BLM's Continued Wild Horse Roundups Defy Independent Report Recommendations

Last Friday at 5:33 p.m. ET, as thousands of captured wild horses sweltered in punishing heat in government holding pens, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a press release announcing plans to round up 1,300 more wild horses from the West over the next eight weeks.

In the public relations world, late Friday afternoon is the time to release bad news. And theBLM's announcement is bad news indeed for wild horses and American taxpayers.

Why? Because it continues the federal government's "business as usual" approach towild horse management, which just last month, anindependent scientific panelat the National Academies (NAS) characterized as "expensive and unproductive for theBLMand the public it serves."

Wild horses are national symbols of freedom, and the irony of stockpiling moremustangsin government holding facilities (50,000) than remain freein the wild(32,000) was not lost on the NAS panel. Dr. Guy Palmer, panel chair, told theAssociated Press, "No one really wants to see more horses in long-term holding just from an economic viewpoint. Secondly, this is not the vision that is associated with what the public wants to see with the horses on these wild lands."

After a nearly two-year review that theBLMitself commissioned and funded, the NAS recommended against furtherroundupsand in favor of managing wild horses on the range with fertility control. Despite this, theBLMis galloping ahead with more roundups, as the agency's carefully timed Friday afternoon press release revealed.

In May, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell toldThe Denver Postthat she would look to the NAS report to guide her approach to reforming theBLMprogram. Today -- 50 days after the release of the NAS report -- she is still reviewing the NAS findings, according to her recent Congressional testimony.

But, as theBLM's summer roundup schedule reveals, Secretary Jewell is fiddling while Rome burns. While she is "reviewing" the report, theBLMwill bring 1,300 more wild horses into a holding system that is already at capacity and -- at a daily cost to American taxpayers of $120,000 a day -- threatening fiscal collapse.

Savvy to the PR implications, theBLMis spinning the new roundup schedule as an "emergency" response to drought conditions in the West. But the agency's own handbook classifies droughts not as emergencies, but as events that "can be detected in advance and are managed through the normal planning process."

Like the stockpiling of thousands of captured wild horses in holding pens, where they are forced to endure merciless sun and heat without benefit of shelter, theBLM's "emergency" droughtroundupsare a symptom of a much larger program at this agency -- the fundamental failure to humanely manage horses on the range.

The NAS said it straight up: "Tools already exist forBLMto address many challenges." But the agency is under-utilizing available tools, which include humanefertility controlto keep herds in check.

With regard to drought, proactive range improvements -- done for livestock all the time -- would ensure wild horses have suitable access to water in the vast majority of areas. Remember, wild horses live on 26 million acres ofBLMland while cattle graze on 165 million acres where they outnumber wild horses by at least 50-1. Yet you don't hear of theBLMconducting cattleroundups...

BLMspokesperson Tom Gorey told theLos Angeles Timesthat "the opponents of our horse gathers face a daunting question of ethics. On one hand, they imply that if Mother Nature kills off the horses from thirst or starvation, that's OK. But if we intervene to save these horses, that's unacceptable."

Let's be clear: theBLMis intervening to "save" wild horses because they've failed to effectively manage them on the range. They need "saving" from conditions theBLMis chiefly responsible for. In other words, they've created the "emergency" and are now using it as an opportunity to justifyroundups.

Seen in this light, theBLM's decision to issue this news on Friday evening is not surprising.

Secretary Jewell clearly has her work cut out for her. But she will have to do more than "review" the findings of the NAS if she is to change theBLMand its "business as usual" practices. The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation) remains hopeful that she is up to the task, because the lives of tens of thousands ofmustangsand burros -- and the future of this unique American legacy -- depend on it.

Originally Posted By The Huffington Post