Laura Moretti: America's Disappearing Wild Horses / Part 2

• Historical Overview

America’s Disappearing Wild Horses

Wild horse populations increased until the advent of the “Cattle Kingdom.” Ranchers no longer viewed horses as necessary tools for moving cattle, but as nuisance animals and competitors for grasslands upon which their cattle fed—marking the beginning of the mass slaughter of horses.

In 1812, Spanish cattle ranchers slaughtered 30,000 horses in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, claiming they were robbing cattle of vital grass.

The Name and the Lands Game

In cattlemen terms, wild horses are “sons of bitches,” eyesores, habitat destroyers, and misfits; in BLM terms, they are “shitters.” History, on the other hand, will bear them out as scapegoats: contrary to popular belief, wild horses are not destroying public lands where they are found amidst 6 million heads of cattle and sheep. In fact, a 1990 General Accounting Office report showed that livestock consumed 81% of Nevada’s forage in the four studied horse areas.

Why is there such determination to rid our public lands of wild horses? For many—the livestock lobby, government agencies, and even environmental and wildlife protection organizations—the wild horse isn’t a wild animal at all, but a domesticated animal gone feral. This mongrel of a horse is not, they argue, native American wildlife. Considered an “exotic,” it competes for habitat with such species as elk and pronghorn antelope, and it decimates rangeland used by domestic livestock. It must be controlled, removed, and, if necessary, gunned down.

And it all boils down to money: under the Department of Interior’s “multiple-use” principles, only so much cattle, so much wildlife, and so many wild horses are allowed on federal lands. The wildlife is “paid for” by hunters’ licensing fees. Cattle are “paid for” by the meat industry: $1.35 per head per month to graze the public domain. Horses, on the other hand, take up one “Animal Unit Month” (AUM), but no one is paying their way. Each horse removed from the West frees up another AUM for cattle or sheep or game antelope.

Adopt-A-Horse Program

The BLM created its Adopt-A-Horse program in 1976. Since then, more than 200,000 horses and burros have been rounded up off public lands and sifted through the adoption pipeline.

In 1978, the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act was amended by the Public Rangelands Improvement Act: among other changes, a titling program implemented by the BLM stipulated that an adopter could not technically “own” a wild horse until one year after its adoption, thereby making it illegal to sell it to anyone else during that first year. In effect, it made the expense of caring for a horse during that time outweigh its meat price.

Still, the program has been marred by scandal, with thousands of horses unaccounted for and feared slaughtered.

In 1984, after a regulatory change that relaxed conditions for removal of animals from the range, massive round-ups landed 40,000 horses in holding corrals. The BLM waived its fees to encourage more adoptions, resulting in an estimated 20,000 wild horses ending at slaughter.

In 1997, AP reporter Martha Mendoza exposed widespread corruption within the program in seven articles that ran throughout the year. That same year, a federal grand jury collected evidence that showed BLM officials had allowed the slaughter of hundreds of wild horses, falsified records and tried to prevent investigators from uncovering the truth. The case was eventually closed down after federal officials intervened.

Today, one can easily adopt a wild horse for as little as $125 a head. The cost to taxpayers for removing that animal from the wild is more than tenfold.

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