I urge the public to call on their senators and representatives to act against cruelty of a national treasure and symbol — the American Mustang.
Like many other people who have a love of horses and animals, I have a long history of it. I was only a few years old when I first sat on a horse and 10 years old when I took my first riding lessons. Since then, my interest and my love affair with horses has never faded.
My concerns for the American wild horses and burros come natural to me. I have been out West many times and have followed the fate of the American Mustang for years. At this particular juncture, with the proposed budget for the Bureau of Land Management, which falls under the Department of the Interior, I am even more concerned. In fact, I am outraged.
The proposed budget for the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program opens the door for captive wild horses to be sold for slaughter. Years of roundups, most of them cruel helicopter roundups that always leave horses injured or dead, have filled the BLM’s holding pens beyond capacity. According to the BLM, 44,000 wild horses and burros are under their watch, yet costly roundups continue. The argument was and is that the population has to be managed.
No doubt, it should, but the methods have been ineffective and costly to the taxpayer. While other means exist, they have been mostly disregarded by BLM offices in many Western states. The National Academy of Sciences approves of population control on the range and has come out against more wild horse roundups. In fact, horses held in holding facilities could be returned to areas where they have been zeroed out before.
Expense can focus on managing wild horses with reversible contraceptives like PZP, which is a dartable vaccine. There are plenty of examples of how volunteers have stepped in to assist darting wild mares. The BLM in Colorado has worked well with the public to get input as well as assistance.
Other BLM offices could follow this example, but seem unwilling to do so. They would rather engage contractors for helicopter roundups who have made millions from those deals, all on the back of the taxpayer. More fiscally responsible policies happen to be also more humane. There is an inherent contradiction to complain about the cost of the roundups and keeping of the horses in holding facilities, but then to continue to do the very same costly roundups and to put more and more horses in holding facilities. An insane system that has not worked, and could have been easily reversed, is in fact perpetuated.
Why is it perpetuated? Fewer than 60,000 wild horses roam our Western states. Some groups claim the numbers to be much lower than that, even as low as 30,000. At the same time, millions of privately owned livestock graze on public lands. Livestock owners and horse advocates have been at odds for decades over the removal of federally protected Mustangs.
Many ranchers claim that horses are highly responsible for range degradation while at the same time the concern for range degradation caused by livestock is low or nonexistent. A look at numbers should clarify this. After all, one has to ask of how much range degradation 60,000 (or much less) horses can cause versus millions of cattle and sheep on public land.
Furthermore, the public land grazing program costs taxpayers. Grazing fees have gone down in 2017. Livestock owners seem to get more than a fair deal. Still more horses are subject to cruel and unjustified roundups, they face slaughter and many more herds going to extinction.
I urge you, the compassionate public, to put a halt to an insane system, to educate yourself and to fight for humane policies for managing these irreplaceable wild symbols of the West.
Jutta Vogelbacher is a Muncie resident.
