For decades, the fight over wild horses in Nevada land has divided ranchers, animal advocates, conservationists, the Bureau of Land Management and others.
Current estimates suggest more than 70,000 wild horses and burros roam the American West, about half of them in Nevada. That’s more than three times the number land managers say can safely co-exist with other animals on the open range.
To move larger numbers of animals off the range, BLM began offering cash incentives to increase adoption rates in 2019. Now, the federal government pays adopters $1,000 for each animal they take, up to four times a year. The agency says the program aims to reduce the amount of money it spends caring for wild horses while addressing overpopulation concerns.
Advocates like Amelia Perrin from the American Wild Horse Conservation argue that the program rewards adopters and incentivizes them to sell the animals to slaughterhouses.
“We want them to get cash out of the equation,” she told KNPR’s State of Nevada. “It's as simple as that. We want to incentivize responsible adoptions by offering a veterinary voucher to offset the initial one-year care of these horses.”
Perrin says BLM could avoid this issue by focusing on using fertility control measures similar to Nevada’s management of wild horses in the Virginia Range east of Reno.
“They're using a one-size-fits-all approach,” she said. There's something called fertility control, which is administered in the field by remote darting. It keeps wild horses wild, eliminates the use of these scary helicopters, and is more cost-effective to the taxpayers.”
At the same time, a free-market environmental group called the Property and Environment Research Center recently released a report hailing the program as a success. It cites BLM statistics showing a decrease of 10,000 wild horses nationwide after one year.
A bill currently before Congress would cut the time it takes to transfer the ownership of a horse to the adopter from one year to six months. It would also increase cash incentives from $1,000 a year to $3,000 and create a “frequent adopter” program. Lastly, the bill would make it a felony to sell wild horses for slaughter.
Horse advocates argue the bill would exacerbate the problem, while BLM officials question those claims.
“Nobody's going to make money getting $1,000 after they've had the horse for a year, then sending it to slaughter,” said Jenny Lesieutre, public information officer for the BLM’s Nevada Wild Horse and Burro Program “They're not going to make their money back after feeding them and doing everything that they've got to do, including vaccinations.”
BLM officials also stress that many of the horses in the agency’s care suffer from various ailments. According to John Neill, acting facility operations manager for BLM’s Nevada Wild Horse and Burro Program, this can lead to a mortality rate of about 5 percent.
“A lot of times, they don't come in in the best of conditions,” he said. “So, it is our responsibility and our contractor's responsibility to provide all the necessary good-quality feed and medicines for these animals in order to get them into that good body condition.”
That care doesn’t come cheap.
In 2022, the Bureau of Land Management spent more than $137 million caring for wild horses across the country.
However, Lesieutre said federal law dictates that the agency manage wild horses on federal land.
“I encourage everybody to read the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act,” she said, “because it clearly states that the Secretary must remove excess horses once it's been determined that the range lands and water can't support them for long-term viability. You know, we're talking about an ecological issue here.”
Guests: Amelia Perrin, communications manager, American Wild Horse Conservation; Jenny Lesieutre, public affairs specialist, BLM Nevada Wild Horse and Burro Program; John Neill, acting facility operations manager, BLM Nevada Wild Horse and Burro Program
