Are there enough wild horses to bring back equine slaughter for human food?

FoodSafetyNews.com - Full Article

By Dan Flynn on January 20, 2023

A lengthy joint resolution in the Wyoming House calls upon Congress to bring back equine slaughter and processing for markets outside the United States. Wyoming is offering the resolution as a “best management practice” for all those wild mustangs that roam and breed with little effective management throughout the Cowboy State.

By offering the solution to Wyoming’s wild mustang problem, the usual sides are lining up. Wyoming’s Park County Commissioner Lee Livingston sees equine slaughter as “practical and humane.” Grace Kuhn, speaking for the American Wild Horse Campaign, said it’s “impractical and inhumane.”

The slaughter of horses for human food — widely practiced in other parts of the world — ended in the United States in 2007 when Congress prohibited the expenditure of public funds for equine inspections without which its sale for human food is prohibited...

Read more here:
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2023/01/are-there-enough-wild-horses-to-bring-back-equine-slaughter-for-human-food/

The real problem with wild horses is not what you think

Laura Seitz, Deseret News photo

Deseret.com - Full Article

An overpopulation of wild horses is not the problem on the rangelands — and removing them isn’t protecting them

By Scott Beckstead
Nov 3, 2022

Our nation’s wild horses and burros, viewed by most Americans as cherished living symbols of our nation’s frontier history and culture, are facing unprecedented persecution.

The Bureau of Land Management and its livestock industry allies continue to repeat unfounded claims about horses being overpopulated and in danger of starvation and rangelands being devastated by wild equine herds.

But the BLM doesn’t mention the cattle and sheep swarming over our rangelands by the millions, often outnumbering wild horses by dozens to one on designated wild horse and burro habitats, or that wild equines occupy just a tiny fraction of BLM lands. With this misleading narrative, the BLM conducts mass helicopter roundups under the pretext of “emergency” or “drought” conditions, which allows them to proceed without first conducting environmental assessments or taking public comment...

Read more here:
https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2022/11/3/23435597/opinion-wild-horses-endangered-blm

Horse Group Says Wild Horses Aren’t The Problem, It’s Cattle That’s Destroying The Land

Cowboystatedaily.com - Full Article

November 15, 2022

By Mark Heinz, Outdoors Reporter
Mark@CowboyStateDaily.com

Wild horse management in Wyoming will remain business as usual for now, with mustang roundups being the primary means of controlling the horses’ numbers on rangelands and Native American reservations, say Wyoming lawmakers.

However, it is cattle, not mustangs, that are causing most of the damage to the land and conflicts with wildlife, maintains a spokeswoman for a wild horse advocacy group.

Meanwhile, both sides agree that shooting mustang mares with birth control darts could be the best solution to Wyoming’s wild horse quandary.

Combat veterans armed with dart rifles could dispense the birth control among mustang herds, said Chairman Sen. Brian Boner, R-Douglas, during a Tuesday meeting of the Legislature’s Agriculture State and Public Lands and Water Resources Joint Committee...

Read more here:
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2022/11/15/horse-group-says-wild-horses-arent-the-problem-its-cattle-thats-destroying-the-land/

Wild horses need to stop ruling the range

LakePowellChronicle.com - Full Article

By: Ted Williams
Posted Sep 27, 2022

They are icons of America’s past, symbols of our pioneering spirit. Eyes flashing, nostrils flaring, tails obscured by a cloud of dust, they tear across the landscape. I am, of course, referring to feral hogs.

More on feral hogs directly. But first some background on another feral ungulate. Few issues in the West are more incendiary than management of “wild horses.” Advocates proclaim them “natives” that should be “wild and free.”

Opponents submit that these proliferating aliens are harming land and wildlife belonging to all Americans.

The federal management goal for these horses on public lands is 27,000. Yet the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency charged with tending them, estimates the current population at 64,604. The Journal of Wildlife Management reports 300,000 on all lands – public, private and tribal. Federal law precludes effective feral-horse management. Unmanaged populations increase by 20% annually...

Read more here:
https://lakepowellchronicle.com/article/wild-horses-need-to-stop-ruling-the-range

Wild horses deserve a home in the West

LakePowellChronicle.com - Full Article

By: Scott Beckstead
Posted Sep 20, 2022

I live in a rural county heavily dependent on ranching and agriculture, and though I often hear people talk about threats from large predators like bears or lions, I never hear complaints about wild horses living on our public lands.

Instead, I hear that these animals are living symbols of the American West. From Portland urbanites to Idaho ranchers, and also from the many Indigenous peoples whose forebears called the horse their brother, no one can imagine this region without herds of mustangs and burros running free.

From the federal government it’s a different story. Hewing to a strong pro-livestock bias, the Bureau of Land Management has for decades spun a false narrative about an “overpopulation” of equines that, the agency claims, are in danger of starving and destroying their habitat. The agency would have us dismiss what photographers, tourists and advocates document every day: thriving, robust families of horses living peacefully on vast stretches of federal lands...

Read more here:
https://lakepowellchronicle.com/article/wild-horses-deserve-a-home-in-the-west

Wild horse activists focus on fertility control as BLM pulls horses from Western rangelands

BoiseStatePublicRadio.org - full story

KUNR Public Radio | By Kaleb Roedel
Published September 15, 2022 at 5:22 PM MDT

In a sun-baked desert east of Reno, Nev., Tracy Wilson and Rae Hanna stood 70 yards from a band of wild horses quietly munching on sagebrush.

Hanna held an air rifle loaded with a dart containing a fertility-control vaccine booster called Porcine Zona Pellucida (PZP)

While Hanna crept closer to the horses, Wilson split off to the right and slowly walked in a semi-circle around them.

“There are times when I’ll just pick at the bushes like I’m another animal grazing," Wilson said. "If you’re just staring them down and going right for them, they’re going to leave.”

Hanna raised her air rifle and aimed at a female horse they call “Bangs.” She pulled the trigger, and the dart struck the black mare in the rump...

Read more and listen here:
https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/science-research/2022-09-15/wild-horse-activists-focus-on-fertility-control-as-blm-pulls-horses-from-western-rangelands

Wild horse gather to take place this year on Wind River Reservation, Wyoming

County10.com - Full Article

Katie Roenigk
September 16, 2022

Tribal, state and federal officials hope to conduct a wild horse gather operation on the Wind River Reservation by the end of this year.

The goal is to remove about 1,200 horses using a “helicopter procedure” and a “standard gathering technique,” state staffers told the legislature’s Select Committee on Tribal Relations during a meeting last month in Riverton.

Once the gather is complete, Tribal officials “have the ability to sell those horses or get them back to (their) owners – or they have an administrative process if people have dumped their horses on the reservation illegally,” said Kit Wendtland, special counsel to Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon...

Read more here:
https://county10.com/wild-horse-gather-to-take-place-this-year-on-wind-river-reservation/