Wild Horses Research Paper

The image of the open land filled with wild horses running free has become threatened by the U.S. government that seems to have aligned itself with “Big Cattle”.

Today, there are more American wild horses being held in facilities than currently in the wild. Since the 19th century, the number of wild horses free in the West has declined by 98%. The practices of removing American horses off public lands has decimated their numbers and raised taxpayer costs by $80,000,000 each fiscal year. Thousands of wild horses are being herded by helicopters and vehicles into holding pens annually. The ones who survive separation from their families, substandard veterinary care, electric cattle prods or other horse ‘management’ techniques are stockpiled

Though BLM has claimed there have been no deaths or injuries to wild horses or burros during the roundups, NBC correspondent Lisa Myers’ exposé on wild horses clearly captures on film a foal being trampled to death in a BLM holding facility.

The crux of the matter is the culpability of the Cattle Industry, which claims the wild horses and burros are nuisances on public land, though cattle drastically outnumber wild horses and burros. 240 million acres (82.5%) of public land are leased to private companies for grazing - less than 20% is allotted to be shared with wild horses, and less and less is being “shared” with the wild horses every day.

30-year retired BLM employee Bob Edwards disagrees with his former employers claiming that it’s the livestock numbers that need managing, not the wild horse population. Says Edwards, “The wild horses are not receiving a fair

Gus Cothran, has stated that the reduction in the U.S. burro population is resulting in an increase of inbreeding due to a lack of genetic variability. Burro populations have only a 20 percent genetic variability factor compared to a healthy genetic variability of 70%.

Such figures led the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to warn in its 2013 report that "removing burros permanently from the range could jeopardize the genetic health of the total population." So far, those warnings have done nothing to curb the roundups.

In June 2014, nonprofit organizations and friends of wild horse preservation petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the animals as an endangered species so as to protect them from cattlemen who would prefer the public lands be used for grazing herds than those “pesty” wild horses (though the cattle population drastically outnumbers the horses). The groups requested that the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) recognize North American wild horses as a distinct population segment (DPS) of the species Equus caballus and protect them on all US federal lands.

“These horses are different, they are treated different under the law, they behave differently and there’s some evidence they are genetically different,” Jennifer Barnes, a lawyer for Friends of Animals based in suburban