By Tracy Wilson
Beginning on Monday, July 20, the healthy and incredibly beautiful Lahontan Herd Management Area (HMA) horses that live Southeast of Reno, will lose their freedom forever. Not because science says they must go, but because our federal management system has failed to keep pace with modern conservation.
Lahontan is a complicated area. The actual HMA is small, with few resources for horses. The lack of fencing means the horses roam outside the HMA for forage and water – and the nearby reservoir provides just that – to both the wild horses and the privately owned cattle being grazed on the Lahontan grazing allotment.
The public, and the Lahontan grazing allotment, is losing acreage to the expansion of Naval Air Station Fallon’s B-16 bombing range. There is much pressure on the Navy to compensate for lost Animal Unit Month (AUMs) grazing by the permittee. But unlike livestock grazing or other resource extraction or land usage, there is no profit to be made from wildlife and wild horses on public lands.
The Lahontan HMA Appropriate Management Level (AML) is set at 7-10 horses. This number is both arbitrary and not genetically viable based on scientific research, which raises serious concerns about long-term health and survival of the horses. And this HMA is not alone in AMLs set well below genetic viability – there are quite a few of them across the West.
Just barely 10 miles away, is the Horse Mountain HMA. With an AML of 78-118, there is a zero population on the HMA according to BLM. Data provided by BLM annually does not list a past roundup of Horse Mountain. It says the HMA was last at AML in 2003. Are there Horse Mountain HMA horses in Lahontan? No one knows.
In the other direction are the neighboring Virginia Range (VR) horses. While it is not common for the VR horses to wander into the Lahontan area, over the last year two bands have done exactly that because there is no fencing to prevent them from doing so.
The VR horses have been consistently denied protections under the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, classified instead, as “estray” or “feral livestock” — yet they now face the prospect of being removed and processed as BLM wild horses under the very Act they were excluded from.
American Wild Horse Conservation has sent a letter to the BLM asking them to avoid removing the 15 known VR horses near the area, however we have received no response. We know where the horses are and we will be watching. Our team can identify the horses – pretty much on sight as we know them well.
The last listed roundup of Lahontan horses was in 2010 and there has been no proactive population management by any government agency. The absence of proactive management is one of the biggest of the red flags of a broken system. Horses on HMAs across the West are rounded up, occasionally the agency applies a handful of fertility control treatments — usually far too few to actually affect herd population growth. Then the population is allowed to grow beyond what they deem appropriate, paid contractors round up horses again at taxpayer expense, and they are held in government holding. The whole process gets repeated a few years down the road.
Today, the federal government spends well over $100 million each year maintaining tens of thousands of horses in off-range holding facilities, while only a fraction of that budget goes toward proven on-range fertility control that could reduce removals in the first place. Storing wild horses in corrals is not conservation, it’s broken management and the public is footing the bill.
There is an alternative.
Proactive, humane, on-range fertility control could keep a healthy herd living their lives peacefully on public lands. When managed properly, fertility control offers the ability to slow or stabilize population growth rate, and allows for genetic diversity. I want my taxes to fund this second option.
The Lahontan situation isn’t simply a story about one roundup. It’s a case study in everything that is wrong with the federal government’s approach to managing America’s wild horses. It’s a red flag that the fifty year old management system is no longer working and is disconnected from modern science.The choice isn’t between doing nothing and removing thousands of horses. The choice is between repeating an expensive and outdated cycle that is failing or embrace science, fiscal responsibility, and conservation worthy of the American West and the American wild horse – a treasure we can pass on for generations to come.
Here is what we are asking of the public: Write and call your elected officials — including President Trump — and demand that the BLM stop its cruel, expensive helicopter roundups and reassess AMLs. The solution is to shift to the humane, cost-effective fertility control which we have proven works.
Tracy Wilson is the Conservation Director for American Wild Horse Conservation.
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