The Big Lie That’s Destroying the Wild Horses of the American West

Source/Full Article: Counter Punch by Vickery Eckhoff, co-founder of the The Daily Pitchfork

​The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is busy clearing federally designated wild horse territory of wild horses on public lands — and BLM officials are telling some big lies to get the job done.

At roughly 27 million acres, wild horse herd management areas (HMAs) constitute just 4% of the 750 million acres making up “the West” in the lower 48 states. There are 22 million cattle and sheep across that vast western expanse. That’s 265 times the number of wild horses (presently estimated at 86,000) in the 177 HMAs that were established principally for their use by the 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. 

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10 YEARS TO AML AGENDA

Prompted by the Path Forward, 10 Years to AML agenda, the Bureau of Land Management is in full swing, rounding up wild horses at an alarming rate. The Path Forward plan specifically recommended removing as many as 20,000 horses and burros annually, but no mandate to reduce livestock grazing on wild horse HMAs. 

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