Jerry Moran: “Despite so much public support for allowing wild horses to remain wild, despite multiple scientific studies of their…”

“Despite so much public support for allowing wild horses to remain wild, despite multiple scientific studies of their management that exposed poor analysis, fiscal waste, and no use of preventative methods, the BLM continues to use helicopters to round up and remove horses from the range and place them in long-term holding facilities. There are about 40,600 horses in these pens currently. The most recently completed fiscal year holding costs accounted for $37 million out of a total wild horse and burro budget of $64 million. The average lifespan of a wild horse in captivity is about 30 years. Holding and maintaining one wild horse in these long-term facilities costs about $500 a year. Last year, BLM received a 30 percent increase in their budget. Instead of using that to fix this broken wild horse management problem, they permanently removed another 10,000 wild horses and burros and put them into tax funded long-term holding pens. BLM's approach has been enormously wasteful and misguided. Instead of capturing wild horses and holding them in pens for life, BLM should have already fully implemented a less costly, preventative, and more humane option, that of controlling herd size through contraception.”