Wild horse advocates are condemning a report the Bureau of Land Management quietly submitted to Congress that calls for massive removals of wild horse from public lands in Utah and nine other Western states.
Groups derided the 24-page document as a “roadmap for destruction of America’s wild free-roaming horse and burros,” because it calls for permanent sterilization, euthanasia and “sale without limitation,” a euphemism for slaughter.
The report lays out several options for reducing the number of horses roaming public lands to populations the BLM has determined to be the “appropriate management level,” or AML, pegged at between 17,000 and 27,000 — a number that horse groups say is not compatible with the long-term survival of wild equines.