Sometimes there’s too much of a good thing. While wild horses are undeniably magnificent animals and in many ways embody the West, they also cause tensions with ranchers who argue that they damage rangeland and eat food that should go to cattle. Also, with virtually no predators, their population has exploded. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) believes public lands can support 27,000 wild horses, but there are now 77,000 living there. Enter horse birth control.
The ideal solution to this excess population remains to get the wild horses adopted, but the numbers have simply grown too large for that to be possible. Indeed, there has even been the suggestion that wild horses should simply be euthanized, though that was rejected after objections from animal welfare organizations and the general public. Similarly, the BLM has now rejected sterilization as well. (They had planned to experiment on 200 wild mares before lawsuits blocked the attempt.)
That leaves fertility control. It’s a labor-intensive approach, since it will likely require an initial injection and then an annual booster. There are also concerns about how the hormonal changes to mares will impact their behavior. Still, it remains the most promising for these extremely fertile creatures. (While the gestation period lasts nearly a year, a mare may be ready to become pregnant again in as little as six days after giving birth.)
To learn more about this surprisingly complicated issue, click here.
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