Nov 2, 2008 11:33 am US/Mountain
Wild Horses Pose Problems For Colorado, The West
Written by Paul Day
Reporting
Paul Day
MAYBELL, Colo. (CBS4) ―
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Wild horses in Colorado in October 2008.
CBS
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Officials take notes on the herd.
CBS
Thundering hoof-beats are drowned out by the sound of a low flying helicopter. A recent round up in northwestern Colorado underscores how desperate the government is to solve long-standing problems with the management of wild horses.
"They're talking about euthanizing 33,000 horses that are in long-term holding" around the country, said Carol Walker, an author and self-described wild horse activist.
"No decisions have been made on euthanasia (or mercy killings)," said David Boyd, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. But he conceded, "It is something we're having to look at."
Wild horse herds in the western United States have become a potentially budget-busting management headache for Uncle Sam.
How did this happen?
The Sand Wash Basin Horse Management Area near the town of Maybell covers more than 154,000 acres in Northwestern Colorado. It's a BLM-managed refuge for one of the four herds of wild horses in Colorado. This fall, the Sand Wash Herd numbered 420 animals. That's too many according to the BLM.
Left uncontrolled, the wild horses would overgraze and begin to destroy the public rangeland, according to the federal agency.
So cowboys and a helicopter pilot were hired to round them up in mid-October. The goal was to reduce the herd size to 160 wild horses with the round-up, which the BLM refers to as "gathers."
"Gathers are definitely stressful to the animals," said Heidi Hopkins, a Wild Horse Program Manager with The Humane Society of the United States.
Hopkins' team of researchers was on hand as the animals are driven into holding pens.
Their interest is birth control. They will administer shots of a drug called PZP to each and every mare that will be released back into the wild.
"It's our hope this drug will reduce the amount of gathers that will occur and reduce the amount of stress that's put on the animals," Hopkins said.
PZP is a temporary contraceptive. Studies show it's effective at blocking pregnancies for only two years.
"By no means does PZP stop population growth." Hopkins said.
She said the drug slows the growth rate in the herd to around 10 percent, down from 20 percent without contraception.
Hopkins hopes the wild horses will continue to populate the area.
"We just want them to do it a little slower."
But the birth rate problem aside, it's what's happening to the tens of thousands of horses already removed from the range that has the government talking about euthanasia.
At Sand Wash, the BLM chose to remove 246 horses from the wild herd. Only 11 were placed in adoptive care, three were transferred to another herd in Colorado to improve the genetic diversity there. But 232 animals were shipped off to a holding facility in Canon City. They join the 33,000 formerly wild horses in government corrals or sanctuaries mentioned by Walker that could become candidates for euthanasia.
Paying for their care costs $27 million in the past year. That's three-fourths of the BLM's entire budget for the Wild Horse Program.
"How are we going to continue on this path with so many horses in captivity?" Boyd said.
Walker and other wild horse activists says the solution is to stop the round-ups and open up more rangeland for bigger herds of wild horses.
"I think the horses should be left out in the wild," Walker said.
But Boyd says totally doing away with round-ups would eliminate birth control. He predicts overpopulation would quickly result with the real possibility of disease and starvation for wild horses. It's why the BLM is considering mercy killings, an option horse-lovers regard as unthinkable.
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