Refer to this opinion piece in the Pagosa Daily Post of Pagosa Springs, CO.
Apparently the writer has subscribed to the overpopulation narrative, in that he agrees with the use of contraceptives not to slow wild horse population growth but to reverse it, yet somehow he arrives at the right conclusion:
“The reality is, there are far more cattle and sheep on our public lands than wild horses and burros. This is an attempt to further imbalance the ratio by liquidating populations of wild horses and burros, so that beef can may graze on more federal lands.”
The nine million AUMs allocated each year to privately owned livestock on public lands managed by the BLM in the western U.S. would support at least 750,000 wild horses and burros, enough to empty all of the off-range corrals and long-term pastures fifteen times over. The current wild horse population is about ten percent of that.
There is no wild horse population crisis.
The proposed wild horse management plan is not about saving money or protecting western rangelands. It’s about deceit and greed on the part of the public-lands ranchers, their overlords, cheerleaders and political allies.
RELATED: Wild Horse Overpopulation?
