At a House Energy and Natural Resources Committee meeting in Washington last week, Republican lawmakers criticized the Bureau of Land Management for its plans to research new sterilization methods for wild horses. Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert said there has been enough research and that it's time to start acting.
“We don’t have time for a lot more studies. This has been an issue for years. It seems like we need a bill to end the studies and start the implementation.”
Wyoming’s BLM Office is conducting one sterilization study near Rock Springs on the White Mountain and Little Colorado herds, late next fall. BLM spokeswoman Cindy Wertz says it’s a controversial issue and that’s why good science is needed.
“Well, there are people that would prefer that we leave the horses roaming naturally. And then there are people that would prefer that all the horses are gathered. So what we need to do is find a middle ground between those two.”
Wertz says wild horses double the size of their herds every four years and that the Rock Springs herds are well over their management levels.
Since the 1980s, the BLM has experimented with contraceptives like PZP. But most of them have to be re-administered each year, which means rounding up thousands of horses. The new methods would involve permanent spaying. Wertz says she could not yet specify what method of sterilization will be used since it will depend on the conclusions of other studies happening in Oregon. Those studies involve removing mare ovaries and tubal ligation, both which have been tried before. But they’ll also try a new approach of scarring and sealing the ovarian ducts.
