She notes that some public lands are also leased by oil, gas and mining companies who are “all huge contributors to climate change.” That's a fraction of the land that's grazed by livestock,” Roy said. “There are 86,000 wild horses and burros on 27 million acres in the West. She also dismisses the notion that horses should bear the burden of the West’s hard times. ![]() Other groups and ranchers say it is impossible to reach enough horses if they are free ranging. The group’s director, Suzanne Roy, points to the work her group has done, without gathers, delivering 4,287 contraceptive shots and boosters to 1,474 mares since 2019. The American Wild Horse Campaign opposes any roundups except in emergency situations and believes that horses should receive fertility control vaccinations only in their natural habitat. “It allows us to work in places where there are stable populations at sustainable levels.”īut the Path Forward approach, which the group has lobbied for in Washington, has been vehemently attacked by some wild horse groups. “The challenge in the short term is that's not going to reduce populations,” Culver said. Beyond that, Culver said the populations are so large that vaccines alone cannot bring the size down. On its website, BLM said that the vaccine technology has become more viable over time, but the logistics to carry out a dramatic expansion has often proved daunting because many wild horse herds dwell on hard-to-reach terrain. Of the record 18,000 horses that will be rounded up this year, 1,000 will receive fertility-control shots, said Nada Culver, the deputy director of policy and programs for BLM. The BLM said in a statement that its use of fertility controls was also slowed by lawsuits. It delivered 384 treatments in 2014 and those numbers rose to 735 in 2020. The BLM’s use of the shots stalled for most of the decade. But the BLM website describes the 2013 report as finding "no highly effective, easily delivered and affordable fertility-control methods" and advising further research. In 2013, a National Academy of Sciences study noted that round ups had not curbed the wild horse population and called fertility prevention shots “promising”. The horses are injected by dart or hand at a cost of $30 to $50 per horse, but the BLM says the cost of capturing and holding a horse for the time required to administer a shot costs 50 times as much as the actual shot. The contraceptive techniques require injections ranging between one to five years, but are reversible. They hope, as contraceptive measures ramp up and the number of wild horses gradually stabilizes, the round ups are phased out. The Path Forward group is a coalition of animal rights groups, public lands advocates, local and state government offices and farming and cattle industry representatives that favor using contraception aggressively so that the wild horse population achieves a sustainable level. “We know they're going to be hungry or starving to death because there's not going to be water there that year,” Pearson said. Pearson said that year in year out, she is reducing her cattle herd size because of the changing weather conditions. Tammy Pearson, a rancher and county commissioner in Beaver County, Utah, is a founding member of the Path Forward coalition. “No one who cares about these animals wants to see them suffer and die of dehydration or malnutrition,” Griffin said. The worry for the survival of cattle, wild horses and wildlife in the West has spurred this on. It’s climate change and the new reality is fast settling in.” “The greatest threat to our wild horses and burros and our public lands right now isn’t the BLM, it’s not cattle, ranching or mining interests. Stephanie Boyles Griffin, the chief scientist of the Humane Society of the United States’ wildlife protection department, said climate change has forced different groups to come together. Those activists are now advocating a mix of roundups and fertility control measures for wild horses, whose population has grown from an estimated 30,000 in 2013 to nearly 80,000. But, faced with dwindling water and plant resources, some rights activists have accepted the roundups as a necessary evil when faced with climate change. A smaller number are put up for adoption. Horse defenders have long hated the helicopter-led roundups, where wild horses are herded into corrals and then brought to long-term grazing facilities, mostly in the Midwest. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Register
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