Wild horse management and conservation is one of the most politically charged issues on the federal public lands, and it is critically important to have objective, unbiased research to help inform the policy debate. The recent University of Wyoming study led by Jeffrey Beck on sage grouse and wild horses doesn’t live up to this standard. Most glaringly, the study fails to consider the impacts of cattle and sheep on sage grouse.
Opinion
The study made no attempt to measure wild horse population density per square mile, which would be the objective measure of horse impact on sage grouse habitat. Instead, it used percentages of politically influenced Bureau of Land Management population targets called “appropriate management levels,” which vary widely from area to area. It’s like setting an arbitrary population target of 20,000 people in Laramie, then calling Laramie “overpopulated” at 30,000 residents, and then comparing that level of human impact to Rawlins with a population of 8,200 and an arbitrary target set at 5,470. That puts both towns 50% over their population targets, but the targets themselves are arbitrary. Clearly, human impacts in the two towns are different. That’s one critical flaw in the study.
But let’s get to the biggest flaw: failure to consider the effects of cattle and sheep.
Cattle and sheep impacts on sage grouse habitats are well-established, and these impacts were identified as a principal threat to the species when sage grouse were found warranted for listing in 2010. When grazers — cattle and sheep are typically authorized to graze 50 to 65% of the annual forage production — reduce grass height below 7 inches, sage grouse are more exposed to predators and their camouflage is less effective, resulting in reduced nest success. When grazing gets so heavy that native perennial bunchgrasses are suppressed, cheatgrass can invade the disturbed landscape, resulting in a loss of forbs and poor habitat quality, and fires that wipe out the sagebrush.
Peter Coates of the U.S. Geological Survey co-authored the Beck paper, and its methods mirror a 2021 study that Coates and others did in Nevada and northeast California. In that study, like this one, Coates cast wild horse “overpopulation” as the degree to which wild horse populations exceeded arbitrary appropriate management level targets set by agency bureaucrats, a level the National Academies of Science found to have no scientific basis. Coates failed to include domestic livestock grazing in the model, even though livestock grazing has consistently been found to be a key variable affecting sage grouse habitat quality.
Coates, when presenting his 2021 findings at a webinar, was explicitly questioned on why grazing impacts by cattle and sheep were excluded from the model. His response to the question treated livestock grazing as part of the baseline on western public lands, while the impacts of wild horses are “extra grazing on the landscape aside from cattle grazing.” In other words, domestic livestock are an integral part of sage grouse habitat, so their effect on bird populations can be ignored.
It’s an outrageous assertion that exposes an extreme level of scientific bias.
Wild horse impacts on sage grouse habitats are intertwined with livestock grazing and with those of every other wild herbivore. The only way to tease them apart is with rigorous hypothesis testing that offers both livestock and wild horse densities to the model, comparing the relative influence of each on sage grouse populations. Doing so would answer three key questions. Do wild horses have the primary impact on sage grouse numbers? Or do cattle and sheep have the primary impact on sage grouse numbers? How do the impacts of wild horses and livestock on sage grouse compare? The failure of these researchers to ask the right questions, and to tease apart the impacts of the different herbivores in question, suggests that they didn’t want to know the answer.
The Bureau of Land Management sets how many livestock it authorizes for each lease parcel annually and publishes wild horse population estimates each spring. Access to information is not the problem. It’s industry sway over management decisions.
The Bureau of Land Management is responsible for managing sage grouse habitats and regulates livestock numbers and wild horses alike. If wild horse numbers climb above herd targets, the agency has full legal authority — under 43 CFR § 4710.5 — to close wild horse Herd Management Areas to domestic livestock, temporarily or permanently, to compensate. Grazing permits also include terms that allow the Bureau of Land Management to end livestock grazing when forage starts getting scarce or land health problems emerge. Such adjustments would lessen combined habitat impacts on sage grouse, and all other species. Yet, we rarely see the agency do this. Clearly, the Bureau cares more about keeping the livestock industry happy than it does about maintaining viable sage grouse populations, and it appears that the University of Wyoming is complicit in scapegoating horses as a means to sidestep the hard truths about cattle.
Consider Beck’s response to Molvar’s criticism: “Livestock were factored in, just not directly…We use the BLM numbers…” The problem? BLM establishes HMAs & “appropriate management levels” for wild horses. For livestock, BLM assumes livestock damage is rare, even when assessments come from self-monitored evaluation by livestock permittees. Because he depends on BLM data, Beck’s study also ignores the fact that sage grouse habitat — esp. terrain — is often damaged by extractive industries. The narrow focus Beck claims for his study doesn’t have to be done with blinders.
