The latest move to control US wild horse populations involves rounding up and spaying mares before returning them to the wild.
By: Kim Izzo | December 16, 2020
The latest attempt to control wild horse populations in the United States has come under fire from wild horse advocates and members of the US Senate and House of Representatives. The current scandal revolves around the plan by the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to round up horses from western Utah and surgically sterilize the mares before returning them to the wild.
According to news reports the procedure has not been “performed before on wild horses under the purview of the Bureau of Land Management, was done on mares occupying a national wildlife refuge in Nevada with success, federal officials say.”
This move has been condemned by advocates as “unwarranted and cruel”, including by the American Wild Horse Campaign, whose communications director, Grace Kuhn, said in a statement last week. “It is not a population management tool. It is pretty barbaric.”
