Briefing Materials: House Natural Resources Committee, Federal

Lands Subcommittee
Oversight Hearing on BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program
Prepared by the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign
Contact: Suzanne Roy, 919-697-9389, sroy@wildhorsepreservation.org
MYTH: Wild Horses are overrunning and ruining the range.
FACT: Wild horses are present on just 17% of BLM rangelands, where they remain vastly
outnumbered by livestock
Wild horses are not present on more than 80% of rangelands, which makes the claim that that
they are overrunning the range preposterous.
Moreover, according to the BLM, less than onequarter of available forage within Herd Management
Areas (HMAs) is allocated to wild horses. More than
75% is allocated to livestock. (1.1 million AUMs for
livestock; 320,000 AUMs for wild horses and burros.).
The vast majority of rangeland and forage is reserved
for livestock not wild horses.
BLM Grazing in States with Wild Horses
State
BLM Acres Grazed by
Livestock
Arizona
11.5 million
California
7 million
Colorado
7.8 million
Idaho
11.5 million
Montana
8.2 million*
Nevada
43 million
New Mexico
13 million
Oregon
14 million
Utah
22 million
Wyoming
17.4 million
*includes Dakotas
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BLM Acres Wild Horse and

Burro HMAs
1.5 million
2 million
365,000
383,000
27,094
14 million
24,500
2.7 million
2.1 million
3.6 million

MYTH: Wild Horse populations are 3x over the number the land can sustain.
FACT: The BLMs claims of overpopulation are not based on science, but are arbitrary
numbers unsupported by science and contrary to the unanimously adopted law designed to
save the fast disappearing wild horse population levels.

By setting a national AML of just 16,300

27,000, the BLM seeks to drive the wild
horse population back to the number
(25,000) that existed in 1971, when
Congress determined these iconic animals
were fast disappearing and acted
unanimously to save them.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

found in 2013:
How Appropriate Management Levels (AMLs) are established, monitored, and adjusted
is not transparent to stakeholders, supported by scientific information, or amenable to
adaptation with new information and environmental and social change.
The committee could not identify a science-based rationale used by BLM to allocate
forage and habitat resources to various uses within the constraints of protecting
rangeland health and listed species and given the multiple-use mandate.

This is part of an established pattern at BLM of ignoring science, the will of the American people
and Congress. In 1990, for example, GAO found that despite congressional direction, BLM'S
decisions on how many wild horses to remove from federal rangelands have not been based on
direct evidence that existing wild populations exceed what the range can support.
MYTH: The only solution is slaughter.
FACT: Slaughter is strongly opposed by the American public, but win-win solutions are
available.
Polls show that 80% of Americans (including 90% of
women) oppose horse slaughter, and nearly 3 in 4
Americans support protecting wild horses on our
public lands. The public outrage that surrounded the
BLMs illegal sale of nearly 1,800 federally-protected
wild horses to a known kill buyer who sold them to
slaughter and the overwhelming public outcry over
the U.S. Forest Service plans to remove the Salt River
wild horses from the Tonto National Forest in
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Arizona are testimony to the strength of public opposition to the destruction of wild horses
[move up to previous page, if possible].
Win-win solutions are available, but are not being implemented. These include:

Using the proven PZP fertility control vaccine to reduce population growth rates.
Creating public-private partnerships to implement humane management programs.
Adjusting the artificially low and unscientific AMLs to accommodate current population
levels and allow for the preservation of wild horses and burros in genetically viable
herds.
Developing mechanisms to compensate ranchers for reduced use or non-use of public
grazing allotments in HMAs. Compensating ranchers will be far cheaper than continuing
to roundup, remove and stockpile wild horses in holding facilities.
Reducing the population of horses in holding by transferring them to zeroed out Herd
Areas or other public lands areas where they can earn their own keep. These horses
are non-reproducing, so will phase out over time and thus will not create additional
management challenges.

MYTH: PZP doesnt work.

FACT: PZP works IF ITS USED.
Currently the BLM spends less than 1 percent of its
budget on proven humane fertility control, while
spending at least 72 percent to roundup, remove and
stockpile horses.
PZP is used today to successfully manage 20 wild horse
populations in the U.S. and has achieved zero
population growth in many of them. Despite this, the
agency continues to fail to use it on a scale that will
make a difference, and has actually reduced the use of
PZP since 2011.
The NAS confirmed this in its 2013 report, which states, Tools already exist for BLM to address
many challenges. The primary took available immediately is the PZP vaccine, which the NAS
confirmed that the BLM is using on too small a scale to make a difference.
MYTH: BLM must conduct large-scale wild horse removals but cannot do so because
holding facilities are full.
FACT: Removals are creating the very problem BLM seeks to solve.
The NAS found:
[BLMs] management practices are facilitating high rates of population growth.
population growth rate could be increased by removals through compensatory
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population growth from decreased competition for forage. As a result, the number of
animals processed through holding facilities is probably increased by management.
Removals are likely to keep the population at a size that maximizes population growth
rate, which in turn maximizes the number of animals that must be removed through
holding facilities.
MYTH: Wild horses are a feral, invasive, non-native species.
FACT: Wild horses are a native reintroduced species.
Wild horses evolved on this continent, and their disappearance less than 10,000 years ago is a
mere blip on the evolutionary scale of time. They migrated across the land bridge to Asia,
where they thrived, were domesticated and reintroduced to the Americas by the Spanish in the
1500s. The fact that the horses that were re-introduced came from domestic stock is
scientifically irrelevant. Feral describes a species relationship to humans; it has no biological
significance. As the noted paleontologist Dr. Ross MacPhee of the American Natural History
Museum in New York has stated, Evidence from both quaternary mammalian paleontology
and ancient DNA studies is overwhelmingly in favor of horses being regarded as a native
North American species.