Note the positive effects of removing cattle from Hart Mountain, Oregon.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_2015_batchelor.pdf
The Bureau of Land Management leans toward favoring cattle grazing, much in demand by the cattle owners. The fee for renting grazing land is strikingly low, so
it is a lucrative situation for the ranchers. But cattle do much of the fouling of
water sources, eating vegetation to the nub. There are already many cattle on western land, and the do damage. Horses have a lighter impact, but the BLM is
shifting them away from their traditional lands according to their decisions about how many should be allowed there. The roundups, using helicopters, drives the horses — mares and their foals — in fear, especially the foals, who are often injured and killed in the rampage. This rough control of the animals is cruel and unnecessary. We need better information about why horses must be moved to accommdate grazing cattle. I would like a public hearing on the policies that underly the treatment of these iconic horses before worse things happen to them.
Cattle are the destroyers of lands, not Wild Hoses, and Burros. Please stop scapegoating wild horses, and burros, saving them, alongwith sage grouse, and stop cattle grazing. Our wildlife, are more important on our lands than cattle. Cattle are killing the grasses, and greenhouse emissions are out of control with cattle.
Cattle have been a problem since cattlemen forced public parks to allow them to graze their herds for free. The herds dictate what animals may remain in those public lands. I think it’s time to take the power out of the hands of cattlemen. they can graze on their own land, and we the people can determine what animals we want in our parks as we enjoy the herds of wild horses running free for a hundred more years. The herds have survived here for hundreds of years and I wonder at what point does science say an animal is indigenous.
The wild horses are always scapegoated and always pay the price for the overgrazing of the sheep and cattle. The bottom line is that big money wins out in the end. The wild horses are just collateral damage to them. They just don’t care and they don’t see their value.
EXACTLY , wild horses are not to blame. It’s the cattle and sheep owners that are ruling the BLM. These are supposed to be government lands that was where wild horses should roam free. Wild horses do not overgraze the land, they keep moving where as cattle and sheep graze that land down to the roots. Besides that, there is such an abundance of wide open spaces for horses to occupy that there is no need for these horrific roundups that exhaust these animals and are separated from their families, put , into holding pens where they are so stress out trying to free themselves that they die trying to get free. Some day, these iconic wild horses will be on the endangered list also. Horses were the back bone of this country, they carried soldiers into battle, pulled artillery wagons and gave up their lives as did our soldiers, plowed fields, etc. to make this country what it is today. With the help of humane sterilization of mares this would reduce their population greatly at a lower cost than roundups and keeping them in holding pens with hopes that they will be auctioned off to buyers that would eventually sell them to the meat men. How disgraceful and sad for such an iconic animal. My heart goes out to all these wild horses. Let them roam in peace !!!
The cattle industry often acts as though it owns the West, and the BLM is complicit in this twisting of the facts. Industry spokesmen automatically blame wild horses for the degradation of grazing land, whereas it is mostly the cattle and sheep that denude the landscape of suitable habitat for wildlife. Obviously cattle industry lobbyists are having an outsized influence on the BLM and specifically the branch of that federal agency in charge of wild horse management. This has got to stop.
Cattle and sheep are not native wildlife to that area. They are the extra. This is a scientific not political view. The wild horse has been there for who knows how long. The eco system was not disrupted until now.
This is an example of big lobby and the government saying this is so with no facts but making it fact. Then all should believe and not question the authority of the government. It is turning the ecosystem into a corporate state which exchanges money for whatever and whomever they can buy. Then it’s a communistic state for all those that don’t exist is that bubble and are trying to save the ecosystem from greed.
This is a sad time for Mustangs.
Horses can be tamed and trained, and send to other nations to help in farming, Africa, South America, central America, Asia, Europe.
Let cattle feed on the land, help the farmers.
I agree! If we are going to take a number of wild horses off of our public land, then that same number of livestock should be taken off also. All impact the grouse but only the horses suffer! That needs to stop and the BLM must stop protecting livestock ranchers. I want to see wild horses. NOT CATTLE OR SHEEP on our public lands. Those lands belong to all of us!
Wild horses compete with sage grouse for habitat and forage. So do cattle, sheep and domestic horses. So does oil and gas development, mining, recreation, highways and roads, housing developments, conversion of large tracts of land into ranchettes and urbanization. Other wildlife species that are less sensitive than sage-grouse have moved into landscapes that they didn’t formally occupy, competing with sage grouse. The decline of sage grouse is a big ecological deal, however, after spending the last 40 years working and describing our range lands, I have noticed the decline in several other wildlife species as well; notably logger headed shrike, sagebrush obligate sparrows, kestrel, snakes and mule deer. I have also seen increases in non native plants and animals as well.
