May 6, 2001

Government wants nearly half the West’s wild horses removed by 2005

Scott Sonner
Associated Press

PALOMINO VALLEY, NV— One of the last vestiges of the American West, the wild mustang is flourishing — so much that federal land managers say they’re going to have to rein it in.

Running free across parts of 10 Western states, the estimated 48,000 wild horses and burros are far too many for the range to sustain, the Bureau of Land Management has concluded.

The agency wants nearly half of the 25,000 in Nevada removed and placed in adoption programs in coming years and they’re counting on the Bush administration to provide the money for more roundups.

Advocates for the wild horses say it’s a land grab at the expense of the herds they say have been roaming the West for centuries, some dating to the days of the Spanish conquistadors.

Horse activists who’ve been fighting government roundups in court say there’s plenty of open range to support wild mustangs and that the BLM is buckling to pressure from cattle and sheep ranchers who want to protect forage for their livestock.

They accuse the BLM of inflating horse population counts and argue any new federal spending should be used for a national census of the wild equines.

“There is a lot of land out there. It could support more horses than they are saying,” said Bobbi Royle, president of Wild Horse Spirit, a watchdog group for the estimated 1,000 horses that roam the Virginia Range east of Reno and Carson City.