I do not buy that there are too many. Challenge is cattle ranchers want them gone so they can graze cattle.
“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/
Where there is an excess of wild horses there are no cattle grazing because the horses eat the feed down to nothing and destroy the graze for years. Then the horses starve to death.
These horses are not indigenous animals. If they were a fish they would poison the lake to get them out of it.
The last big BLM gather I witnessed more than 10% of the horses died from the stress of the gather because they were so starved they could not handle it. They had so overfed the range they could not run two miles.
The wolves are coming to the wild horse country, maybe they are the answer. I’m sure the horse worshipers would much rather have the wolves run them down, kill them slowly and begin eating them before they are even dead.
Like it or not the wolves will one day feed on these horses and the larger the numbers the more wolf feed they will become. The more wolves that are eating well, the more little wolves there will be and the more horses they will kill and eat.
But of course that is better and more humane than thumping them in the head and dispatching them quickly and without all that pain.
The kicker to this is that the wolves are indigenous animals and protected in most states so they will not kill the wolves to protect the horses.