The Wild Free-roaming Horses and Burros Act (1971) as amended requires the protection, management, and control of wild free- roaming horses and burros (WH&B) on public lands managed by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. ��The Act requires these animals to be managed as components of the public lands and limits their distribution to areas they occupied in 1971.� Populations are to be managed in manner designed to achieve and maintain a thriving natural ecological balance and in keeping with the multiple-use management concept for the public lands. Once a determination that overpopulation exists and excess animals are present, agencies are to remove them from the range to achieve appropriate management levels.� Animals that have been removed from the range are to be made available for adoption and private maintenance and care.� The Act has provisions for the destruction of animals for which no adoption demand exists and to sell without limitation those animals older than ten years or that have been passed over for adoption three times.� Annual legislation has prohibited the Bureau of Land Management from implementing these provisions since 2010.� Land managers have difficulty controlling herd growth.� Currently, on-range populations significantly exceed target management numbers.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.