Wild horse roundup opponents ignore reality

t should come as no surprise that wild horse advocates have assembled more than 3,000 letters opposing the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's plans to round up nearly 2,000 wild horses in southwest Wyoming this fall. Many people see wild horses as a romantic symbol of the West. So the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign had no trouble rallying people around the country and internationally to oppose the BLM's helicopter roundup plans. What many of those people don't understand is that while the BLM has a responsibility to manage wild horses, it also has an obligation to manage federal land where those horses live for multiple uses -- livestock grazing, recreation, wildlife and mineral development, to name just a few. If wild horse herds are allowed to run wild -- remember, they have no natural predators and multiply rapidly -- there's no possibility for balance. And "management" of wild horses means just what its says in the dictionary: "to direct or control the use of," or "to exert control over." Even if you accept the argument of some wild horse advocates that the animals should be considered a native species, modern wildlife management principles would dictate that the horse population should be controlled. Because we don't allow wild horse hunting seasons, the only real option is to remove excess animals from the range...more