Our Mission: To Change BLM Managment Tactics

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“It is incredible that one should have to furnish any argument to bring about any laws to save the Mustang, but if there must be an argument let it be this: that of all the things that have played a part in the development of this country, except for man, the horse has played the most important and beneficial role. He portrays the West as all people like to think of it. He is the symbol of wild freedom to us all.”

-Velma B. Johnston, a.k.a. Wild Horse Annie (1959)



There is a battle going on in the United States of America that many people are unaware of. Perhaps they think it’s unimportant, that it doesn’t affect them. The battle to save America’s wild Mustangs isn’t just between soft-hearted horse-lovers and hard-working ranchers. It’s much more complex than that. And in the end… we could all lose.

First of all, I do not support the idea of ceasing all BLM management of wild Mustang herds because since ranching and urbanization has taken over the ranges, and since humans hunt Mustangs' natural predators, the Mustangs would eventually overpopulate, cause habitat degradation, and starve. I must say that in some places the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) helps to care for the wild Mustangs by rounding up herds in places where there's very little food and/or water, and by rounding up Mustangs that wander onto private land (land owned by people). Some people in the BLM sincerely want to protect the Mustangs. Many roundups go without incident; the Mustangs are herded off the range into the holding pens, vaccinated, freeze-branded, and then adopted by loving owners. The BLM has many different facilities, and many are perfectly fine and do help the Mustangs. In some places the BLM is a good thing.

But in most other areas, the BLM uses its authority to take advantage of the animals and the land in its care. Over the past nine years, 40% of the Mustang population has been removed by the BLM for no other reason than rancher and government greed. Alternative methods for managing Mustang populations are available (savethemustanghorses.blogspot.…), and yet the BLM does not use them to any significant extent. Roundup teams are paid roughly $350 for each horse they bring in (dead or alive), so the pilots often go to drastic measures to capture as many horses as possible during each gather. Entire herds of Mustangs (including newborn foals) are driven at breakneck speeds over land deemed too rough for vehicles. Mustangs and burros (wild donkeys) are injured during the roundups and many beyond recovery and must be euthanized. (savethemustanghorses.blogspot.… , savethemustanghorses.blogspot.…)

The BLM openly admits to holding approximately 50,000 Mustangs in captivity (roughly double than there are in the wild), and their finances are running out. It costs roughly $3,000 tax dollars to process a single wild horse for adoption, and hundreds are removed in a typical roundup. It costs around $100,000 every single day to feed the captive Mustangs. Many Mustangs in BLM corrals are in poorer condition than they were and would be in the wild, and some are starving. Almost no BLM facilities provide shelter for the horses held captive. The panicked herd stallions often fight each other in the small spaces, desperately trying to keep their mares together, therefore hurting themselves and others.
"I'm assured repeatedly [by BLM veterinarians] that these horses are cared for," said wild horse advocate Elyse Gardner. "So why does it seem that it is the public observers that continually need to bring so many overlooked injuries, illness or orphaned foals to the attention of the BLM?" Again, alternative methods for managing Mustang populations on the range (so that they need not be removed and held in captivity) are available (savethemustanghorses.blogspot.…), but the BLM does not use them to any significant extent. This shows extreme shortsightedness on the BLM's account. They are wasting enormous amounts of money and causing animals to suffer when less expensive, more humane methods are available.

While many Mustangs do find good homes with kind people, many are sold to irresponsible owners who want to "break a wild bronco". Such owners don’t know how to handle wild horses, and are often injured. If the Mustangs are not adopted or sold, they are rarely ever returned to the wild. The BLM holds unadopted/unsold Mustangs in taxpayer-funded corrals until they either die of old age, they are euthanized, or the BLM gains the right to slaughter them. I repeat: alternative methods for managing Mustang populations on the range (so that they need not be removed and held in captivity) are available (savethemustanghorses.blogspot.…), but the BLM does not use them to any significant extent. The BLM would rather these animals suffered a slow death rather than use alternative methods to manage them.

