The Bureau of Land Management’s brutal sterilization program for wild horses should not be allowed to take place. The plan calls for the least safe and most invasive method of sterilizing wild horses – even though controlling wild populations is already legally suspect (according to this op-ed).

The sterilization could hardly be called a procedure, as it involves vets literally reaching inside female horses for their ovaries and removing them right there on the spot. Without follow-up, a plan for administering antibiotics, pain relief, or a period of care, horses could hemorrhage or get sepsis and die out in the wild.

The BLM is ignoring other alternatives that could be safer, because of so-called cost, even though the scale of this sterilization program would be massive (and therefore costly) as well as the huge risk of failure. If the program is doomed to fail, it’s been suggested, it would be easier to justify mass cullings of horses by offering the excuse that other alternatives have failed. There is something callous and cynical about the sudden leap to board a large scale program that is not strongly backed by experts, that puts horses through so much unnecessary damage – without even giving pain relief.

Brutality is often justified by “necessity”. This program is crude, unnecessary and incredibly harmful to horses. Please sign the petition and share to protect wild horses.