Wild-horse panel urges strong measures

The Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Committee wants to take its case to Congress, asking that the Bureau of Land Management take strong measures — including destruction of healthy animals — to better manage the range.

The committee also recommended that the BLM phase out the long-term housing of wild horses and burros and use the savings to improve rangeland management. It also rejected a proposal that helicopters no longer be used to round up, or gather, wild horses.

The agency last year recommended that the BLM have the ability to destroy or sell excess horses, but members of the committee said they were frustrated that the recommendation appeared to have been ignored.

Voting in favor of the recommendation in 2016 was “one of the hardest things I have ever had to do,” said committee member Ben Masters, a Bozeman, Montana, filmmaker. The BLM, however, never responded to the proposal and, “I feel very blown away by that.”

The committee voted to conduct its next regular meeting in Washington, D.C., where members can speak directly to members of Congress, before the terms of some of the members expire in the spring.

Committee members debated ways to encourage adoptions of wild horses and burros that have been removed from the range, with member Ginger Kathrens, a Colorado resident with the Cloud Foundation, urging the BLM to paint the animals as positively as possible.

“The word ‘feral’ should never be used” to describe horses and burros available for adoption, Kathrens said.

The board also adopted a recommendation that once herds are at appropriate populations they be managed by using contraceptives delivered by darts, adoption or permanent sterilization.

The Cloud Foundation opposes euthanasia for the horses, and another organization, the American Wild Horse Campaign, presented a petition with 300,000 signatures opposing the committee’s 2016 recommendation.

Originally posted by Daily Sentinel

Gary Harmon, Daily Sentinel