Save the Horses! But How?

So, there’s been this viral story making the rounds lately about the Bureau of Land Management deciding to cull 44,000 wild horses in the Western US, much to the shock and dismay of everybody passing the story around. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to most people who know me that I actually have a thing or two to say about all the hubbub. I mean, aside from the fact that BLM has not actually made the purported decision — it was a non-binding recommendation from the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board that agency itself has yet to take up formally.

First of all, a little background. Wild horses and burros are technically feral, meaning they come from previously domesticated stock that have returned to living in a wild state. Basically like alley cats, except much larger and they’re rubbish at keeping down the rodent population. The original wild equine populations of the Americas were hunted out of existence by humans in the prehistoric period around 7600 years ago. The modern US populations originated from animals that escaped or were released from captivity beginning with the Spanish roughly 500 years ago.

Some people will say, then, that this makes them a reintroduced native species. I even found one weepy-eyed narrative insisting that because horses are monogastric (simple-stomached) grazers, only they are capable of passing enough viable seed through their digestive tracts to maintain western grasslands. Which, of course, conveniently ignores the 7000 years or so that those same grasslands managed to get along just fine with only bison, elk, pronghorn, and other ruminants (animals with compartmentalized stomachs) around.

In fact, only 12.5% of the current population of wild horses and burros in the United States are within in any part of the Great Plains states. Which isn’t the same as saying they actually live on the Great Plains, but rather that there are herds living in some parts of states that contain part of that geographic region. Over half of the current population of 67,027 lives in Nevada, the driest state in the US, where they subsist largely by browsing on sparse vegetation in the sagebrush deserts. This means that the biggest chunk of them live on land that can’t support large numbers of animals, and it also means that they can damage critical habitat for other species, like the threatened sage grouse.

Currently, BLM estimates the maximum number the areas the horses now live in can reasonably sustain is 26,715, meaning there are over 40,000 too many horses. If they try to relocate them to more productive grazing lands, it puts the horses in conflict with ranchers who graze their sheep or cattle on those grasslands. Although the rents they pay to BLM are historically very low, it is a source of revenue for the agency, so they are understandably going to be loath to give that up. There are also legitimate concerns about the potential for disease transmission between wild and domestic horses, not to mention conflict — horses can be territorial and fight pretty dirty. It also bears pointing out that the recommendation apparently referred to animals currently in BLM “holding facilities”, which would suggest they’re not unrestricted on the range, but people aren’t adopting them and BLM has nowhere else to put them. Caring for that many horses is an expensive proposition, as any horse owner knows.

BLM also says that it has explored options for birth control, but there aren’t many at this point in time and what they do have for an option has to be repeated annually. Remember that these horses and burros are essentially wild, so it’s not as though you can just walk up to them and give them a shot. They’re also wary of humans and being tracked annually will only make them more so, meaning that approach becomes extremely labor intensive. On the other hand, the population can double every four years, meaning they put a greater strain on the land, increase the likelihood of animals starving to death, etc.

So what to do? I’m not sure I have a great answer for that, other than there will need to be some hard thinking about what the agency’s priorities are. In fairness, the one dissenter on the Advisory Board vote cited a 2013 National Academy of Sciences report criticizing the agency for not using rigorous methods to estimate populations and not using appropriate science-based methodologies to develop better management strategies.

But even if BLM does start focusing more on researching these issues, it doesn’t solve the immediate problem, and all I’ve seen so far is “Don’t let them kill the horsies!” outrage without any real alternative solutions put forward. I will fully admit that I don’t have the background to really put forward a cogent and comprehensive alternative, but I’m a bit bemused at the outrage over 44,000 horses when so many other animals are killed every year in the US without anybody caring to notice.

If we want to talk about livestock, which is what horses are, consider that, according to USDA figures, over 42 million feedlot cattle were sold for slaughter in 2015. That’s only feedlot cattle — not veal calves, not pasture-raised cattle, not dairy cows whose production has dropped — just the ones pumped up with hormones and antibiotics in shit-filled pens. And that’s nearly 1,000 times the number of horses BLM is looking at. There were also around 49.7 million hogs and sows slaughtered in 2015–1,129 times the number of BLM horses.

And people think that’s fine and dandy because bacon, but in North Carolina, where I attended grad school many years ago, the pollution caused by these animals is a really serious issue. The manure “lagoons” that are catchment ponds for the animal waste are basically toxic waste dumps, full of potentially pathogenic bacteria, possibly also viruses, and definitely levels of phosphorus and nitrogen that would basically poison whole watersheds. The fermentation that goes on in the oxygen-poor environment below the surface also belches out tons of greenhouse gases, but hey, no problem here.

But, you insist, those animals are supposed to be killed, because bacon cheeseburgers. To which I say, that’s a totally arbitrary distinction. But if you’re going to insist on making irrational and meaningless categorizations, then let’s talk about the 1.2 million dogs and 1.4 million cats that the ASPCA estimates are killed in US animal shelters every year, the vast majority of whom are healthy and adoptable. Where is the outrage at that? That’s still 27 times more dogs and 32 times more cats than horses, but there’s no demand that the government do something to stop that slaughter. Nor are there any solutions offered.

Again, I will fully admit that I don’t have the solution here — I know a bit about some of the players and can run through some basic scenarios, but that’s not enough to put forward good ideas of what to do — but this reactionary kind of “Save the Ponies!” thing still does nothing to address the real issue that BLM is faced with. Despite whatever legitimate criticisms have been directed at the agency, there is a consensus that the current population growth rate of wild horses and burros is unsustainable and that something needs to be done. Likewise with dogs, cats, cattle, swine, white-tailed deer (our most widely hunted big game species, which carries diseases that are serious concerns for other wild species as well as livestock), and the list goes on. None of the options are going to be cheap, not even this recommended cull, but doing nothing just isn’t an option. And if all anybody is doing is passing around outrage on Facebook, that’s nothing at all.