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I like wild horses but they are not native to the US so kill them all.
They are native to the earth aren't they?
Even if sarcasm THAT was in poor taste, and if serious you need help.
BTW
Modern horses, zebras, and asses belong to the genus Equus, the only surviving genus in a once diverse family, the Equidae. Based on fossil records, the genus appears to have originated in North America about 4 million years ago and spread to Eurasia (presumably by crossing the Bering land bridge) 2 to 3 million years ago.
Let's not forget that the mustangs aren't the only feral critters that are problematic.
Feral horses, feral burros, feral hogs, feral cats, feral dogs, feral goats, nutria, anacondas and Burmese pythons, zebra mussels, snakeheads, Asian jumping carp, lampreys, non-native parrots (especially budgies and Quaker Parakeets), feral pigeons, starlings, fire ants, on and on the list goes...
And these are just a few of the problematic non-native animal species. The list of problematic non-native plant species is every bit as long.
Let's not forget that the mustangs aren't the only feral critters that are problematic.
Feral hogs and feral burros also abound, and both are even worse than the horses in some respects. The burros eat vegetation a horse won't touch, and climb up rocks and into places a horse won't go.
The hogs are omnivorous and and will eat anything and everything. They also root up the ground, destroying future vegetation and eating the young of all kinds in their dens.
Folks are almost as reluctant to do anything about the burros as the horses. Hogs are hogs, and we don't hold any affection for them, so they're now considered wild game. But since they reproduce at a higher rate than either horses or burros, they are the greatest problem of all.
We have large herds of wild burros here as well as horses. They are more problematic as they are more problematic to adopt out. They don't have the uses that a proper horse does and they make expensive pets. Not much good in the latter regard anyway as they are often quite ornery.
No feral hogs around here. The climate won't support them. Nothing for them to eat and cover is to sparse. I've hunted feral hog and they are my favorite quarry. But they do breed fast and are four legged wrecking balls.
As far as I know, they're still going on. But the number of horses that need to be placed far exceeds the number of people willing to buy one. That's the fundamental problem.
(Plus, a lot of people who ride want a horse that is purpose-bred to excel in their horse sport of choice, which limits the pool of adopters even more. Mustangs aren't bred for any one use in particular.)
Mustangs are actually getting very popular with the endurance competitors since Mustang Lady back in the mid 1980's. They are very popular as well for the western riders for rodeos and as backyard horse owners. At the same time though, funny thing, the Thoroughbred racing breeding stock has been quite inbred, and people often wonder if it might have something to do with the animals breaking down so early on in their career. Mustangs are often sought after for their hardiness and endurance from having to live off the elements.
I like wild horses but they are not native to the US so kill them all.
Long time ago, before the ice bridges, they were...... But by that measure, lets kill off all the humans that aren't Native Americans on this part of the continent.
Most of us can handle the word slaughter we understand it does happen. To play it off as humanely "euthanized" is misleading and will never lead to a solution, if people think these horses are not enduring torture or fright. Don't assume because someone speaks out that you offended them or they're too emotional to understand what you're talking about.
I'd rather not assume these horses are destroying land, facts are better than assuming. By assuming the horses are destroying land is what leads others to think they need to be downsized in herd or destroyed. My guess the problem lies with the ranchers who want more land for their free range cattle and won't find compromise with the wild horses. I would think some kind of birth control or neutering would calm the birth rate, but animal activist are against this.
Rather than interest groups coming together, finding common ground, and compromising, nearly everything in the wild horse and burro program is accomplished with lawsuits and bitterness.
That's the way I would like to see things like this handled too.
^^^Surgical birth control options are out; simple gelding won't do the job, since all it take is one intact stallion to impregnate dozens of mares, and spaying mares is a very dangerous and difficult surgery.
More practical is a type of immunological birth control called PZP vaccine. You can inject it into a mare and block pregnancy for up to 2 years. But it, too has some issues:
1. It's not permanent. You have to keep rounding up the mares over and over and re-immunizing them. This isn't much of a problem in places like Assateague Island, where the herd is confined to a small area of land and can be closely monitored, but it's a lot tougher out in the west where the rangelands are so much larger.
2. It stops pregnancy, but it doesn't stop the mare from going into estrous, which she will do monthly after she's immunized. In the wild, horses normally foal in the late spring, and by mid summer all the mares are pregnant again. During the period when the mares are coming into heat, the herd stallion has to regularly fend off challenges from rival stallions who want to steal his mares, but this dies down a lot after the mares are pregnant and no longer cycling. After PZP administration, the band mare are cycling all year, so the hubub typical of spring continues to go on all year, taking a toll on both the stallion and his mares.
3. The duration of the infertility can vary, leading to mares becoming pregnant at inappropriate times of the year and then giving birth to foals which are doomed because they will be too weak to survive the weather.
Nonetheless, I expect PZP vaccine to be increasingly used to control wild horse fertility - and if researchers can come up with a version of the vaccine that confers really long-lasting (or even better, permanent) infertility, it will be a very valuable tool indeed. It is certainly a better and more humane option than continually rounding up unwanted horses and keeping them in pens at taxpayers' expense for the rest of their natural lives!
I'm all for cutting out the BLM. Let the wild horses be wild. The BLM needs to be extinct.
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