Lawmakers from Montana should endorse the ‘creative’ wild horse management plan announced on 04/22/19, according to an op-ed that appeared today in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. It’s the only way to stop the endless cycle of roundups.
The alternative, according to the writer, is the use of lethal tools, such as slaughter and mass killings, to manage wild horse and burro populations.
Although she criticizes current management practices, she does not ask why the roundups occur (as if wild horse overpopulation is an established fact, self-evident).
You can’t solve a problem by treating the symptoms, you to have to remove the causes.
The management plan focuses the symptoms (‘excess’ horses displaced from their home range) but ignores the causes (too many privately owned livestock grazing on public lands set aside for the horses).
In 1971 Velma Johnston won protections for wild horses but not for their land.
It’s time to end public-lands ranching, along with the bureaucracy that supports it.
Western Horse Watchers Association 