This “zeroing out” of wild horses flies in the face of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burro Act and the BLM's own regional office 2008 goal to “Maintain and manage health, self-sustaining wild horse herds inside herd management areas within appropriate management levels to ensure a thriving and natural ecological balance.” Since 1971, when the Wild Horse and Burro Act took effect, wild horses have been zeroed out from 111 herd areas representing over 19 million acres of public land.
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IDA helping horses
Last November at a meeting of the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, IDA publicly lambasted the BLM for its decades-long pattern of bungling wild horse management, which has lead to the current crisis where nearly half of America’s wild horses, approximately 30,000, have been rounded up from their native range and put into holding areas with fates unknown. The BLM was (and may still be) considering killing these majestic wild horses - or worse - lifting restrictions on sales and thus opening the door for slaughter buyers, as a solution to the rising cost of maintaining them in a sluggish adoption market. IDA clearly stated - and maintains - that this move by our government would be an unacceptable breach of the public trust and a travesty heard round the world.
House of Representatives votes to protect wild horses
IDA is also supporting passage of the Restoring Our American Mustangs Act (ROAM), which would update existing laws that protect wild horses encouraging the reopening of certain public lands to the mustangs, thus potentially decreasing the number in captivity. It also restores a crucial protection to keep wild horses from going to slaughter, which was stripped away several years ago, and would facilitate the creation of sanctuaries to house the 33,000 wild horses currently languishing in government holding facilities.
This summer, the ROAM Act was passed by the House of Representatives on a 239-185 vote. The Senate version (S 1579) was introduced by Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) and is currently in the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
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