of the imprecise nature of its population counts. Meanwhile, only 4% of its wild horse and burro budget is allocated to population inventory; “excess” is simply determined on paper, using grossly inflated fertility rates (up to 25%, whereas the National Academy of Sciences estimates actual growth rates to be closer to 10%).


More Round-Ups

Early on, the BLM did not capture wild horses who ranged out of their herd boundaries. Today, if wild horses step out of their boundaries, the BLM removes them permanently from public lands. In the state of Nevada, home to about 70% of our nation’s wild herds, horses found outside of their boundaries are treated as stray animals and sold at auction, usually ending up at slaughter.

Another well-established BLM practice is to thin out herds to the point where they are no longer deemed genetically viable, and then use the threat of in-breeding as an excuse to zero out such herds completely. Three fourths of the remaining wild horse and burro herds are below population levels that would guarantee their long-term survival. Sex ratios in wild horse herds normally average 50% female to 50% male. To further affect viability, the BLM will stack herds with 70% of males, severely disrupting herd dynamics and behavioral patterns.

Still, BLM’s most often used rationale for round-ups is the threat of starvation and drought conditions: so-called “emergency gathers” are another way for the BLM to circumvent the legal requirement that only “excess” animals be rounded-up. Oftentimes, cattle is restocked shortly after wild horses have been removed.

Case In Point: Nevada, summer 2004 - an AWHPC Investigation

In the summer of 2004, according to the BLM, the wild horse situation in the state of Nevada reached a critical point: there was no water on the range; wild horses could not survive the drought and had to be immediately removed or face a certain death. So, with the help of another $7.6 million for the year (on top of its allocated $29 million), the BLM came to the "rescue" by rounding up the animals.

On the range, however, a team of wild horse experts found a somewhat different, disturbing reality.

Only the HMAs (Herd Management Areas) that did not have cattle grazing on them were without water; those that had cattle had plenty of water. On all the cattle-free HMAs visited, water tanks and troughs were empty and had been for some time; pipes and pumps had been disconnected. Presumably, when cattle are removed from the HMAs, the water sources are disengaged and abandoned until the next cattle-grazing season. It is on those fenced-off HMAs that horse fatalities were found: seven animals were found dead within a couple of hundred feet of each other; another was found on the Ravenwood HMA trapped by a fence keeping him from a water source; the skeletons of six more were found close together on the Pilot Mountains HMA near dried and abandoned water troughs. Meanwhile, on the HMAs where cattle was left to graze, water sources were readily available.

While wild horses were left to literally drop dead next to well-managed cows thriving on the other side of public-land fencing, the BLM was busy removing from desirable areas horses that even they admit were healthy, thriving and sustainable. Their field managers then lamented the condition of horses in drought-stricken areas and moved in to remove these horses as well, on an emergency basis.

The fact is that it would be less costly to manage horses in the wild than to subject them to traumatic round-ups — including in drought-stricken areas, where water pumps could be left on when public land ranchers remove their cattle to send them to market. After all, public land ranchers get some of their grazing fees back to pay for range improvements such as water wells. Wild horses could be granted access to such subsidized range improvements and BLM could compensate ranchers for any increase in their water bills. Furthermore, it is oftentimes public land fencing that prevents horses from accessing scarce natural water sources.

Wild horses have been relegated to some of the most inhospitable land. Still, they adapt and survive. The first photo in this row shows a typical HMA in western central Nevada. The second shows the desert floor littered with cow manure. In the third and fourth, you will see some of the few wild horses we found (note in the last photo just how vast an area very few horses live in).


Today, the BLM continues to conduct indiscriminate round-ups, zeroing out herds in violation of the 1971 Act. In 2001, it obtained a 50% increase in annual budget to $29 million for implementation of an aggressive removal campaign (in 2005, that budget rose to $39 million). Twenty-four thousand horses were slated for capture; no long-term plan was put in place for these horses after their removal.



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