ADOBE STOCK
Feral horses are too often romanticized as “ wild mustangs .” In truth , they are nothing more than a destructive , yet protected , invasive species .
The situation is infuriating and , if you love wild places and native wildlife , it can almost make you cry . Recently , one of these animal-rights groups continued to do wrong by urging Interior Secretary Deb Haaland “ to retain horse population sizes that will maintain TNEB [ Thriving Natural Ecological Balance ].”
It is to laugh ! That ’ s like retaining feral hogs to maintain ecological balance . It ’ s like feeding and protecting feral house cats to maintain songbirds . It ’ s akin to protecting pythons in the Everglades , Asian carp in the Mississippi , zebra and quagga mussels in the Great Lakes . Canadian thistles on the High Plains . Cheat grass in sage grouse country .
Paying to protect and increase feral horses on fragile public lands is worse than selfish , worse than foolish . It ’ s environmentally criminal . And you pay for it . This doesn ’ t mean that we shouldn ’ t care for horses . Thousands of horse lovers do that every day . They keep horses in pastures , shelter them in barns , treat them for diseases . They care for them . But so-called animal-rights horse lovers force lost , feral horses to live desperate lives under conditions that would get a horse owner dragged into court for animal abuse .
Our so-called wild horses roam dry , overgrazed deserts and semi-deserts . They make do with poor and insufficient forage , dirty water , injuries , worms , disease , fighting , biting , and broken legs and jaws , without veterinary care . And all the while they pound , chew and abuse native vegetation , commandeer scarce water holes , drive off native deer and sheep , and deplete nesting and escape habitat for ground-nesting birds .
In short , they do what you would expect a non-native , invasive species would do : They negatively impact native wildlife . It ’ s bad in the best of times . It ’ s insanity when we are losing native birds and mammals so fast that a species as widespread and common as the sage grouse has declined more than 80 percent since the 1970s . So why do we put up with this ?
Emotions . Tender imaginations . Persistent myths . The romantic myth of the wild mustang , which is nothing but the offspring of horses likely run off from the Coronado expedition .
Feral horses are much like feral hogs in Florida that ran off from the De Soto expedition hundreds of years ago . However , in the 1970s , a well-meaning but ecologically ignorant bunch of romantic horse lovers convinced an equally ignorant bunch of elected officials to make feral horses sacred . Over the years they tightened the screws . Feral horses take precedence over all native wildlife on Western federal lands where they roam . They are the only single species we spend $ 80 million annually feeding and sheltering .
You , dear friend , literally pay to feed tens of thousands of “ wild mustangs ” confined to corrals ( pens or “ prisons ” if we can borrow the hyperbolic language of animal-rights agitators ) until they die of old age , which could take more than 20 years . Meanwhile pronghorns , bighorn sheep , mule deer , elk , desert cottontails , sage grouse , Brewer ’ s sparrows , desert tortoises and dozens of other native species dwindle away because their habitat has been converted into horse flesh .
Pragmatic people have long advised against managing wildlife by emotion because it flies in the face of nature . Forcing an invasive species like the horse — wonderful domestic animal though it is — to eke out a living on fragile Western lands is disrespecting Mother Nature . Big time .
It ’ s time to stop this feral horse abuse , of the horses themselves as well as our land and wildlife . Round up the feral horses . Give them good homes . Put them on pastures in the East if you want . Prominent animal-rights organizations have hundreds of millions of dollars . I ’ m sure they ’ ll pay for it all .
SPRING 2022 19