Blame it all on WILD HORSE ANNIE. She fought to save the mustangs and got laws passed against wild horse roundups.
Now the wild horse population has exploded and they have overgrazed their lands so bad the government now operates wild horse roundups, then tries to give them away to anyone who wants them.
Many of them still end up in dog food.
Yeah, when they auction off the horses they round up, the only ones worth buying are the young ones or the pregnant mares. The adults definitely are wild and are quite dangerous to attempt to work with. Since they haven’t been around humans, they’d just as soon kill a man if they can’t run away. I think most end up at rendering plants. Some people get all emotional about the romantic image of feral livestock, and because of those laws passed, frequently a rancher who has paid for an allotment for his cattle can’t do anything about the mustangs eating all the feed. Many years ago I seriously considered buying some of these animals through the BLM adoption program. They had some fairly strict requirements regarding the conditions needed for their new home. The reason I passed on the idea was because these animals are very difficult to tame, but not only that, they are all inbred with not so desireable traits. Many people don’t relize all the problems created by these feral animals, primarily the issues of overgrazing, both competing for food with native species and in other areas, livestock too. Then there’s the original issue of the article: destroying the riparian areas through overgrazing. There’s just not enough food for some of these herds.