Erik Molvar: The American Wild Horse Crisis

"It is not hyperbole to say that livestock grazing on Western public lands is the single biggest and most important environmental impact that does the most damage. And, also causes the most widespread impact of any of the things that damage public lands, including oil and gas development, including strip mining and mountaintop removal, including, damming, the rivers. Livestock raising is the most pervasive and the most ecologically harmful - and it's everywhere." - Erik Molvar

In the United States, we have around 80,000 wild horses living on Western public lands. For decades, there's been a battle between the people who want these horses to stay and roam freely and the people who want them gone. Many of the people who want them gone are either a part of, or connected to the cattle industry.And, the agency that makes these decisions, whether the horses stay or go, is the Bureau of Land Management, the BLM.

There are herds living on public lands throughout the Western United States. And one of, or maybe the most, beloved herd is the Onaqui. They live in Utah, around 60 miles from Salt Lake City. Because they're close to a city, people visit them often. The horses have become accustomed to a human audience, so they don't flee when they see humans. They trust them. Or at least they did until a couple of weeks ago when 435 of these majestic and very free horses were rounded up with helicopters by the BLM.

124 of them will become part of a birth control program and be released to the wild. But the other 300 will be put in a government holding facility. Eventually some might get adopted, but many will remain and holding for years. These roundups happen all the time, but the Onaqui roundup got a lot of publicity because these horses were so adored.

The BLM's reason for rounding up our horses is that they degrade public lands when the herds get too large. Now these same lands are rented for use for millions and millions of cattle and sheep. The horses are a teeny tiny fraction of animals that live on that land.

Today's conversation is with Eric Molvar. He is not a wild horse advocate. He's a wildlife biologist and the executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, a nonprofit conservation group dedicated to protecting and restoring wildlife and watersheds across the American West. I asked Eric to come onto the show so that I could better understand how and why these roundups continue to happen.