“The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is failing to apply its own data about the growing adverse impacts of livestock grazing on Western public lands and is instead blaming wild horses for land degradation, according to a new analysis released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a leading environmental watchdog organization. In a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, PEER blasted the department for ignoring “[v]ast amounts of data concerning the ecological impacts of grazing” and unsustainable livestock practices. PEER called the Interior Department’s focus on wild horse removals when these animals are outnumbered by livestock 30-1 “the antithesis of sound science.”
The American Wild Horse Campaign welcomed PEER’s letter, stating that it supports the group’s position that political pressure from the livestock industry, not science, is driving the BLM’s mass wild horse and burro roundup program.”
