This blogpost is based on information found in Pacific Standard Magazine for Nov/Dec. 2015. There are 60,000 wild mustangs in the ten western United States; more than a thousand of them are penned up in BLM corrals near Las Vegas. Nationwide, 45,000 mustangs languish in BLM holding corrals. Those horses are in competition with 18,000 ranchers whose cattle graze on ±750,000 so-called animal units contained on 155 million acres of land, and no one knows how many domestic animals use the land in aggregate because the BLM considers counts to be futile exercises. The ranchers consider the wild horses as introduced pests comparable to feral pigs, and wild burros—useless and costly. They cannot even be eaten; legal slaughter of horses for human consumption has been banned under U.S. law for the better part of a decade. Animal enthusiasts, particularly horse lovers—including a considerable number of westerners—believe that it is emblematic of American freedom that mustangs should be able to run wild and free, much like the cowboys of the old west. Freedom for the ranchers is the right to have, to feed, and to protect their animals—the cows and sheep—from the predation of deer, elk, and now wild horses. The world would be better off without any of them, some farmers and ranchers feel.
In the middle is the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and both sides feel free to appeal to the government to persuade for or against the horses. The issue is a powerful one between conservationists and livestock producers. It is estimated that there were over 2,000,000 wild horses in 1900, and the numbers were reduced to around 17,000 total in 1971 when the government passed laws to keep the wild horses from extinction. The BLM controls ranchers’ use of government owned land by granting allotments of land for defined numbers of domestic animals and taking into account environmental factors such as the numbers of wild animals, the plentitude or scarcity of feed in the grazing area, and climatic factors such as drought or heavy snows which are not entirely predictable. The allotments are a bargain from a business point of view, but the ranchers resent that they are not able to get more land to raise more cattle and sheep because the useless horses have to be factored in.
In Fiscal Year 2014, the BLM was allocated $79.9 million for its rangeland management program. Of that figure, the agency spent $34.3 million (43 percent) on livestock grazing administration. The other funds covered such activities as weed management, rangeland monitoring (not related to grazing administration), planning, water development, vegetation restoration, and habitat improvement. In 2014, the BLM collected $12.1 million in grazing fees. The receipts from these annual fees, in accordance with legislative requirements, are shared with state and local governments.
To accommodate the horses, ranchers have to build corrals, thus raising the costs of production while they are not able to pass on all of those additional costs to consumers. Environmentalists and conservationists do not accept the complaints and assertions of the ranchers citing the fact that horses move about as much as do elk and do no more damage than they do. On the contrary, the horse lovers assert, cattle, and especially sheep, cause almost irreparable damage to the land and the ecosystem. Why not just raise cows in feed yards and be done with the nostalgia of riding the range in the old west? The conservationists point out that the grazing land does not belong to the ranchers; they are given the privilege of grazing their stock on land that belongs to all of the people of the country.
What should be done? This question is asked by citizen of the West. I do not know the answer; neither does the BLM. Any decision they make will infuriate large numbers of people, and politicians and bureaucrats are allergic to giving offense. So, the horses stay in limbo; the ranchers and the conservations gnash their teeth; and the federal government dithers as it always does when faced with such questions. Everyone is urged to be patient. At this point in time, that is about all that anyone can do.