The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has decided to go forward with a controversial roundup of wild horses off of the Wyoming range. The intention, according to spokesmen at the BLM is to reduce a herd of 1000 mustangs down to 400, which is what it says the range can support. It will do this by rounding up 90% of the horses within the range, geld all the stallions, and re-release 177 of them back onto the range. The rest will be either adopted out or placed in government run holding facilities.
Mustangs cause a very visceral reaction across the political spectrum in the west. Ranchers do not want the competition for forage, environmentalists point out that horses have no more business on American rangeland than do cattle or sheep, and equine lovers see them as symbols of the American West in need of protection.
They may be all of these and more, but once they are rounded up, they are horses; a commodity that is sadly oversupplied.
The horse industry has been hammered by the economic down turn. Rescue organizations are overflowing with unwanted horses, and more and more American horses are crossing the borders in trucks and ending their lives at slaughter houses. The drought in Texas has local horse rescue organizatons strapped for cash, and out of room. Hay is only getting more expensive, topping $17.95 a bale here in Tucson.
Texas ranchers, forced to sell their herds of cattle off drying range are dumping their ranch horses onto a flooded market. And even with healthy sound saddle horses, there are no buyers.
Horse breeders, good and bad, cannot merely stop feeding their families and horses and wait out the slump, they are forced by economic considerations to either abandon the industry, and dump their own herds at auction, or try to survive by continuing to breed their own horses. Either option adds even more horses into a market that can handle no more animals.
With good horses going to killers at auctions what chance will 600 or more small, badly built, wild horses have? People can no longer afford to have thousand pound lawn ornaments. And while wild horses may hold a special place in America's heart, the animal itself usually requires expensive and intensive training by professionals to make it worth more than 60 cents a pound.
The government has several mustang holding facilities in states where the local prison population saddle breaks the horses before placing them up for adoption. And there may be a niche for some of these horses.
The government, caught between ranchers and horsemen is in a no win situation, but sadly, it is the horses that American's want to see running the range, but are largely worthless once removed from it, that must pay the price.
The BLM has a holding facility in Kingman Arizona, adoptions are held there periodically, mostly the facility houses wild burros removed from public land in Arizona and Nevada. The BLM, in an effort to adopt out more mature horses is offering an incentive program which will pay $500 for the adopted horses after they have been owned one year. They have periodic online auctions.
Tucson has two large horse rescue organizations: Heart of Tucson and Equine Voices.
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