Ranchers and Activists Face Off Over Wild Horses

James McWilliams covers a rural land use drama: how to handle thousands of free-ranging wild horses. Currently, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) contains many of the animals and attempts to control their movements. "The primary reason they're confined is the nearly 18,000 ranchers grazing an estimated 747,963 'animal units'—a bureaucratic term that can represent either a horse, a cow/calf pair, or five sheep—on 155 million acres of land."

Ranchers must compete with the horses for forage opportunities, a difficult task during drought. "They view the remaining 58,150 mustangs and burros roaming wild across 10 western states as invasive pests who gorge on precious forage and trample the landscape into hardpan."

Since the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the BLM has been charged with protection and management of wild herds on federal land. "Because the BLM also issues grazing allotments to private ranchers [...] the agency is entrusted to balance wild horse and cattle populations on land where these animals overlap."

Many ranchers argue for drastic measures to contain the horses. But advocates say they're exaggerating the problem. "Of all the public grazing land the BLM manages (155 million acres), wild horses are technically allowed to graze on only 17 percent of it."