“As of March 1, 2016, there were 67,000 horses and burros on public lands and 45,000 in government holding pens. Computer models show that the current population, including foals born in 2016, is approximately 75,000 wild horses and burros. The controversial nationwide Appropriate Management Level (AML), defined as “the number of horses to have thriving ecological balance with the vegetation, wildlife, and livestock usage,” is 27,000...
...The horses have accumulated in holding across the country to the 45,000 we have today. The vast majority of the BLM’s budget goes to feeding horses in holding pens, which prohibits limits the agency’s ability to gather other horses off the range...
...As our society changes and regulations tighten, annual adoptions have fallen from a high of 8,000 per year to about 2,500 per year currently. “
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/environment/wild-horses-part-one/
Harder to adopt
I understand reality bites but even this forums most deliciously depraved scolds would likely not get aroused by shooting wild Horses say the same way they would hanging pot smokers
Shooting Horses is not pleasant
The real problem is that the animals are so destructive to the land they live on. Hard hooves trample the very delicate desert ground. They aren’t native. They are invasive, like the wild pigs in Texas or the guagga mussels in the lakes. They are destructive beyond belief.
The land they are occupying doesn’t recover from the damage, we don’t get much rain here. A four wheeler leaves marks that last for years, those hard hooves slamming down on the delicate residue that holds the soil down is as bad a running a harrow over it.
Folks have romanticized horses.
A horse on the range is worse than a cat in the house. They can’t give these things away, they can’t sell them, they spend millions every year holding them in “Wild Horse facilities” like this one: https://www.blm.gov/adoptahorse/
They hold them for years until they die, penned up. Meanwhile, the rangelands get torn to pieces by the multitude of the ones left to run amuck on the desert.
Anybody wants to argue the facts, come on out to Sevier, Iron, Tooele, or Millard County Utah and look for yourself. Flaming me without looking just proves you don’t give a damn about facts....
If you folks love these things so much, let’s turn them loose on the public lands in your state. Oh, and if they stray onto private land, and tear the crap out of your crops, that’s too bad, you can’t do anything about it....Harm one and you go to jail. Somebody killed one a few years back, I wish they would hunt down child molesters with such zeal...and give them the same punishment...
We need to get misplaced emotions out of the wild horse management issue.