The wild mustangs of the USA west are originally from those horses brought by settlers. They are an ancient lineage. To date, the BLM has initiated all kinds of control measures, however, they have no genetic basis to identify the horses. Before any round-ups can continue the BLM must test the horses genetically to determine the lineage we should all be proud of preserving.
When the BLM has determined the ancient lineage, they then can eliminate the horses least displaying those genetics. To prevent too much inbreeding, from time to time new horses will have to be introduced to complement the lineage.
Interested groups have every reason to be upset about the handling of the American Mustang by the BLM and should look for an injunction to end the random practices yet to be proven to protect the lineage so much as destroy it.
Some of the horses are a full-size horse, but, most are 56 inches at the shoulder.
American Mustang (click here)
November 7, 2019Denver - The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (click here) must utilize adoption, sterilization and roundups to drastically reduce the number of wild horses and burros on public lands, an advisory panel suggests.
The bureau's Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, a citizen group of wild horse and burro stakeholders, met in Washington, D.C., last week, to advise the bureau on best practices....
...But activists worry federal agencies might loosen rules and allow horses to be sold for slaughter, as has happened in the past....
..."These are tough situations that require tough choices to be made," said board member Steven Yardley, a Utah cattle rancher. "We are facing an ecological disaster."
In 2018, Congress blocked an agency proposal to sell captured wild horses to Canada and Mexico for slaughter. Both countries sell horse meat to Asia. A year earlier, Congress blocked a proposal for "humane euthanization" of thousands of wild horses.
The Bureau of Land Management plans to ask Congress for $5 billion over the next 15 years, or about $3,750 per animal per year, to bring population levels down, said William Pendley, acting director of the agency....
..."You take a band of horses and run them for mile after mile with a helicopter where they're driven into a [fenced] trap," said former advisory board member Ginger Kathrens, a Colorado-based documentary filmmaker who has filmed the bureau's horse-gathering operations. "Some of them break their legs, some are traumatized. It's just inhumane."...
...The "ovariectomy via colpotomy" procedure involves inserting a metal rod in the animal and severing the horse's ovaries....
The ovaries are still intact.
...Wild horses, however, might not be to blame for destruction of rangelands and don't necessary need to be removed from them, some of those who commented at the meetings maintained.
"Wild horses are targets of a sophisticated propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the public that they are destroying public lands, even though 88 percent of BLM land has no wild horses on it," statement released by the American Wild Horse Campaign said.
The group said the bureau sought to remove the horses and "replace them with commercial livestock." It blamed oil and gas fracking, mining and livestock grazing for the degradation of public lands.
