Oregon Public Broadcasting

The Bureau of Land Management is considering a proposal to kill off thousands of wild horses in long-term holding pens.  As Pete Springer reports, animal activists are not happy with the proposal.

There are an estimated 33,000 wild horses and burros in the western states.

BLM officials say that’s about 5700 more animals than their management goals allow.

Jolynn Worley is a spokeswoman for the BLM in Reno, Nevada.

Worley says there are just too many horses in some areas for the range to support. Plus, she says, Nevada's had drought conditions for the last decade.

Jolynn Worley: “And when that happens, we have a lot of environmental degradation happening.  There’s not enough forage, not just for the wildlife and livestock, but the horses either.” 

To deal with this problem, the BLM rounds up many of these horses and keeps them in long-term holding pens.

Some horses are adopted out. But in recent years there have been fewer adoptions since the cost of feeding and sheltering horses is so high.

To add to the problem, wild horse populations can double every four years.

So the BLM is considering killing some of these captive horses as population control.

This idea doesn’t sit well with Chris Heyde. He's a spokesman for the Animal Welfare Institute, an animal rights group in Washington D.C.

Chris Heyde: “There are certainly options on dealing with these horses if the BLM managed them properly.  They could, those horses could be dealt with through contraception, birth control, you know proper adoption if done properly.  All of those kinds of other tools.”

A decision on the proposal is expected by early October.