Wild horse populations in Oregon on the rise says the BLM

The BLM says Oregon’s wild horse and burro populations are greater than the rangelands can handle in balance with other public land uses.

PORTLAND, Ore. (May 16, 2017) — Amanda Peacher reporting for the Associated Press writes:

New numbers from the Bureau of Land Management show Oregon’s wild horse and burro populations are on the rise.

There are an estimated 4,351 wild horses and burros on Oregon’s rangelands. That’s up more than 13 percent from last year’s population. And it’s far more than the number of horses the BLM says the rangelands can handle in balance with other public land uses.

Wild horses are protected under a 1971 Congressional Act, which makes it illegal for the government to euthanize them to keep populations down. But the horses cause big problems on the rangelands when they chomp down native grasses and cause erosion.

The BLM wants to try new birth control methods for wild horses — including capture and sterilization — but those methods have been protested by animal rights advocates.

The BLM says the appropriate population number is 2,715 for Oregon’s rangelands.

What do you think — especially coming from Oregon? We know what we think.

Notice the key words, “far more than the number of horses the BLM says the rangelands can handle in balance with other public land uses“. Italics added. With other public land uses. That sums it up in a nutshell.

How does Oregon want to purge its ranges of wild horses since they can’t kill them the way they want to? Capture and sterilization. Does the bad news ever end?

Oregon should hang its head in shame for continuing to harass and shake its death rattle at America’s iconic Mustangs who belong exactly where they are and if it weren’t for the continued encroachment of these “other land uses” into their territory, there would be enough room for everyone.

The tragedy is — and one you do not often see mentioned anywhere but here — there still is room for everyone.

Many of the herd management areas that the BLM have emptied out of wild horses and burros for “other land uses” are still empty.

The wild horses and burros they removed are either languishing in long-term holding, their lives irretrievably broken, or dead, some slaughtered for their meat. Or what seems to be the rarest of all outcomes, adopted.

In case you need reminding. Your tax dollars are paying for this barbarity.

Amanda Peacher should hang her head in shame for writing such a jaded one-sided article. Perhaps that’s unfair. She probably didn’t write it at all. The Associated Press which used to be a highly relied on and valued purveyor of news seem to have become little more than a press release distribution service.

Learn more about Oregon’s disappearing wild horse population at Oregon Public Broadcasting. It is beautifully done. They even have a population counter for the number of wild horses in the wild and in holding, plus how much it is costing.

The case of a young Oregon Mustang they call Blue Eye paints an oft repeated scenario of what happens to these wild horses once they have been taken from their homes and end up in a BLM corral:

Blue Eye, like all the horses in short-term corrals, faced three strikes. The BLM would offer him for adoption three times.

If no one took him, he would be trucked far from his native high desert to long-term holding. The BLM rents pastures in states like Oklahoma and Kansas where old or unadoptable horses spend the rest of their lives.

Yet . . . 

The crisis, [BLM’s Rob] Sharp says, is “absolutely preventable.”

Blue Eye was caught in the middle. The young foal would never go back to the range. He faced the two options BLM most often relies on: adoption or exile to pastures in the Midwest.

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BLM captures 155 wild horses in Oregon, Sept. 4, 2016. Source: Return to Freedom.