By perpetuating the myth of an overpopulation of wild horses and burros on public lands, the Bureau of Land Management has succeeded in leasing more than 80% of the habitat they have removed these animals from to private and corporate interests. This amounts to a land grab of around 22 million acres over the last 50 years, since the BLM were first tasked with protecting and managing the wild horses and burros of North America through the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971. The systematic removal of these animals has taken place at significant taxpayer expense and has resulted in the commercial plundering of the ecosystems they were previously inhabiting. The extractive, industrial practices that are now polluting and destroying those ecosystems include livestock grazing, oil and natural gas drilling, big game hunting, gold and copper mining, and lithium mining. 

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The fact is that wild equines inhabit just 12 percent of Federal rangelands, and are vastly outnumbered by up to 50:1 in some areas by livestock, a ratio that is increasing every year as these animals are removed by the tens of thousands. With the BLM effectively owned and operated by the livestock industry, the number of wild equines is now less than 80,000 on the 245 million acres of land managed by the BLM, while the number of domestic cattle and other livestock grazing these same lands is approximately two million. The ecological costs from the intensive grazing of commercial livestock in industrial numbers are devastating, and yet the BLM is intent on blaming the wild horses and burros for this environmental degradation. They plan to reduce the population of wild horses and burros to just 27,000 on the 27 million acres they were tasked with managing these animals on in 1971. This is the same number they were reduced to in the 1950s when they were considered"fast disappearing", and calls for their protection had become widespread.

 

Livestock grazing affects more acres than any other activity on US public lands, and has degraded and destroyed over 700 million acres of Western grasslands. Unlike wild horses and burros who travel up to 20 or 30 miles a day and do not pollute their natural water sources, cattle are known to congregate at and pollute water sources. In fact, domestic livestock are the greatest non-point source polluter of water in the West, the single greatest cause of the loss of biodiversity, and the greatest threat to endangered and threatened species. Not only do they consume huge amounts of native grasses, but they trample the soil and microbiotic crusts, resulting in increased erosion and soil compaction, massively increased runoff, flooding, and the decline of soil nutrients. Livestock also promote the spread of undesirable plants, and destroy streamside vegetation. Because these impacts are so widespread, livestock grazing has been called the most pervasive and damaging activity on US public lands.

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Another myth propagated by the BLM to justify the removal of wild horses and burros is that they contribute towards drought on public lands. However, the extractive practices that have replaced them require far greater quantities of water than the wild herds could ever consume, given their current numbers on the range. For example, according to the BLM's own cattle vs. horse statistic of 30:1 on the range, cows use between 480-720 gallons of water per day on cold days, and 960-1,440 gallons of water (per day) on warm days, compared to a meagre 8-14 gallons (per day) on any day for wild equines. Fracking just one well requires an average of 15 million gallons of water, which is injected at high pressure, along with chemicals and sand, which opens up cracks in the shale to release oil and gas. As for lithium mining, the extraction of merely one ton of lithium uses approximately 1/2 million liters of water. In addition, both of these highly polluting industrial practices lead to significant contamination of the surrounding water, soil, and air.

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Wild equines have been known to increase water availability at various times of the year and within a range of ecosystems: in wintertime, wild horses will break the ice with their hooves to drink, allowing other species access to that same water; and in drought conditions, wild burros dig for water to create small catchments, creating intermittent riparian habitat for desert species. New research shows that this equid ingenuity has many far reaching benefits for the ecosystem. In one study, scientists found that a total of 57 native species came to these equine-engineered wells to drink, including: raptors, such as red-tailed hawks and Cooper’s hawks; smaller birds such as yellow warblers, hooded orioles, and scrub jays; and large mammals such as mule deer, bighorn sheep, and badgers; and even Colorado River toads.  

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While corporate and private industries devastate the land, and are largely exempt from many of the regular Federal restrictions, science has shown that wild horses and burros contribute toward restoring and maintaining ecological balance in many ways through their natural lifestyle habits. These include high-intensity grazing in short bouts (mimicked in a holistic land management practice known as "mob grazing"); fertilizing, trampling and wallowing; and dispersing intact native seeds through their single-stomach digestive systems. In contrast to the propaganda that wild horses are destructive to ecosystems and threaten native species such as sage grouse habitat, their actions support many other native species of animals and plant life to survive and thrive. There is much evidence to suggest that, if wild horses and burros were protected as a native wildlife species and supported to live in their ancestral lands, where they naturally thrive, they would only benefit those ecosystems.

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Equids are indigenous to the Americas. They dominated the grasslands and forests here for millions of years with other large-bodied herbivores such as bison and elk, helping to cultivate and maintain the health of the various ecologies they populated. Instead of protecting wild horses and burros, the BLM are scapegoating them as part of a land grab that is leading to the destruction of US public lands. In this way, these animals could be seem as a kind of"indicator species", or the modern equivalent of the canary in the coal mine, signaling the environmental degradation that is sure to follow their removal. With these issues of land use and animal welfare being deeply interwoven, our hope is that environmental groups, wild horse and burro advocates, and Native peoples will come together to protect these animals by supporting them to live freely in their native habitats, and in so doing, to protect the land.