The cumulative effects of all the competing uses, is what drives the decline in our wildlife and native plants. If you want to point your finger at anything, its the multiple use policy that governs BLM and Forest Service lands, and the lack of land planning on private lands. Managing these competing interests on wild lands has become untenable and I expect it will get worse as long as we keep pointing the finger at the other guy and not working cooperatively to solve these problems.
Jim Managna, director of the Wyoming Welfare Stockgrowers is definitely very pleased by this highly biased report that takes the heat off the immense numbers of domestic livestock that overgraze the public lands. Managna may be the most powerful person in Wyoming, even above the Governor plus he seems to control the policies of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Heck, the G & F game wardens patrol the private landholdings and act as private security fort the rich and famous at the price of “on the house”. Have a hunter harassment issue against some welfare cowboy on public lands? G & F will ignore it and try to turn the blame around, yet just get accused of trespassing on a land baron’s property and G & F will be on you like stink on _($t
I have raised horses and cattle my entire life. On private land. We watch, often in disbelief, as federal management damages our public resources. Grazing could be an important tool for suppressing fire, cheatgrass and other invasives. Grazing with optimal timing will increase soil fertility and increase production of beneficial species. Excellent article. It’s good to see the outdated, unsuccessful system questioned.
Wild horse supporters don’t pay kickbacks to the BLM. The wealthy do and that is why Wild Horses are expendable. The Wild Horses are innocent creatures that are just trying to survive in nature with nature. They hurt no one intentionally. However, they graze on valuable real estate (free range land) that cattle and sheep Barons can rent for pennies on the dollar to run their money making crop of domestic livestock on so that they don’t have to pay to feed them. Meanwhile, us everyday tax payers foot the astronomical bills of paying to round up wild animals ( majestic Wild Horses) with loud, scary helicopters and dozens of people, many trucks and other sorted equipment, that are then forced into small enclosures and fed grain and hay paid for by us taxpayers while the cattle and sheep ranchers enlarge their herds and their own pockets. Those beautiful wild horses are relegated to catch pens where they suffer aimlessly so the rich get richer. American capitalism at it’s finest. Where are their morals? Do they care about the suffering that the wild horses endure?
When the horses are being rounded up they are often killed or maimed. Including the foals. They don’t stay in those pens. They are sold for slaughter if no one buys them at auction.
The grouse and wild horses have coexisted well for hundreds of years. The wild horses eat plants and the seeds pass through their system and are replanted in their excrement. It’s the cattle that are the invasive species devouring the plants and the seeds go through the cows 4 stomachs and are destroyed and unable to grow from their excrement. Cows are being introduced in ever increasing numbers to satisfy ranchers profits never taking the environment into account. Constantly blaming the horses for the damage the cattle are doing is wrong. The horses and the grouse have a symbiotic relationship. Remove the cattle or at the very least reduce their numbers and the problems will solve them self. Stop removing the wild horses 🐎.
Are these legitimate researchers, or are they simply providing cover and drawing attention away from the ranchers and woolgrowers?
What Mr. Molvar fails to consider in this peice is the fact that feral horses are an invasive species and cattle are an easily managed livestock animal. No matter how romantic or iconic feral horses have become in the eyes of tourists, they are not a species native to the west. It is absolutely fair to study the impact of an unmanaged (at least that is the management system that appears to be advocated for here) invasive species separate from the impacts of managed livestock is completely fair. Cattle and horses have very distinguishably different impacts on pasture, anyone who has kept both understands the difference. Those who haven’t will continue to have uneducated opinions on the subject.
I’m no fan of feral horses because of t he damage they cause to wildlife habitat.
You are spot on with your opinion regarding cattle and sheep habitat destruction, not just sage grouse but try to find à riparian area that hasn’t been seriously adversely impacted by cattle and sheep on public lands..
Excellent article, Erik!
Unfortunately, public university researchers are justifiably afraid of saying anything negative about the ranching industry which is so politically powerful. Witness the reaction to Debra L. Donahue’s (1999), The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands To Conserve Native Biodiversity. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
As far as BLM is concerned, Mike Hudak’s Western Turf Wars has documented how BLM staff who tried to enforce regulations on grazing were attacked by Wyoming politicos and transferred or fired.
The author’s offhand comment on the (lack of) impact of cattle is not something a professor should make without providing documentation to back up his assertion.
Thanks for the facts, Erik. Sage grouse and wild horses have shared the range for centuries without harm. Cattle over-graze and destroy habitat and pollute water and should be removed from places where sage grouse are threatened.
