BLM Tests Fertility Drug to Control Wild Herd Growth

TheHorse.com - full article

Oocyte growth factor (OGF) lasts three years or longer and is a potential alternative to PZP.

Posted by Pat Raia | May 28, 2020

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has begun testing a new fertility-control vaccine it hopes will become an alternative to contraceptive porcine zona pellucida (PZP) for controlling wild herd growth. While some wild horse advocates believe the vaccine could reduce the need for controversial wild horse gathers, others maintain that the agency is not allowing enough public scrutiny of the testing.

In use by the BLM since the 1990s, PZP is injected into wild mares to produce antibodies that prevent sperm from attaching to an egg and fertilizing it. Mares on the range receive PZP via dart gun, while gathered mares are administered by syringe. The contraceptive is effective for about a year...

Read more here:
https://thehorse.com/189045/blm-tests-fertility-drug-to-control-wild-herd-growth/?utm_medium=Welfare+enews&utm_source=Newsletter

BLM cites ‘staggering’ cost of reining in U.S. wild horses

SLTrib.com - Full Article

By Scott Sonner | The Associated Press
May 15 2020

Reno, Nev. • Federal land managers say it will take two decades and cost more than $1 billion over the first six years alone to slash wild horse populations to sustainable levels necessary to protect U.S. rangeland.

The Bureau of Land Management's latest plans envision capturing 200,000 mustangs over the next two decades. It also wants to build corrals to hold thousands more than current capacity and adopt regulations allowing the permanent sterilization of horses roaming federal lands for the first time.

"The overall funding requirements could be staggering," the bureau acknowledged in a report to Congress this week.

The strategy underscores the volatility of the decades-long controversy pitting horse advocates against ranchers whose livestock compete for federally subsidized forage across 10 western states...

Read more here:
https://www.sltrib.com/news/nation-world/2020/05/14/blm-cites-staggering-cost/

Mustangs and memories: BLM plan threatens Wyo’s wild horses

WyoFile.com - Full Article

May 5, 2020 by Chad Hanson

I won’t forget the first wild horses I saw: flared nostrils, churning hooves and dreadlock manes. I intended to go fly fishing on Green Mountain, but I made a set of mustang memories instead.

The unplanned meeting happened years ago. That doesn’t matter. I can still picture the scruffy but yet majestic animals. Experiences, and our recollections afterward, hold deep seats in our minds. Virginia Woolf considered memory “the seamstress that threads our lives together.” Our memories and the stories we tell about them are what make us people.

After you’ve seen mustangs running, sparring or caring for their foals, they stay in your thoughts. Today, the wild horses I have known make me smile in meetings at the office. They run beside me and lend a bit of grace to my ordinary old-man jog for exercise in the morning. They even lured me to the section of the library dedicated to equine lore and history. There, in the stacks, I learned that the oldest horse fossils on Earth were found in Wyoming.

About a year ago, I uncovered a map on the internet that included a wild horse herd area along the banks of Deer Creek, south of Casper. I also learned that the Bureau of Land Management removed those horses entirely. They no longer exist. At a public meeting, I showed the map to the director of the local BLM office. He looked surprised, even taken aback. He could not remember when the agency decided to eliminate wild horses from the prairie south of my hometown...

Read more here:
https://www.wyofile.com/mustangs-and-memories-blm-plan-threatens-wyos-wild-horses/