Oregon's horse population outpaces ability to care for them

[depakid]

Horse populations are exploding on the Western ranges and in domestic horse pastures across the nation. These wild horses at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Wild Horse Corrals near Burns wait for someone to adopt them. The BLM is in the midst of a budget crunch, and to economize, the agency has cut back on wild horse roundups, and soon may propose euthanizing some wild horses and selling others "to any buyer whatsoever," virtually guaranteeing many would go for slaughter.
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BURNS -- Joan Steelhammer planned to care for 35 unwanted and neglected horses this summer at her nonprofit central Oregon sanctuary.

It didn't work out that way. Steelhammer's Equine Outreach on 20 acres near Bend Municipal Airport, is feeding 1 ton of high-priced hay daily to about 100 abandoned horses. She's worried about the approach of colder weather, when more financially strapped owners might decide they can't afford to feed their horses hay costing more than $200 per ton.

"I'm scared to death about this winter," says the 54-year-old real estate broker. "I wake up at 3 a.m. scared."

Oregon and the nation are in the throes of a population explosion of horses, both wild and domestic. The surge in horse numbers -- estimated at 9.2 million animals by the American Horse Council in Washington, D.C. -- is aggravated by a sluggish national economy, soaring hay and fuel prices, and the 2007 closure of the nation's last domestic horse slaughter facilities.

$190,000 a year

Steelhammer and her husband, Gary Everett, rely on donations to help cover their $190,000-a-year costs to feed and care for unwanted horses in the shelter they have operated about five years. They offer domestic horses for adoption after rescuing and rehabilitating them.

Oregon has 3,750 wild horses on its open ranges, well above the 2,855 level that range managers prefer, said Gary McFadden, a federal Bureau of Land Management wild horse specialist in Burns.

About 175 wild horses are penned at the bureau's corrals near Burns, down substantially from a more typical 440 wild horses there in January 2007. The BLM's budget crunch put the brakes on roundups that normally gathered 500 to 600 wild horses a year to protect Oregon's open ranges, said McFadden.

This year's roundups have corralled only 234 horses. Wild horse adoptions have declined, in part, because of the cheap availability of thousands of unwanted domestic horses.

Without an increase in its budget, BLM soon will be faced with implementing one or more unpopular options to control wild horses, said Tom Gorey, BLM spokesman in Washington, D.C.

So the BLM may propose in October:

• Humanely killing wild horses that nobody wants to adopt.

• Selling unwanted horses "to any buyer whatsoever," virtually guaranteeing many or most would be trucked to slaughter facilities in Canada or Mexico.

• Ending wild horse roundups. BLM roundups remove about 10,000 horses a year from federal rangelands. Halting them would stop the torrent of wild horses into long- and short-term care, where costs to feed and care for them range between $1.25 and $5.08 a day for each.

• Killing or selling wild horses under conditions that could lead to their slaughter are authorized under provisions of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, he said.

"It is not a matter of us wanting to exercise either option," Gorey said. But with a budget of $37 million for the wild horse and burro program, the agency can't continue with the current program, he said.

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/08/oregons_horse_population_outpa.html

[Boxerfan]

1. Seriously sad...They are slaughtering the wild horses at a record rate now

And the economy makes it so people are not able to donate.Local food pantries are bare & social services in Oregon are lacking at best. And this is for the Humans.

Hopefully they get some extra press to generate donations on a nationwide basis.

[malakai2]

2. Feral horses

If they insist on maintaining horses on the range and they need a low cost population management tool, I can think of a few predators that could probably handle the job.

[Meeker Morgan]

3. What exactly is wrong with HUMANS being the natural predators?

Then we can control it better and don't have to worry so much about predation of whatever other than horses.

And what exactly is wrong with selling the meat?

Please explain this to me.

[malakai2]

5. I have no problem with humans as a predator

Humans are one of the predators I'd suggest. If the BLM is hellbent on keeping feral horses out there, but wants to limit their numbers because they damage the range, and they don't have the funds to do culls, then they could invite a managed hunting season. Use license or tag fees to offset administration costs.

That would provide a good mechanism for keeping the population within a target range. Doesn't mean the actual target range chosen is good from any particular perspective, but inasmuch as we'd like to artificially maintain a predefined population, sure we can do that better than wolves or any other predator. I think the many benefits of non-human predators do outweigh this "fine" control over single variables we seem to like.

I don't have a problem with people eating or selling the meat. A lot of people do, and because this is a Federal property, everybody can have a say in how the land is managed, so I imagine those people will have their way.

[NickB79]

4. Can they pull plows?

That might come in handy if (when) diesel goes over $5/gal (next summer).

[amandabeech]

6. These horses are light, and if trained, could carry riders or pull carriages or light wagons.

Draft horses are taller, heavier-boned and heavier-muscled. They are specially bred and don't run wild. They are also very valuable.

[kestrel91316]

7. Feral horses are not a native species in North America.

They are an imported invasive species in the same way that kudzu and the Asian longhorn beetle are.

A sad fact.

[depakid]

8. Then again, horses evolved in North America (the best fossil record is found in Oregon)

though they disappeared from the continent during the late Pleistocene. Now there's a mystery for the ages.

What happened to the North American megafauna?

[kestrel91316]

9. Don't know. But I don't think it's wise to try to recreate

the Pleistocene, at least not by wreaking environmental havoc like we have so far, and then reintroducing a single prey species (without any of the keystone predators).

[depakid]

10. Maybe so, but overgrazing cattle and sheep do a lot more damage to the range

than mustangs- and management practices for maximizing profits also include predator control (or elimination) and destruction of riparian habitat.

I guess I don't have a problem with having mustangs on the range. Burros in the Southwest are another matter entirely.

[kestrel91316]

12. I'm not ok with the overgrazing by sheep and cattle, either.

And I say that as the descendant of some serious NV ranchers. The West is a mess because of overgrazing and imported species. Cheat grass has ruined 25% of NV (Elko area).

At Great Basin National Park in Eastern NV they are doing environmental restoration work to undo the damage that generations of MY FAMILY and others did to the land for the sake of their cattle. Actually pretty successful, from what I hear......

I'm not against ranching and some limited use of public lands for grazing, BTW. But it really needs to be reined in. The leases are way too cheap.

[NNadir]

11. Can't we distill horses to make biodiesel? We, um, here a lot of talk about doing that with cows.

It will give new meaning to the word "horseless carriage."