I couldn’t have said it better! The cattle industry probably financed the study with wild horses being the cause. Most public lands that are used for grazing and managed under BLM are always siding with cattle association.
How do you know that sage grouse and wild horses shared the range for centuries without harm?
Because they are all still there, aren’t they! Cattle cause different problems, but problems anyway. Take the horses off and take the cattle and sheep off also. Then you may have my vote .
Yes, sage grouse are still there but not in the numbers prior to the invasion of their habitat starting in the early 1800s.
It’s too bad that there is so much truth to this. I believe there are many management options to fix the problem but we don’t seem to think we need to fix it. For that reason, and the industry folks, I don’t think sage-grouse are going to survive our “progress.”
Thanks for spreading light in the form of a much more honest perspective on this issue. By the way, as a scholar as well as appreciator of the naturally living returned native horses, It aggravates me to see how the many positive contributions of wild horses are ignored by wild horse enemies who deliberately target them for discrediting and elimination not because this is right but because of their own narrow-minded and selfish interests!
Great dissection. Indeed, cattle grazing is so baked into the culture of many public lands managers that management has historically almost always been management to improve grazing conditions. For example, many plants that are more successful for sage steppe restoration, say basin wild rye, or rabbit brush, are often overlooked because they either don’t withstand heavy grazing, or are unpalatable to cows. Likewise many juniper / pinyon pine eradication efforts, once, like sagebrush chaining, were explicitly done to improve cattle grazing, and now operate under the guise of ‘restoration’ or habitat improvement.
I’ll buy that!
The spread of horses across the US became more noticeable by the late 1600s as they were part of the exploration by Europeans. In the west and patricianly Wyoming cattle did not appear as a commercial product until the late 1800s, or about 200 years after horses. The large increase in cattle was tied directly to the construction of the transcontinental railroad, which provided a means to ship train loads of livestock to eastern markets. Keep in mind that settlement of the west generally bypassed Wyoming due to the climate and sparse vegetation compared to California, Oregon and Washington. California statehood happened in 1850. It was the only state in west. Again the railroad was the main factor that tied the west coast to the mid west (Omaha) to rest of the US.
The large cattle drives (Lonesome Dove) happen between 1865- early to mid 1900s. Those too ended because of new transportation networks such as improved highways and more rail lines in the Midwest.
Thus the question of a baseline starting point would be difficult to establish but at a minimum prior to the late 1800s may be somewhat reasonable.
Feral horses would be livestock.Having grown up on a ranch in NE WYO, with cows and horses in abundance(and a couple bison because sheep are lame), the ecological impact of equine and bovine species on everything else is fun to watch.
Great opinion piece, Erik. If you want to personally witness overgrazing and cattle and sheep grazing wild horses ranges (at same time as the horses), check out the Bighorn Basin region. On the McCullough Peaks HMA, there are cattle grazing and on the Fifteen Mile HMA, you have several large bands of sheep on it. Much of the annual forage grazed goes way past the 50-60% mark is nubbed down to the dirt and then we all wonder why there is so much cheatgrass?! This isn’t just on the HMA’s. If you want to take it a step further, look at the severe overgrazing of the riparian areas in the Northern sector of the Bighorn National forest. Where are the BLM and USFS range detectives? It seems that a blind eye is cast by the so called protectors of the range whenever the stockmen are decimating the cookie jar
When a member of the public presents information regarding over-grazing on public lands, the modus operandi of the Wind River/Big Horn BLM is to (in no particular order): Play dumb…deny the information…cast the reporting person as ignorant of what they’re seeing…do absolutely nothing about the situation. Regarding the article, letting the U of W compile some sage grouse/cattle report is like letting the fox have the key to the chicken coop.
I never cease to be amazed at how often folks like this author seem to consider the “livestock industry” as nothing but an impediment to their dreams. how many grouse are eliminated by cows? Documented? What would be the impact on human food to eliminate ranching instead of figuring ways to make them work together? Don’t forget the cattle recycle the grass etc and the fertilizer promotes the growth of more grass in addition to providing some food for various critters.
The affect of livestock grazing on sage-grouse mortality has been well documented–ironically–by one of the same researchers that the left the impact of stock out of the recent research on the relationship between sage-grouse and wild horses.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3783858
Marion, I don’t think that this author or others see this as an impediment to their dreams. I believe that they are in fact trying to balance the outcome of shared resources with reality. As of 2023 Wyoming ranked 14th in beef production in the United States. Wyoming has more public land than any of the top 10 ranked states in beef production and yes, we know that a great deal of that land is used for grazing livestock. Yes, agreed, we need to find a way to work together, but first the ranching community needs to see things as they really are. In Wyoming, I would consider ranching a highly subsidized industry.