U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

FACT #3:  This assertion is false. The BLM’s short-term holding corrals provide ample space to horses, along with clean feed and water, while long-term holding pastures – large ranches located mainly in Kansas and Oklahoma – permit the horses to roam freely on approximately 289,000 acres of grassland.

FACT #4:  This claim is false.  No specific amount of acreage was “set aside” for the exclusive or principal use by wild horses and burros under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.  The Act directed the BLM to determine the areas where horses and burros were found roaming and to manage them "in a manner that is designed to achieve and maintain a thriving natural ecological balance on the public lands."  The law also stipulated in Section 1339 that "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the [Interior] Secretary to relocate wild free-roaming horses or burros to areas of the public lands where they do not presently exist." Of the 22.2 million acres no longer managed for wild horse and burro use:

• 6.7 million acres were never under BLM management. Of the 15.5 million other acres of land under BLM management: 
• 48.6 percent (7,522,100 acres) were intermingled ("checkerboard") land ownerships or areas where water was not owned or controlled by the BLM, which made management infeasible; 
• 13.5 percent (2,091,709 acres) were lands transferred out of the BLM's ownership to other agencies, both Federal and state through legislation or exchange;
• 10.6 percent (1,645,758 acres) were lands where there were substantial conflicts with other resource values (such as the need to protect habitat for desert tortoise); 
• 9.7 percent (1,512,179 acres) were lands removed from wild horse and burro use through court decisions; urban expansion; highway fencing (causing habitat fragmentation); and land withdrawals;  
• 9.6 percent (1,485,068 acres) were lands where no BLM animals were present at the time of the passage of the 1971 Act or places where all animals were claimed as private property.  These lands in future land-use plans will be subtracted from the BLM totals as they should never have been designated as lands where herds were found roaming; and
• 8.0 percent (1,240,894 acres) were lands where a critical habitat component (such as winter range) was missing, making the land unsuitable for wild horse and burro use, or areas that had too few animals to allow for effective management.

(The percentages above were current as of July 25, 2011.)

FACT #5: This charge is patently false.  The 2016 on-range population of wild horses and burros (approximately 67,000) is two-and-a-half times greater than the number found roaming in 1971 (about 25,300).  The BLM is seeking to achieve the Appropriate Management Level of 26,715 wild horses and burros on Western public rangelands, or about 40,000 fewer than the current West-wide on-range population. The BLM monitors the genetic diversity of each herd through collection of hair samples during gather operations.  Under an assistance agreement, Dr. Gus Cothran of Texas A&M University analyzes the samples and reports to the BLM his recommendations for specific herds.

FACT #7:  This assertion is false.  Section 1333 of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act mandates that once the Interior Secretary "determines...on the basis of all information currently available to him, that an overpopulation exists on a given area of the public lands and that action is necessary to remove excess animals, he shall immediately remove excess animals from the range so as to achieve appropriate management levels."  Section 1338 of the law authorizes the BLM’s use of helicopters and motorized vehicles in its management of wild horses and burros.

FACT #8:  This claim is false.  The BLM's helicopter-assisted gathers are conducted humanely, as affirmed by three recent independent reports (see below), and have proven to be more humane, effective, and efficient than other types of gather methods when large numbers of animals need to be removed over wide areas or rugged terrain.  Helicopters start the horses moving in the right direction and then back off sometimes one-quarter to one-half mile from the animals to let them travel at their own pace; horses are moved at a more rapid pace when they need to be turned or as they reach the entrance to the capture site.  Helicopter pilots are better able to keep mares and foals together than horseback riders; pilots can also more effectively move the animals around such barriers as deep ravines, fences, or roads.

In Fiscal Year 2014, out of 1,863 wild horses and burros removed, a total of 18 animals, or approximately one percent (0.97 percent), died or were euthanized during gather operations; of those 18, nine animals, or about one-half of one percent (0.48 percent) of the removed animals, died or were euthanized because of acute injuries.  Acute injury deaths include all animals that died or were euthanized because of acute injuries, such as spinal cord or head injuries, fractured limbs, or other severe injuries that occurred during gathers.  Total deaths include all animals that died or were euthanized for any reason during gathers, including acute or sudden injuries or illnesses, as well as chronic or pre-existing conditions that required euthanasia (such as limb deformities, lameness, and poor body condition).