Recent discoveries made by the National Academy of Sciences (www8.nationalacademies.org/onp… , www.nap.edu/catalog/13511/usin…) has found that by removing so many wild horses in roundups, the BLM is actually causing population growth instead of reducing it. By lowering the population to such an unnaturally small number, the herds become smaller than the carrying limit of the lands (the limit of how many animals can graze on the land before food begins to run out).With so much extra space, the species springs back as it would after a natural disaster or plague. NAS studies show that Mustang populations have been increasing by around 10% to 15% each year. For the BLM to continue their current operation, they will have to remove more and more Mustangs each year, therefore causing increasing population growth, and so on. The answer is clearly not to step up roundups yet again, but to find alternative means by which to control the population and to prevent Mustangs from becoming problems on privately-owned land.

Studies show that nearly 85% of the Mustangs are below genetic viability, meaning that they are inbreeding. By removing Mustangs and their genetic information from the wild, the BLM is forcing the Mustangs to inbreed even more.

Even with the rapid population growth (and therefore rising cost of roundups) if things continue in this manner, in about 50 years there will be no free-roaming Mustangs left. Wildlife biologists estimate that the Mustang will be extinct in the wild before the end of the century. Time is running out for the American Mustang. Will we let them become like the Quagga and the Tarpan, pale ghosts of memory? Your air won’t be any cleaner, your water won’t be any clearer, and your food won’t be any more abundant with Mustangs extinct.

In 1900, over a million Mustangs ran free (lipizzaner-kgirl.deviantart.co…, www.horse-breeds.net/mustangs.… , academickids.com/encyclopedia/… , www.masterliness.com/a/Mustang…).) Now, less than 25,000 of them are left, and that number is steadily falling. Turning our backs is not the answer. We cannot leave Mustangs to their own devices, but we also cannot ignore the damage that the BLM is doing.

Alternatives to BLM Helicopter Roundups

While the current Mustang population is far, far from being overpopulated, if all action of maintaining the herds were to cease entirely, eventually the wild horses would begin to spread out onto private land, destroy delicate habitats, and become a problem. Because their natural predators are hunted and displaced by humans, wild horses have no good way to limit their population.


It's important to remember that Mustangs and Native Americans thrived side-by-side for centuries. Mustangs were not overpopulated and were not starving. They were living the way Nature intended: being maintained by predators and their food supply. These current problems only arose when white men arrived, hunted the Mustangs' natural predators, pushed the horses (and people, I might add) out of the lands that they and their ancestors had lived in all their lives, and blanketed the ranges with their own cattle and sheep.


But the people living there today are not the people who made those first mistakes. People have their homes there. Their ranches are their livelihoods. It would not be right to ask them to leave on account of animals. Therefore, we must be responsible in caring for the Mustangs.


So we've established that because of our past actions we have put our country's wildlife in a very sticky situation. It may be possible to halt the BLM roundups for a few years, but what about in the future? Is there any way to maintain a healthy free-roaming Mustang population without causing them, the environment, or ranchers to suffer? Yes, there is!


A few alternatives are:




- Remotely-delivered fertility control – This is possibly the BEST SOLUTION, and could survive on its own if used correctly. Mustangs would not reproduce as quickly. Drugs such as Porcine Zona Pellucida (PZP) can be delivered remotely to mares in the form of a dart. The horses mustn't be rounded up or removed. PZP is also morally acceptable to all in that it simply prevents a mare from becoming pregnant instead of killing an unborn foal. Its effects also wear off over time, allowing a once-darted mare to become fertile again. This "reversibility" is very beneficial for the gene pool because all mares could potentially have foals, just not as many as they would naturally.
Since 1988, the wild horse population of Maryland’s Assateague Island has been successfully managed at 150 animals using the contraceptive vaccine PZP developed with the help of the Humane Society of the United States. Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick was assisting the BLM in implementing this non-intrusive contraceptive method across a growing number of herd management areas before his untimely death.

PZP  has proven very successful, is easy to administer (via remote darting of the mares) and does not disrupt the complex social structure of wild herds. A March 2004 USGS study found that $7.7 million could be saved annually through the use of contraceptive measures alone.

ECONOMICAL BONUS: Fertility drugs are far, far less expensive to create, obtain, and distribute than the costly roundup operation currently in progress. Also, it could help to generate jobs that many people can perform, seeing as the darter mustn't pay for years of flight training prior to being hired.



