During this winter’s legislative session, Wyoming lawmakers may ask Congress to allow the federal government and private landowners to kill wild horses.
The request, made in a drafted resolution, is the latest turn in a longstanding debate over managing public land, where wild horse populations have been a longstanding point of conflict. State lawmakers may bring the issue to Congress. The resolution would ask Congress to allow the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to kill horses. Private landowners would be allowed to use aircraft or motor vehicles to capture or kill horses, and the bill would also restore funding for meat inspections for horse meat.
The BLM contends that the abundance of wild horses is damaging rangeland, though agency research has shown variability in how feral equines impact the land. While the condition of rangeland is improving in some areas, wild horses are having “adverse” effects on other lands, BLM researchers say. Wild horses have few natural predators — though researchers have found mountain lions preying on horses elsewhere in the West — and 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. There are currently about 4,600 more wild horses than the maximum appropriate management level (AML) set by the BLM. The state currently has an estimated 7,100 wild horses across 14 management areas. AMLs 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 outlined.
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.
Correction: This story has been updated to clarify that the BLM’s internal research shows that wild horses’ impact on rangeland can vary. It has also been updated to clarify information about wild horses’ predators.
