Full Frontal’s Samantha Bee visits Nevada’s Virginia Range to show how we can easily protect horses and save taxpayers money, despite the U.S. Government’s efforts to do otherwise
RENO (April 22, 2022): Last night, the national late night talk and news satire show “Full Frontal,” hosted by Samatha Bee, took viewers to Reno’s Virginia Range where the American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC) operates the world’s largest fertility control program for wild horses.
The seven-minute segment exposed how the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM)’s Wild Horse and Burro Program wastes millions of taxpayer dollars on helicopter roundups while ignoring cost-effective and humane alternatives. The program highlighted AWHC’s volunteer darters on the Virginia Range, who administer the humane fertility control vaccine PZP to mustangs in order to safely manage herd populations.
In Bee’s words, the segment revealed how “your tax dollars are being spent rounding up, jailing and sometimes killing wild horses” and showed how the lifetime cost of treating a horse with PZP fertility control averages about $700 compared with $50,000 to roundup and remove a horse from the range.
When told that the BLM’s wild horse budget currently costs Americans $150 million annually and that spending on the program is likely to reach $1 billion in the next five years, Bee said, “Even if you hate horses… it doesn’t feel fiscally responsible.”
Nevada is home to the largest free-ranging horse fertility control program in the world. The Virginia Range Horse Fertility Control program is managed by the American Wild Horse Campaign in cooperation with the Nevada Department of Agriculture. In 2021, foaling rates have been reduced by 43% through the use of the PZP immunocontraceptive vaccine delivered remotely by dart to wild mares.
Nevada’s Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen and Rep. Dina Titus have been leaders in the effort on Capitol Hill in Washington DC to require the BLM to fund fertility control programs. Currently, the BLM spends less than 1 percent of its wild horse budget on fertility control while 70 percent is spent to round up, remove, and warehouse horses and burros.
Recent polling shows that 88% of Americans support the protection and preservation of wild horses.
You can view the “Full Frontal Segment” here.
About the American Wild Horse Campaign
The American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC) is the nation’s leading wild horse protection organization, with more than 700,000 supporters and followers nationwide. AWHC is dedicated to preserving the American wild horse and burros in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. In addition to advocating for the protection and preservation of America’s wild herds, AWHC implements the largest wild horse fertility control program in the world.
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