MYTH: Wild horses and burros don't really need legal protection. The law was passed in response to the lobbying of a few "horse lovers" and school children.

False. Prior to the passage of the wild horse law, free lance cowboys ("mustangers") were selling wild horses, which are government property, without a license to dog food manufacturers. Using trucks and helicopters to round up the animals, the cowboys often left injured horses to die slowly in the desert. This outraged Velma Johnston, a resident of Reno, Nevada, whose actions on the horses' behalf gave her the nickname "Wild Horse Annie." As a result of the national publicity generated by Mrs. Johnston and others, a law was passed in 1959 to prohibit the use of aircraft or motor vehicles to hunt certain wild horses and burros on federally owned land. This law also made it illegal to "pollute any watering hole on any of the public land or ranges for the purpose of trapping, killing, wounding, or maiming any of such animals."

However, the 1959 law did not prevent commercial interests from rounding up horses and burros and selling them for profit. Further protection for wild horses and burros was provided by the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the result of overwhelming nationwide public support. Both chambers of Congress passed the Act unanimously -- not one Senator or Representative voted against it. Congress chose to protect wild horses and burros as a heritage species.

MYTH: There is an overpopulation of wild horses on public lands.

False. There is no overpopulation of wild horses and burros. The condition of the land, not the number of animals, determines whether or not a wild horse overpopulation exists in a particular area. The wild horse law says that in a given area, a certain amount of vegetation may be eaten as forage. Only when that amount is exceeded are there too many animals.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has changed the definition of overpopulation as given in the wild horse law. The BLM has declared that overpopulation is any amount above its desired management number of 21,000 animals. The BLM's 1997 report to Congress claimed an estimated 43,000 wild horses and burros on rangelands, a figure based on maximum reproductive rates to ensure funding from Congress to continue to remove horses and burros from public lands. The Animal Protection Institute and others contend that less than 20,000 animals actually remain on the land.