I'll be the first to agree the horses need to be removed BUT it is unrealistic to believe that ALL horses will be removed, ever!! If you think that can happen, you're living in a fantasy world. We (Hunters) couldn't keep the tree huggers from "Introducing" wolves, how the he!! can we get a species removed that has been around for 600 years???
The tree huggers will out spend us 1000-1 on that one. They've already bought a zillion acre ranch as a "refuge" for the horses.
And the BLM is doing a good job, in my opinion, against public opposition. Every time there is a round up, the tree huggers show up with video equipment and film. On the first day of last year's round up, some horse broke a leg, running from the helicopter and it was all over the news, swaying public opinion in their favor. The BLM continued the round up.
In a lot of instances I believe we could "band" together and make positive changes but in this one area I think we need to give positive reinforcement to BLM and maybe nudge them to increase their efforts. But for the most part they are already fighting this battle for us.
My understanding is that they have to release all of the horses they gather that are over 4 years old anyways. Everytime I hear about a gather, I hear statistics like, they captured 2,750 horses and removed 1,100. You can't even take an old, broke down domestic horse to the auction yard for chicken feed anymore. A Federal law prohibits that now, they have to be shipped to Mexico or Canada before they can be butchered. How's that for a feel good law? Instead of having them butchered here (USA), we eliminated an industry and the horses get packed into rail cars and shipped to another country, butchered and ground into chicken feed and sent back here at a higher cost. We put people out of work and pay more for a lesser product, stupid!!!
You ain't gonna win any battle on that one.
Here's what we are talking about:
NOT THIS
OR THIS
THIS IS A MUSTANG, MINE. Hope you can see the freeze brand on the left side of his neck. It's the white mark below his left ear, on his neck.
And here's another of him. His mane is over the freeze brand.
My vet has the contract at the local BLM corrals and know alot about mustangs. Last year he shaved the hair off of the freeze brand so he could actually read it. Gave the number to the local BLM manager and they came back and told me when and where "Hildago" was captured.