The Bureau of Land Management’s mismanagement of the wild horse and burro program is a textbook case for those who study government waste. The BLM spends more than $50 million a year rounding up what are (in theory) wild and free-roaming horses and burros, and then warehousing them in government-run corrals and pens.
The federal agency contends that there are too many horses on the range across the millions of acres of sparsely populated land out West. What constitutes an appropriate population level for our nation’s herds, however, remains the subject of fierce debate.
Continuing this cycle of roundups and storage of wild horses is an affront to fiscal conservatism. The BLM should take proactive, not reactive, measures to manage horses if the goal is to curb population growth.
It’s not often that members of Congress who sit at opposite ends of the political spectrum, such as Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Rep. Ted Lieu of California, agree on something. Yet both lawmakers, along with dozens of their colleagues, recently rebuked the BLM over its proposal to conduct mass surgical sterilization experiments on wild horses.
In an effort to render mares infertile, the BLM is attempting once again after three previous failed attempts, to study the effectiveness of a controversial surgical procedure known as “ovariectomy via colpotomy.” The surgery involves the manual insertion of a metal rod to blindly locate and sever a horse’s ovaries. The animals would remain conscious during the procedure, which carries risks of evisceration, bleeding, hemorrhaging, and even death.
In 2013, the BLM commissioned a report from the National Academy of Sciences on how to improve wild horse management. A committee of experts reviewed a wide range of fertility control options. Their conclusion was unequivocal: Ovariectomy via colpotomy should not be used due to the risks of trauma and infection.
Ignoring recommendations based on science, the BLM advanced proposals to ovariectomize wild horses and to do so in non-sterile conditions such as in a holding facility or corral, thus exacerbating the risks to these animals. Under the current plan, the agency would conduct more than two dozen surgeries a day with minimal post-operative care. The agency’s stated experimental goal is to quantify morbidity and mortality of horses subjected to the procedure. A previous BLM proposal also sought to calculate the number of aborted foals resulting from surgeries on pregnant mares — a particularly gruesome aspect that Sen. Mike Lee of Utah noted during a recent congressional hearing.
“It seems that the [BLM] understands the risky nature of the procedure but is nevertheless aiming to quantify precisely how dangerous it is using federally protected animals,” members of Congress wrote in a recent letter to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.
Moreover, two major research institutions — Oregon State University and Colorado State University — have terminated research partnerships with the BLM related to these experiments. After Colorado State University backed out last summer, the BLM simply decided to move forward without any outside veterinary expertise. Subsequently, a federal court blocked the agency from conducting the experiments, in part because of the lack of meaningful independent observation.
The BLM claims that ovariectomies would cost less than scientifically supported and less invasive fertility control options, such as immunocontraceptive vaccines. The most common vaccine is Porcine Zona Pellucida, which costs about $30 a dose.
But the agency’s math is fuzzy at best. According to the BLM’s most recent estimate, ovariectomy via colpotomy costs $250 to $300 per surgery. That figure does not include the exorbitant cost of rounding up and chasing horses using helicopters, which is the BLM’s preferred method, along with transporting animals to holding facilities and providing them with adequate veterinary care. There is also the fundamental problem of scalability. It will likely be difficult for the BLM to locate enough skilled equine veterinarians who are willing to perform this relatively rare procedure.
Ultimately, the BLM’s research budget needs to focus on viable and humane approaches to managing America’s iconic wild horses. The agency could choose to invest taxpayer dollars in safer and reversible options for wild horse management, such as intrauterine devices or longer-lasting vaccines. Barreling down the current ovariectomy path will only continue to raise eyebrows and red flags. The American public and lawmakers are right to question this controversial and impractical scheme, which seems designed to cause unnecessary suffering to wild horses.
Joanna Grossman, Ph.D., is the equine program manager for the Washington, D.C.-based Animal Welfare Institute.
