Maybe there are too many cows, not too many horses
An Meat and Dairy Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM The Fund for Horses
July 2021

The BLM claims that the current population of 94,000 wild equines on 26 million acres of public land should be reduced to 27,000, yet millions of domestic livestock graze the same rangeland.

Cattle grazing
Cattle grazing in the Mojave Desert, California. Photo by George Wuerthner

Letter to the Editor | Opinion Page | The Washington Post | 6th July 2021

Kathleen Parker’s June 27th Sunday Opinion column, “We have too many wild horses. But this is not the way.,” brilliantly highlighted one aspect of heritage animals’ mistreatment by the Bureau of Land Management. Unfortunately, it also perpetuated the myth underlying the gruesome policy of rounding up, warehousing and mindlessly disposing of captive wild horses and burros.

The BLM claims that the current population of 94,000 wild equines on 26 million acres of public land should be reduced to 27,000, yet millions of domestic livestock graze the same rangeland.

This radically low goal is nearly the same number that prompted Congress to pass the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act to keep wild horses and burros from “fast disappearing from the West.”

The National Academy of Sciences found the bureau’s “appropriate management level” of 27,000 to be arbitrary, rigid and not science-based. This contrived population target allocates the lion’s share of forage to livestock, which, unlike wild equines, is not federally protected.

Isn’t it time to put humane policies and real science into action?


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