Wild Animal Overprotection – So Soon We Forget
By Rex Cleary and Jeremy Drew*
Wild horse advocates recently filed a lawsuit against BLM in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., to
halt a planned roundup of 2,400 excess horses in northern Nevada. The suit claims the horses are an
integral part of the natural ecosystem and should remain on rangeland. Additionally, advocates have
launched a sweeping initiative to force wild horse “overprotection” on society with a national gathering
moratorium. However, overprotection of wild animals is fraught with hazards.
Mule deer and wild horses both require control of excess reproduction to stabilize the herds. Deer
populations can be held in check by natural predators plus human harvest with hunting tags. Conversely,
wild horses have few natural predators and human harvest by agency gathers is essential. Without
some form of reproduction controls their populations will double every four years. BLM and FS have
sufficiently controlled wild horse populations so that the full destructive force of overpopulation has not
been expressed on western rangelands. However, the destructive force was vividly expressed in the
classic case of the Kaibab Plateau Deer Herd of Northern Arizona.
In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt designated the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve to
“showcase” the Kaibab Deer Herd considered the Nation’s finest. To increase deer numbers, hunting
was eliminated and natural predators were nearly eliminated. Populations exploded from an estimated
3,000 deer in 1906 to as many as 100,000 in 1923. The deer herd had far exceeded the carrying capacity
of its habitat. Measures to reduce the herd were too little, too late. Thousands of deer starved and
froze to death winter after winter. The Nation’s “showcase” was left in deplorable condition.
Reports on the case document that wildlife populations will continue to increase after causing severe
habitat abuse before the populations will implode and starve. This classic case triggered the revision of
big game management guidelines throughout the wildlife profession, and its lessons influence
management today.
There are striking similarities between the current campaign to “overprotect and showcase” wild horses
and the Kaibab Deer Herd.
So soon we forget!
*About authors – Rex Cleary, a retired BLM employee with extensive wild horse experience as Manager
of the Montana Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range - four years, and Susanville BLM District’s thirteen
wild horse Herd Management Areas - fourteen years. Jeremy Drew, President Northern Nevada Chapter
of Safari Club International holds a Conservation Biology Degree from UNR. As a professional resource
consultant and life- long conservationist/sportsman he’s experienced, first hand, the interaction between
wildlife and wild horses throughout Northern Nevada.