In response to outcry over a proposed plan to euthanize 45,000 wild horses and burros, the U.S. government has nixed the move that would help manage what it says is an out of control wildlife population in the American West.
The National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board said last week the U.S. Bureau of Land Management should consider killing some of the animals whose population growth has led to overgrazing. The estimated 67,000 animals, mostly in Nevada and California, have outgrown the 27,000 animal population that would allow other wildlife to continue to thrive on the same land.
But the bureau told Reuters that it now has plans to “continue its current policy of caring for unadopted or unsold wild horses and burros.” The animals will not be sold or sent to slaughter, and the bureau will make a formal decision on the issue in the coming months.
Animal rights activists protested the proposed treatment for the animals, which the government rounds up and removes from public lands. It’s then left with a massive population the bureau spends $50 million each year caring for.
"It's something the American public just doesn't know about, you don't think of wild horses being held in facilities all across the United States," said Gillian Lyons, wild horse and burro program manager for the Humane Society of the United States.
The bureau is housed in the Department of the Interior, which isn’t the only government agency reacting to overblown wild animal populations. The Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services agency killed more than 3.2 million animals in fiscal year 2015, half a million more than the previous year.
Wildlife Services is responsible for controlling populations of creatures like bears, foxes, mountain lions, wolves, coyotes and eagles that threaten livestock and farmland. The federal program began in 1915 and has been highly secretive about its practices to manage such animals. An investigation into the agency by Harper’s found that since 2000, Wildlife Services has killed at least 2 million mammals and 15 million birds. It uses neck snares, leghold traps, poisoned bait, cyanide traps and aerial gunning to kill animals that are thought to endanger livestock grazing on public land.