While the wild horse population on Bureau of Land Management has more than tripled since 1971, despite annual removals of as many as 20,000 horses, there are now only half as many cattle and sheep on the range as there were when the Wild Free Roaming Horse & Burro Act of 1971 was passed by Congress.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility argued in a recent report that as of the end of 2023, two-thirds of Bureau of Land Management range land, about 44 million acres, are severely degraded by overgrazing, only about 1% of it due to wild horses.
