Cross Breeds

Why do these people want to eliminate wild horses?

I was youtubing and I found a few preview clips about a group of wild horses. They discuss that the government or something like that wants to thin out the population of wild horses. I was trying to find the anwsers why but they weren't as specific as I hoped they would. They discuss it in this article in this link below. http://www.pbs.org/engage/blog/cloud-online-activism-save-wild-horses They say why but I'm still not sure why exactly. Why would they need to do such a thing?

Public Comments

1. 1. Horses in the USA are no more native than a...Burmese Python. If we didn't have thousands of "OMG SAVE THE MUSTAAANNNGS!!!" type people running around, they probably would have been thinned out long ago or starved to death, what with modern development limiting the amount of land to graze. 2. I didn't listen to it or read it, but think about it: These animals are living on a certain amount of land. Seeing as they hardly migrate much, they probably need supplemental food provided- and a lot of it. 3. They eat grasses that real, native species (Like Bison, if they haven't been made extinct in the area....) or profitable species like cattle could eat. 4. You get too many animals and not enough food, and they start dying. They starve, a disease goes through, they die. Keeping the numbers down is better for them as a group. 5. This isn't a friggin zoo. If you want all the horses to be "happy" and live and never have to be displaced or killed, go to a stable. If we want to entertain the idea that these are "Wild", we have to treat them like they are wild. -------------------------------------- Needless to say, I am in favor of thinning Mustang herds by adopting them out or something like gelding most of the stallions. I mean, they are not even native- They are an invasive species. They just happen to be an invasive species we get all starry-eyed over, so we let them stay and give them a reserve and help them.
2. Because mustangs reproduce like horny rabbits and they are spiraling out of control. We need to get them under control, as the horse population is already way to large as it is. There is so much breeding that needs to be stopped that it's not even funny. Horse excess is a direct result from things like the racing industry, feral mustangs, backyard breeders, PMU farms (except they may be illegal now? I thought I heard that somewhere) and many other things. It's a contribution from lots of different places that results in way to many horses and no place to put them.
3. because the big ranches want the land to use for raising their cattle and making money.
4. Because there is much to many and they r taking over the land.....they only want to keep the population under control...... I really wish that some there could be something that they could feed stallions so they cant reproduce(only some so there isnt always more and more foals) U really dont know how many horses there is! they have to do it! or wed be over run with horses,,,,,
5. i saw the cloud vids. the blm is thinning them to prevent inbreeding and so the population doesnt get out of control and encroach on local ranching land. them dont "eliminate" them they round op marked ones and sell them at a aunction.
6. They are actually doing th mustangs a favor by thinning out the herd. There is limited land for them to graze on. If the herd wasn't thinned out, they would starve. I didn't read the article so I'm not sure how they are thinning out the herd but I have a feeling it is the same way they thin out the Chincoteague pony herd. Chincoteague ponies are wild horses but no one seems to fuss about them as much. Every year they are herded to the main land, the herd is thinned out, the still wild horses are released, and the rest are sold to good homes. This keeps the horses from starving, thus keeping the herd from becoming extinct.
7. Well our horses aren't native. Horses appeared way back when the first Spanish explorers began coming over to settle in America, and of course some of the horses they brought got loose and became feral. They have to thin out the herds because a the large number of uncontrolled horses can eat the vegetation to nothing, which would not only starve them but the rest of the ecosystem. They aren't eliminating the wild horse. What they do is every year they round up large numbers of them and auction them off, not to slaughter, to people who want them for training or whatever. The horses in excellent condition and have absolutely no problems are left in the wild since they can survive best.
8. I just finished watching the clip you were talking about. And I have a few opinions of my own. I loved that clip first of all. It showed the real beauty of Gods land and nature. And for the people that are for "thinning the crop out" we are not God. He knows what he s doing, nature takes care of its self. I could think of a few thousand people that I would like to see thinned out but that's not our position. People just want to thin them out b/c a) they get money from selling them and b) they have to have land to lease out for hunting and cattle. Everything breeds like bunnies, people, cows, dogs.....maybe we need to start auctioning off a few of each! The government, by law, have to leave so many head of wild life alone. If it was up to the richy people that ave $20,000 horses, the "mutt" breed (mustangs) would go extinct. I think we need to let them be.
9. Well, you seem to have some misconceptions yourself. These horses are not wild! They are feral. They are the descendants of horses brought over by the Spanish and other European settlers who either escaped or were released into the wild. There is a BIG difference between a wild animal and a feral animal. The horses do not really belong there. They are not a native species, and they damage other native species such as the buffalo. Now, I don't think we need to altogether remove them, but it is not good for the ecosystem to allow a non-native species like this to overrun the area. Because horses are not naturally found in North America, the plants here are not adapted to "fight back" the horses and they can quickly kill all of the native plants. It's also not good for the horses for there to be too many of them. They will eat all of the grasses, and with no food left they will starve themselves to death. It's much better for the population to be controlled by relocating them, domesticating them, gelding stallions, and yes, unfortunately in some cases, euthanizing them. The horses don't have many natural predators so it is up to man to control the population. Man put them there, now man needs to fix the problem he caused. I'll give you an example of something that happened near me. There is a park called Catoctin Mountain Park that is in Maryland. It's a very nice park, but there is a problem. The wolves in that area are extinct, so the deer have no predators. As a result, the deer population has exploded. The deer then eat all of the underbrush and kill the native plants. Then an invasive species, Stiltgrass (it's from Japan), takes over the area where the underbrush was and kills even more native plants. Deer don't eat stiltgrass because it tastes very bad. The deer would sooner starve than eat stiltgrass, so the deer do starve. The deer are all very thin and have all sorts of health problems due to malnutrition. This has caused the extinction of several rare plant species. So the only solution to the deer problem is to kill deer. They let certain people hunt to prevent the deer from destrying the ecosystem. It's a similar thing with mustangs. The government (the BLM) does NOT want to eliminate them. They just want to lower the population so that it doesn't get too big and then cave in on itself, killing all of the mustangs.
10. Patsy, mustangs have no serious predators that control their population, and the land where most mustang populations are located is very, very ecologically fragile: if it is overgrazed or if damage is done to the ground by hoofs, it leaves the most fertile part of the soil open to erosion by wind and water, and once the land has been damaged it can take decades to recover. Reducing the number of horses by roundups and other means is necessary. If the population of horses on the land exceeds the number of horses that it can carry (forage and water are the limitations), then populations start to starve. Death by starvation is very slow and painful. When the land the horses are on shows signs of damage by overpopulation, action HAS to be taken. If not, there will be horses starving in the winter.
11. they are not native animals to our country. and they can cause damage to farmers land and such like deer. i do not want them eliminated i love the breed they make amazing horses but the fact is they can be a nuisance
12. They should keep a few small bands, but not the feedlots full of them that we the tax payers are paying for the vet care, farrier care, best of hay and Helicopter to run them into pens. I've been to a few sales in this area. Can't even the get them sold for $125. They are taking feed that deer, bison, cattle, elk can be eating, they can be human food. These that are not trainable are kept, but cannot be used as food, that is rediculous. The stud called Medecine Hat, been to 4 trainers could not be trained. Has lepord color and massive moddled skin. pink around eyes the kind that gets sunburn and then cancer. So instead of putting him down, they give him a heard of mared so he can reproduce more like him!!! There are people going to bed hungry here in the US and we feed over 3,000 of them and people go hungry. What a shame. We should be feeding people and not that many horses.