Wild Horses Need Humane Horse Handling
the access and overpopulation problems explained
Reliably and humanely accessing free-living wild and feral horse horses is the biggest barrier to effective population control for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other organizations charged with managing free-roaming horses in the United States and other countries. Wild horse over-population has become a serious environmental issue throughout the United States and is often associated with ecosystem degradation negatively affecting wild and threatened plant and animal species.
Readily available BLM program data provides a good example illustrating the extent of the wild horse population crisis that is affecting other organizations and lands as well. As of March 2019, there are an estimated 88,090 adult wild horses and burros under BLM stewardship living on public lands and another 46,952, in off-range holding facilities. The on-range population doubles every 4 years, and numbers have far exceeded the Maximum AML (Appropriate Management Level) on-range of 26,690 wild horses and burros.
Rising program costs, unsuccessful on-range population control, growing numbers of horses in holding facilities, low public demand for adoptable animals, ongoing negative impact of overpopulation on multi-use rangeland sustainability, and declines in free-roaming wild horse herd health in certain management areas have brought the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program to its current level of crisis. Removal and relocation of free-roaming horses has proven unsustainable because the BLM WHB Program is stuck using most of its budget on the feeding and management of captive horses in holding facilities, leaving little left over for the management of on-range horses. Historically, life time off-range care has cost an average of $50,000 per horse. This means that just the existing horses in holding facilities will cost taxpayers in excess of $2.3 billion to maintain – meanwhile the on-range population continues to grow and many thousands more horses are to be removed each year.
The current BLM standard method for on-range population control is removal of animals from the range using helicopter gathers and relocation of animals to holding facilities. The number of animals gathered in 2018 was 11,472, an approximately three-fold increase in number of animals gathered in 2017. Helicopter gathers are the status quo for rounding up horses. During a helicopter gather, horses, often in a state of panic, run from a pursuing helicopter and can be driven over long distances at speed. It is often extremely challenging to ensure that family and social groups stay together, and the resulting social disruption during the chase represents a significant threat to welfare. A helicopter gather is a traumatic, potentially life threatening, experience for a horse. The resulting stress and distress jeopardize each individual horse's short-term health and safety as well as create lasting negative associations with helicopters and other stimuli, including the presence of human handlers, related to the gather process. When horses run away from the helicopter, fear and associated escape/avoidance behaviorsbecome conditioned responses making each subsequent gather of that individual more difficult, more traumatizing and more likely to result in fearful and dangerous behavior or future gather failure.
Forms of injectable contraception are available for on-range use, but only 702 horses were treated with injectable contraception in 2018. Current options must be administered to horses multiple times throughouttheir lives and the same individual animal must be repeatedly gathered, treated, released and then gathered again. Alternatively, the horse can be repeatedly darted from a distance. Many herds live remotely and many run away from humans and vehicles, making darting itself difficult. Some free-living horse herds have learned to avoid the approach of dart shooters after just 4-5 years of repeated darting. The long-termnegative effects from repeated, painful, darting on the approachability of animals may pose a significant barrier to future success of population control methods focusing exclusively on long range darting. As horses are more likely to produce offspring if they avoid darting, inadvertent selection for horses that are difficult to manage by remote darting may occur. Access to horses remains the biggest hurdle for any management program success.
Lastly, ideally wild horses gathered from the range would be adopted by individuals who would then be responsible for the care, training and associated costs. Currently BLM adoption rates are insufficient to account for the increases in horses gathered on range. In 2018, 4,609 animals were placed into private ownership, and in the beginning of 2019 an adoption incentive program was started that pays out $1,000 to adopters over the first year in private care to help boost adoption numbers. As of October 2019, over 7,000 had been placed into private care. While 2018 and 2019 did see a rise, adoptions would need to increase significantly more to accommodate placement for all horses removed from the range – especially as removals will have to increase over the next several years. A potential reason for the difficulty faced in placing horses in private care is the need to overcome the avoidance and fear of handlers off-range horses can develop as a result of the fear-based handling techniques commonly used during gathering, handling and transport events.
In response to the issues described above with the current status quo for wild horse management, Sarah Low DVM, Jaime Miller CVT and Sue McDonnell PhD created Humane Horse Handling, a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Our mission is to improve the care and handling of wild and domestic horses through research, education, and application of equine behavior and welfare science. Our goal is to demonstrate that low-stress, science informed handling and gathering of wild horses is a key factor for sustainable management and increased adoptions. Please contact us at info@humanehorsehandling.orgfor more information.