East Coast suburbanite that I am, it’s easy for me to casually root for a booming population of wild horses in the West. I don’t have to worry about any ecological repercussions, just as it’s unlikely that I’ll discover a grizzly bear or mountain lion on my property, or have to contend with a pack of wolves hunting my livestock. I understand that wildlife isn’t abstract to western ranchers and that the land can only sustain a certain level of population in any species before other species or flora begin to suffer as result.

So, I have no strong opinions about what the government should do about the mustang problem, I’m not opposed on principle to rounding them up nor even to culling their numbers, if that’s what experts believe is necessary. It does seem a little crazy to just keep tens of thousands of them in storage, however, at a cost of $3 billion a year.

I like the idea of the plains teeming with bison and the mountain valleys covered in galloping herds of mustangs. I get a thrill out of seeing a wolf pack on the hunt as the sun rises on Yellowstone park, and I have a real fondness (and quite a bit of fear) for the grizzly bear. But I know that everything has to have a balance, and when we protect one species we can put others at risk.

Sentimentality plays an important role in maintaining public support for conservation and species preservation, but it can’t be the driver of actual public land management.

The roundup operation itself is strikingly efficient — a helicopter and a few workers in jean jackets can catch scores of mustangs in a day. The bureau rounded up 7,300 in 2019.

But once they are caught, they have to be fed and cared for. And the costs and frictions of having so many animals on the government’s hands — 49,000 at last count — have pushed the whole wild horse program toward collapse.

The rented pastures and feed lots where they are kept now devour more than two-thirds of the program’s budget, leaving little money for anything else, including looking for ways to get the bureau out of its current fix.

Low on cash, the bureau cut roundups drastically in recent years. But officials acknowledge that the move just made matters worse, by allowing the population on the range to grow rapidly. There are now about 100,000 wild horses and burros on public lands — more than at any time since the days of the Old West. The government reckons the land can sustain only about 27,000.

Bureau officials warn that the mustang herds are a looming catastrophe for the land, and there is no cheap or obvious solution. Capturing all the excess horses and caring for them in storage for the rest of their lives could cost up to $3 billion. Doing nothing may prove costly, too.

In the old days, they used mustangs for dog food and fertilizer, and they tamed many of them and sent them east to work. My guess is that this isn’t something that would have widespread public support today. Yet, I don’t know that there’s a particularly good reason to feed 50,000 or 100,000 or 200,000 horses who never give anything back in terms of work, food, or materials.  The public probably wouldn’t be thrilled with this policy if they knew about it, mainly because it doesn’t make much sense.

One alternative is to remotely sterilize the horses with dart guns. This can avoid a lot of problems, including the ethical concerns (if any) of large culling operations. But apparently it’s not that cheap or easy to do.

A 2013 report by the National Academy of Sciences urged the bureau to shift away from roundups and start using readily available and inexpensive fertility control drugs, which are typically administered by dart gun annually in the field.

Bureau leaders acknowledged the warnings and promised to embrace fertility control drugs, but their use actually declined in the years after the report. Less than 1 percent of the program’s current budget is spent on them.

Nearly all of the fertility control now happening on wild horse ranges is done by local volunteers, often retirees, who have learned to wield dart guns in the field.

If nothing is done, the horses will leave little food for other animals like elk and wild grouse, so this isn’t about being for or against wildlife.  Proper land management isn’t easy and politics always have a way of distorting sensible policies. I’m no expert in this field, nor do I pretend to be.

I do think it’s a pretty spectacular sight, though, to see wild horses on the move. I’m glad they’ve made a strong comeback.