There are just eleven days left to submit comments to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Southern Nevada District Office to protect hundreds of wild horses and burros from roundups within the Nevada Wild Horse Range Herd Management Area. We must act now to demand that the BLM manage Nevada’s wild horses humanely!
Only 800 wild horses are estimated to live within the more than 1.3 million acres of public land in this area, which is part of the Nevada Test & Training Range used by the Air Force. Due to military restrictions, the BLM actively manages wild horses on 484,000 acres of the range. According to the agency’s proposed 10-year management plan, over half of the wild horses in this range would be rounded up and removed. In addition, wild burros living in the area would be completely eradicated.
The BLM is currently accepting public comments on the management proposal and its environmental consequences. Now is the time to weigh in against the agency’s plan to reduce the population to an unscientifically low population limit that will leave just one horse per 3,250 acres and eliminate wild burros from the area entirely!
Key aspects of the BLM’s destructive plan include:
- Removing all wild horses deemed “excess” over a 10 year period to achieve and maintain a population of just 300-400 horses;
- Removing all wild burros from the area;
- Applying untested IUDs for wild mares and other methods of fertility control after the low population limit of 300 horses is reached;
- Maintaining an unnatural population of 60% stallions, 40% mares; and
- Gelding a portion of the stallions, making them non-reproducing and destroying their natural behaviors.