Two academics have sounded a warning over the rising cost of America’s federally managed wild horse and burro program, saying captive mustangs could cost $US1 billion over the next 17 years unless changes are made.
Wild horse advocates have long been critical of the strategies used by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in managing the horses on western rangelands, with tens of thousands of horses now held captive in short- and long-term holding facilities.
More are now held in captivity than inhabit the wild.
A recent report by the National Research Council echoed that view, saying the current program was unsustainable.
The independent report warned that continuing the “business as usual” approach would become increasingly expensive and unproductive for the bureau, pointing out that the strategy of ongoing musters encouraged higher birthrates in the wild.
Now, a report published in the journal, Science, by two of the researchers involved in that report, suggests captive wild horses will have cost American taxpayers $US1 billion by 2030 unless federal management approaches change.
The Science report was written by Madan Oli, a professor in the wildlife ecology and conservation department of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, and Robert Garrott, a professor in the ecology department of Montana State University.
The pair said contraceptive vaccines were a possible solution to the issue.
In 1971, Congress instructed federal agencies to protect and manage wild horses, monitor the population and remove horses when numbers exceeded established population goals.
As Garrott and Oli wrote, thousands of those horses are now kept, not as the untamed creatures many associate with the Wild West, but as domesticated livestock, living out the decades in pastures, for which the pasture owners are compensated.
The problem, the pair confirmed, is that the cost of maintaining the captive horses is increasingly unsustainable. For the 17 years from 2013 until 2030, caring for the horses will cost taxpayers $US1.1 billion, Oli said, and $US67 million annually after that.
The BLM now reports 33,000 free-roaming horses in the western US, but even more – roughly 45,000 – are in holding facilities.
When wild horse numbers grow too large, they are rounded up and taken to short-term holding facilities, where the bureau puts many up for sale or adoption.
If they are too ill for either, they are euthanized, but federal officials are barred from euthanizing healthy horses. Healthy horses not sold or adopted are moved to long-term holding facilities, where they typically remain for the rest of their lives.
The National Research Council committee on which Garrott and Oli served concluded that if horse populations were left unmanaged, the number of horses on public lands would triple about every six years until eventually, food and water supplies were thin.
The wild horse population has been growing at an annual rate of between 15 and 20 percent, Oli said.
“If current management approaches continue, there will be very little money left in the BLM wild horse and burro budget to do anything else but care for horses in captivity,” Oli said.
“Rounding them up is pretty expensive, and at some point, nearly all of the budget would be consumed by horses in captivity. It will just be totally unsustainable to continue business as usual.”
The researchers estimated that the 15 to 20 percent annual population increase in western horse herds could be halved if contraceptive vaccines were more widely used. Contraception for horses is labor intensive because it must be hand-injected. More research into new delivery methods could help, Oli said.
While the debate over wild horses has gone on for years, it is clear something must be done, the researchers said.
After dying out during the last ice age, horses were returned to North America by Spanish explorers in the mid-1500s, later mixing with modern domestic horses that found their way to the range.
Prolific breeders, their numbers multiply quickly in the absence of natural predators.
The paper concluded with a sobering look at Australia, where government agencies have proposed shooting 10,000 of the 400,000-strong wild horse population from helicopters to reduce the number of animals suffering under severe drought conditions.
“We need to think about what’s ethical, what we want to do. The worst-case scenario is that we do nothing,” Garrott said. “Simply not doing anything will result in a much, much harder decision in the future.”
Reporting: Mickie Anderson
A Critical Crossroad for BLM’s Wild Horse Program
Robert A. Garrott and Madan K. Oli
Science 23 August 2013: 341 (6148), 847-848. [DOI:10.1126/science.1240280]