Two reports issued in the fall of 2010 (one by four independent, credentialed equine professionals and one by the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General), plus another report released in 2011 by the American Association of Equine (Veterinary) Practitioners, found -- without any ideological or political bias -- that the BLM’s gathers of wild horses are conducted in a humane manner.  The Inspector General determined that the BLM’s gathers are "justified" and reported that the agency "is doing its best to perform a very difficult job."

FACT #10:  This assertion is false. In its June 2013 report ("Using Science to Improve the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program: A Way Forward"), the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concluded that the BLM's "direct count" aerial survey method has resulted in population undercounts of 20 percent to 30 percent because it does not account for undetected animals.  To more accurately estimate population size, the BLM applied the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) population survey methods in 2014, consisting of the use of "simultaneous double-count" and "photographic mark-resight" methods commonly used to survey wildlife populations.  The BLM will continue to survey one-third of all 177 Herd Management Areas annually, on a rolling basis, using the USGS methods, as recommended by NAS.

FACT #11:  This claim is completely false.  The GAO made no such finding.  The full report can be accessed here: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0977.pdf
 

FACT #12:  This claim is false.  The disappearance of the horse from the Western Hemisphere for 10,000 years supports the position that today's American wild horses should not be considered "native."  American wild horses are descended from domestic horses, some of which were brought over by European explorers in the late 15th and 16th centuries, plus others that were released or escaped captivity in modern times.  Over this 500-year period, these horses (and burros) have adapted successfully to the Western range.  Regardless of the debate over whether these animals are native or non-native, the BLM manages horses and burros on public lands according to the provisions of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, which describes the animals as "wild" rather than feral.

FACT #13:  This figure has no scientific basis.  In a book titled The Mustangs (1952) by J. Frank Dobie, the historian noted that no scientific estimate of wild horse numbers was made in the 19th century or early 20th century.  He went on to write: "All guessed numbers are mournful to history.  My own guess is that at no time were there more than a million mustangs in Texas and no more than a million others scattered over the remainder of the West." (Emphasis added.) Mr. Dobie's admitted "guess" of no more than two million mustangs has over the years been transformed into an asserted or assumed "fact" that two million mustangs actually roamed America in the late 1800s/early 1900s.  When Congress assigned the BLM (and the U.S. Forest Service) to manage wild horses and burros in 1971 -- through passage of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act -- the BLM's population survey methods indicated a population of 17,300 wild horses and 8,045 burros (=25,345 total), as compared to the 2016 estimated population of 55,311 horses and 11,716 burros (=67,027 total).

FACT #14:  The law's language stating that public ranges where wild horses and burros were found roaming in 1971 may be managed "principally but not necessarily exclusively" for the welfare of these animals refers to the Interior Secretary's power to "designate and maintain specific ranges on public lands as sanctuaries for their protection and preservation" -- which are, thus far, the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range (in Montana and Wyoming), the Nevada Wild Horse Range (located within the northcentral portion of Nellis Air Force Range), the Little Book Cliffs Wild Horse Range (in Colorado), and the Marietta Wild Burro Range (in Nevada).  The "principally but not necessarily exclusively" language applies to specific Wild Horse Ranges, not to Herd Management Areas in general.  The Code of Federal Regulations (43 CFR, Subpart 4710.3-2) states: "Herd management areas may also be designated as wild horse or burro ranges to be managed principally, but not necessarily exclusively, for wild horse or burro herds." 

FACT #15:   The Code of Federal Regulations (43 CFR, Subpart 4700.0-6) states that "Wild horses and burros shall be considered comparably with other resource values in the formulation of land use plans."  This regulation means that in its development of land-use plans, the BLM will consider wild horses and burros in a manner similar to the way it treats other resource values (e.g., cultural, historic, wildlife, and scenic, as distinguished from authorized commercial land uses, such as livestock grazing or timber harvesting).