The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) proposed Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) roundup and removal schedule continues its same old “manage to extinction” policies.
Their plan calls for rounding up of over 11,000 wild horses and burros, and permanently removing over 10,000 from living free on taxpayer public lands allocated to them by law.
These iconic equines will be shoved into already overburdened federal holding facilities where traumatized, sick, injured and dying horses eke out their lives.
Current estimates indicate there are over 62,000 wild horses and burros in federal holding corrals. The BLM estimates that there are just over 73,500 horses and burros left on public lands in the West, but this is only an approximation, not hard factual data.
What will be the result? The BLM’s FY25 proposed roundup schedule would easily result in even more wild horses and burros crammed into federal holding facilities than remain free in the wild where they should be managed on the range.
Adding insult to injury, the BLM fully intends to continue the use of helicopters for the majority of the roundups. It is a well known fact that helicopter use results in trauma, severe injuries, and often the deaths of horses and burros. The deaths are brushed off as inconsequential to the overall numbers which manage to survive the brutality.
Fortunately, some wild horse advocacy organizations and other individuals have made some progress with public-private partnerships to prove that humane alternatives exist. The BLM should invest far more of its Wild Horse and Burro Program annual budget into solutions which stop gutting the horses and start gutting the special interests determined to eliminate the herds from our taxpayer funded public lands and bypass the fact of lands being designated by law for wild horse and burro use.