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The U.S. Department of the Interior funds some of the agencies that oversee the management of wild horses on public lands. Those agencies are The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees the Forest Service, which also manages wild horses. Each agency has its own budget requirements, as well as its own regulations.
For the sake of simplifying, we'll concentrate mainly on BLM- and Forest Service-governed lands since the majority of wild free-roaming horses and burros reside there.
The BLM oversees roughly 260 million acres of land in 12 western states, and they are used by hikers, hunters, campers, and the like, as well as cattle grazers. The Forest Service oversees 192 million acres of land in 44 states, and they are also used by hikers, hunters, campers, and the like, as well as cattle grazers. That's more than 450 million acres between them. BLM’s private livestock grazing program encompasses 214 million acres of public lands and costs over $130 million to manage annually.
BLM issues 18,600 permits to run cattle on nearly 13 million AUMs (Animal Unit Months = an AUM is defined by how much forage per month is required to sustain a cow, a sheep — or a horse). The Forest Service issues 8,500 permits to run cattle on roughly 9.3 million AUMs. That's a combined total of more than 26,000 permits and 22.3 million AUMs.
The grazing fee which, technically, fluctuates with the cattle market, is currently at $1.35 per cow per month (the equivalent of $0.06 per acre per year, or about 1/10th of market rates to graze cattle on private lands), giving the government about $26.5 million annually in grazing fees.
Congress has mandated that public lands be enjoyed by means of multiple uses: public recreation (hiking, bird watching, camping, etc.), livestock grazing, and hunting, among other uses. There is roughly more than six million livestock, a couple million ungulates (deer, elk, etc.), and an estimated 23,000 wild horses and burros grazing the public range. Private livestock outnumber wild horses and burros at least 200 to 1 on public lands (note: some livestock may not be grazed year round).
The Early Years
Due to the mistakes, misinformation, and misguided efforts of both cattle ranchers and humane groups, wild horses were caught in the crosshairs. When the Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Act passed in 1971, only 17,000 wild horses and burros were estimated to be on public lands. To the horses' detriment, both sides agreed to allow the government to manage wild horse populations at that level. But eleven years later — in 1982 — a study by the National Academy of Sciences (and, in part, commissioned by the Bureau of Land Management) found that a base of 50,000 wild horses was closer to the actual herd level, given the horses' growth rate and the numbers of horses being removed.
But the damage had already been done, the "management levels" were engraved in stone, and the removal of "excess" horses well in place. Wild horses and burros continue to come off federal land, despite public opposition and the intent of federal law.
It costs the BLM alone as much as $3,000 to roundup, transport, vet, feed, and adopt/place — with an annual budget of $39 million — every horse it catches each year. Even though a sport hunting organization argues that 40,000 bighorn sheep qualifies them as endangered, the BLM has been removing wild horses and burros that, by some standards, already qualify as endangered species.
The horses are then put up for adoption to the American public for $125.00 each. Because most people adopting wild horses don't understand what it entails to tame and train one, most of America's wild horses have gone on to slaughterhouses. In fact — as reported in an Associated Press article — a federal grand jury collected evidence that 90% of the wild horses adopted by the American public have been butchered for table meat in foreign countries.
In order to remove wild horses from public lands, BLM MUST claim that horses are destroying critical habitat, competing for grazing lands, and overpopulating themselves, causing immeasurable suffering, dehydration, and starvation.
But, in fact, two GAO Reports and a National Academy of Sciences study show that none of BLM's claims have been proven: BLM has never presented any evidence that horses destroy habitat, nor that their population levels are what it says they are. What BLM HAS done, however, is fence horses off their winter and summer ranges, removed entire herds from protected, designated horse areas, and allowed tens of thousands of horses to go to slaughter. It is the agency, not the horses, that has created the range wars that exist today.
And there's one more catch: The 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Act, a law designed to protect and keep wild horses on public lands, stipulates that horses can only be removed from public lands if it is proven that they are overpopulating and/or are causing habitat destruction. It further mandates that the government must "protect and manage wild free-roaming horses and burros as components of the public lands, and ... maintain specific ranges on public lands as sanctuaries for their protection and preservation."
Over the past 37 years now, BLM has been violating — and continues to violate — this federal law, enacted by the people for the wild horses and the federal lands that belong to them. In the 40 years that BLM has been "managing" horses, it has rounded up, removed, given away, and slaughtered tens of thousands of wild horses — more than 200,000 to date — but it has NEVER developed a strategic plan to keep viable herds of wild horses on public lands. BLM's history with wild horses is one of reduction, not preservation.
Why would an agency spend $3,000 taxpayer dollars to catch a single horse, a horse that only frees up $8.10 in grazing fees? Well, we have the answer: let's just follow the money...
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