Ellie Phipps Price is the producer of “American Mustang,” a documentary on wild horses that was screened at the Denver Film Festival. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
By Ashley Matthews
Guest Commentary
Media reports consistently declare overpopulation of wild horses causes an environmental burden on Bureau of Land Management lands. This media spin by the BLM has been used to gain public support for removal of thousands of wild horses so commercial interests like the highly profitable cattle industry can use these public lands for a nominal fee. Over the weekend, the Denver Film Festival premiered “American Mustang,” a film addressing this dishonest, costly and cruel federal program undermining protections for wild horses afforded by the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burros Act.
There are more than 1.75 million cattle on public lands. They outnumber horses 50-to-1. Wild horses number less than 30,000 on only 11 percent of public lands, which are still shared with cattle. Wild horse rangeland has been reduced by 75 percent and populations by more than 270,000 since 1970.
Unlike cattle, wild horses actually benefit the ecosystem. Their moist, nutrient-rich manure builds the soils and their tendency to move over long distances to forage spreads grazing pressure over vast terrain.
So why would the BLM tell a different story about wild horses?
Powerful lobbies like the National Cattleman’s Beef Association have the support of the BLM advisory board. The going rate for cattle on private land is over $16 a head but on public lands ranchers pay just 1/16th of that.
To make room for the nearly 2 million “$1-per-head cattle,” taxpayers also shell out over $100,000 per day to feed 50,000 wild horses stockpiled in government holding facilities. Only a handful of cattle ranchers benefit from this incredible handout as a mere 3 percent of the beef industry is supported by public land. The total cost to taxpayers for this corporate welfare to a lucky few: $132 million per year.
In the midst of this greed-fueled disregard for wild horses, at taxpayer’s expense, is the physical and mental agony of these precious animals. Roundups are just the beginning of a wild horse’s nightmarish journey involving terrifying sweeps of helicopters running horses to death, killing foals and pregnant mares and separating family bands. Thousands are kept in small holding pens with no plans to return them to the range.
More than 1,700 have been sent to auction where kill-buyers linger to purchase them for $10 a head. En route to slaughter, horrified horses of all ages are placed with no food or water in livestock tractor-trailers and brought to Canada and Mexico dead or alive. Captive bolt pistols meant for cattle and smaller animals are neither effective nor humane for the equine and rarely render the horse unconscious before slaughter.
This is the reality for these beloved and beautiful symbols of the American West, and the BLM and cattle industry is hoping you’ll never find out or just don’t care.
With the premier of “American Mustang” in Denver, the word is beginning to get out. Asking cattle ranchers to pay the going rate for public lands and returning wild horses back to their original lands would give wild horses a fighting chance, be ecologically sound, unburden the taxpayer and impact a very small portion of beef production.
Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell should run the BLM on behalf of American people and American laws instead of placating the interests of powerful lobbies.
Ashley Matthews is a graduate student living in Boulder. She volunteers at the Colorado Therapeutic Riding Center.
Click the link to add comments: BLM must reconsider its policies on wild horses.
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Hippies for Horses 
Thank you so much for helping to spread the word and fight the fight!
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If we don’t help spread the word, who will? What the BLM does decreases the bio-diversity. They have removed most of the natural predators such as wolves and mountain lions as a result of the welfare cattle ranchers who are lazy and won’t protect their own cattle from predators.
The BLM have misconstrued the intent of 1971 Wild Horse and Burro act entirely! It was meant to protect the horses from those that wanted to slaughter them.
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