Wild horse populations have been a longstanding point of conflict in Wyoming. State lawmakers may bring the issue to Congress. A drafted resolution would ask to allow the BLM to kill horses. Private landowners would be allowed to use aircraft or motor vehicles to capture or kill horses. The bill would also restore funding for meat inspections for horse meat.
The BLM has documented that the overpopulation of horses is damaging the range. Wild horses have no natural predators. Instead, the BLM is tasked with managing their population. The agency rounds up these horses, puts them in holding pens and sells them in public auctions.
However, a federal law bars the BLM from killing healthy, unadopted wild horses and burros. Wyoming lawmakers want to ask Congress to change the restriction through a proposed bill that will be considered at next year’s legislative session.
The federal restriction is through the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, which provides guidelines for how these animals should be managed.
“I think it's important that they [Congress] continue to hear from Wyoming and the other Western states who are so burdened. Nevada obviously so much, and Arizona in particular with burros down there,” said Jim Magagna, Executive Vice President of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association at a meeting about the proposed resolution.
The abundance of wild horses and burros is common across Western states. Nearly 4,600 extra wild horses roam Wyoming, according to the Bureau of Land Management. The state currently has an estimated 7,100 wild horses across 14 management areas. The agency sets population estimates, known as appropriate management levels (AMLs). These are delineated by a high and low population target. Wyoming’s high AML is about 2,500.
But for many, the horses are a staple of Western life. This sentiment was outlined in the 1971 act.
“Congress finds and declares that wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people; and that these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene,” the act said.
When a wild horse wanders onto someone’s ranch or near their home, people have to call and wait for the BLM to remove it. Magagna and lawmakers on the Select Federal Natural Resource Management Committee talked about how there is currently no specific time frame when the agency is required to address wild horses on private land.
During his discussion with lawmakers, Magagna spoke about a greater need to allow private landowners to address wild horses on their land.
“If wild horses or burros stray onto your private land and you notify the agency, they are to remove them,” Magagna said. “Well, with our checkerboard land patterns and that, that just doesn't work.”
The resolution would propose to allow private landowners to use helicopters and motor vehicles to capture or kill wild horses and burros.
The final element of the resolution would aim to change USDA funding restrictions for personnel costs to inspect horse meat. From 2005 through 2009, laws surrounding whether horse meat can be inspected for human consumption in the U.S. were a divisive issue considered by Congress. Ultimately, the debate concluded with an effective ban on domestic horse meat sales in the U.S. through federal funding restrictions on the inspectors necessary to sell this meat.
The drafted bill resolution requests to restore this federal funding.
Wyoming lawmakers said that in order to address population levels across the West, a united effort from several states with horse and burro populations above their AML may be necessary.
“The committee might want to consider…reaching out to some of these other states that also have an overabundance of wild horses and burros in their jurisdictions, because obviously trying to get things done on a national level, it's gonna help the more states we [have] that are asking for these changes,” the committee's co-chair Bob Ide said.
If approved, the request to Congress would be the first move in a push to significantly change management for wild horses and burros. The drafted resolution will be considered during next year’s legislative session.