- Ending/restricting human hunting of predators or possibly releasing existing predators into the wild – Predators would help to naturally manage the Mustang population, therefore giving less need for roundups. Unfortunately,
Mustangs' natural predators are hunted by trophy hunters and by ranchers to protect their livestock, and thus they are less effective at controlling Mustang populations than they could be. Predators have also been displaced from their natural habitats, which is causing an overpopulation of multiple herbivore species, most notably deer.

Mustangs and native wildlife were thriving before humans came and hunted and displaced their predators. By killing herbivores' natural predators, humans have hurt the ecosystems, causing wildlife, including Mustangs, to move into places where they didn't live before and/or to overpopulate.

One con for this is that the predators are dangerous to domestic animals such as cattle, sheep, domestic horses, and dogs. However, there are other, non-lethal methods of protecting livestock from large predators. In Namibia, large dogs are trained to live with and protect sheep and cattle from cheetahs. Hunting laws about predators make it legal to shoot a lion that gets on your property. If for some reason you can't shoot the lion, you can get help from the government. If someone’s going to plant himself in lion country, he’s going to have to deal with it. Killing off the native predators is not the answer. 

ECONOMICAL BONUS: Hiring rangers to inspect wildlife would be much less costly than the expensive roundup operation currently underway.



- Giving helicopter pilots a set salary – Instead of paying pilots for each horse they bring in, by paying them a set salary, pilots would be less apt to drive Mustangs beyond their limits and BLM could save money.

ECONOMICAL BONUS: Instead of paying each pilot $350 for each horse, the general amount of money poured into roundups could very well be greatly reduced. All in all, the U.S. would save a bit of cash.


- Small-scale roundups on horseback – Mustangs would only be driven as fast as the saddle-horses can run. If the saddle horses can't take it, neither can the Mustangs. No, it's not a perfect solution, but coupled with others, it can be part of one (notice I listed many options). One con to this solution is that the land must be mapped out previously, but seeing as the BLM has access to helicopters that shouldn't be a problem. Another downside is that it poses a risk of injury to saddle horse and rider. Since the risk of injury is great enough, obviously horseback roundups could only be used as a supplemental option alongside a more powerful option, such as fertility control.



- Deducting from roundup employees’ salaries or firing employees if animals are injured during a gather – Mustangs would be treated with greater care and respect.

ECONOMICAL BONUS: Well, let's just hope there's no need for one, although it's pretty clear what the bonus would be...





- Bait-trapping – Mustangs are lured by treats, food, or water and enter the corral at their own will. If the horses are truly starving, there will be no problem getting them into the pen. A con with bait-trapping is that predators such as wildcats like to prey on the captured horses, but a proper watch will prevent wildcat attacks. Currently, the BLM sets only one employee to guard the corral. It would be wiser to post two or more guards. That way, one can watch while the other(s) are otherwise occupied so he/she can frighten off at or kill any predator that gets too close. 

ECONOMICAL BONUS: Bait-trapping would reduce the need for helicopter roundups, which are incredibly expensive. It would also help to generate jobs for individuals who are willing to learn the ropes (no pun intended), instead of pouring huge amounts of money into a single man who already had enough money to afford helicopter flight training.




- More uses of Judas-horses during roundups – Mustangs follow the domestic horse instinctively and are less traumatized. Fortunately, the BLM already uses Judas horses quite often.



- Placing fencing or some kind of deterrent around the perimeters of HMAs (Herd Management Areas) -- While this would take a lot of effort and work to start up and a significant amount of work to maintain, it will help prevent wild Mustangs from roaming out of their designated lands and therefore reduce the need for roundups in general. In the long run it would most likely pay itself off. While this may not be needed for very large HMAs, it would be extremely beneficial for "checkerboard" lands (lands that contain one square mile of HMA next to one square mile of cattle graze, back and forth, and so on). Instead of forcibly removing entire herds and thinning the gene pool, Mustangs could be managed within their HMAs through remotely-delivered fertility drugs and/or the other alternatives I have described. Of course, the area enclosed must have a sustainable water source and must not block off migration routes for other land animals.

ECONOMICAL BONUS: Creating and maintaining the fencing would also help to generate jobs that the average laymen could perform, and by providing jobs may help reduce the dependency on government welfare and therefore take a piece of the load off the economy.



- Managing cattle and sheep ranchers as well as Mustangs – by returning to the Wild Horse and Burro Act, all the animals on public rangelands would be safer and more comfortable.

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