Oregon Public Broadcasting

The Bureau of Land Management has released a preliminary count of the wild horses living in an area that includes Southeast Oregon.

The BLM count found a minimum of 4200 wild horses in an area that includes sections of northwest Nevada and southeast Oregon.

The federal government says that’s too many horses for the land.  To control the population, the BLM’s policy is to round-up and stable the captured horses in the Midwest.

Some animal rights groups object to the policy.

Deniz Bolbol is with In Defense of Animals. She says the roundups are unsustainable.

Deniz Bolbol: “The BLM sadly does not do any on the range management of these horses as Congress intended. Instead, what the BLM has done for years, is this broken system of roundup, removal, and warehousing these horses at the cost of taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars.”

The BLM offers the captured horses for adoption. Those that aren’t adopted are kept in government holding facilities.

The BLM’s policies stem from a landmark 1971 law enacted to protect the wild horses that roam 10 western states.