Return to Freedom: BLM should not pursue sterilization of wild mares

LOMPOC, Calif., March 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation announced on Monday that it will remain vigilant that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) not again pursue the invasive surgical sterilization of wild mares.

In the BLM's Fiscal Year 2025 budget justification document, posted last week, the agency requested $15 million to "conduct permanent sterilization ... as a population growth suppression tool for on-range populations" by "gathering and sterilizing animals and then returning the sterilized animals to the range."

"Attempts at surgical sterilization have only led to litigation, not progress toward more humane and sustainable on-range herd management. The BLM shouldn't make yet another wrong turn, and Congress should not enable it," said Neda DeMayo, president of Return to Freedom (RTF), a national nonprofit wild horse and burro advocacy organization.

"Instead, lawmakers should hold the BLM's feet to the fire on the use of safe, proven fertility control. It is a humane and practical tool to slow herd growth and finally phase out BLM's failed, decades-long practice of capturing and removing wild horses and burros from their home ranges." 

Both the agency document and President Biden's budget proposal, released on March 11, call for the BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program to receive $170.9 million in funding for 2025, a $21.9 million increase. Final funding decisions rest with Congress.

The BLM's budget justification is vague about how and what sort of sterilization methods would be used. When the BLM has pursued surgical sterilization of mares, it has been halted by litigation and public opposition.

Most recently, in 2021, the agency abandoned a plan to use a procedure called ovariectomy via colpotomy on captured mares after RTF and others sued. This is an invasive surgical procedure requiring post-surgical pain management and rest, standards of care difficult to achieve for a wild mare. It includes risks of infection, bleeding and death. 

BLM also dropped a plan to perform sterilization experiments on mares in 2016.

In 2017, RTF prevailed in a federal lawsuit challenging BLM's efforts to permanently sterilize an entire Idaho herd of horses. 

The court found that BLM: has a legal mandate to protect horses' wild free-roaming behaviors and manage wild horses in self-sustaining herds, and that sterilizing wild horses impacts the herd's social structure, the wild horses' behavior, and the public's interest in preserving and observing those natural instincts and behaviors.

Scaling up fertility control enjoys strong public support and broad stakeholder support. In recent years, Congress has boosted wild horse program funding while calling for fertility control use.

Population modeling has shown that the BLM must immediately implement fertility control to stabilize herd growth so that removals, which decimate family bands and herds, can be greatly reduced and in some cases, brought to an end, and off-range holding, which costs taxpayers millions more each year, phased out.

Yet the BLM remains focused almost entirely on removals in pursuit of an agency-set population target, or "Appropriate Management Level" (AML), of no more than 26,785 wild horses and burros total on designated rangelands.

The BLM reiterated in its budget document that it would "focus on the use of population growth suppression methods including fertility control applications as the long-term solution to maintaining AML once it is reached," not before.

In 2023, the agency estimated the on-range population at 83,000 horses and burros. The number of captured animals being warehoused in off-range holding totals more than 64,000.

Between now and September, the BLM intends to remove 11,112 wild horses and burros from the range while treating just 219 with fertility control. 

Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation (RTF) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to wild horse preservation through sanctuary, education, conservation, and advocacy since 1998. It also operates the American Wild Horse Sanctuary at three California locations, caring for more than 420 wild horses and burros. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for updates about wild horses and burros on the range and at our sanctuary.

SOURCE Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation