LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Nevada Congresswoman, Dina Titus wants to put a stop to the use of helicopters in round-up horses and much more.
Over hundreds of thousands of years, the first equines on earth roamed and evolved in Nevada’s Great Basin.
In the past century, their re-introduced ancestors have been decimated, dwindling from millions of North American mustangs to perhaps 70,000 today.
Typically, bands of horses are surprised and frightened by the loud machines that suddenly appear in the sky, often buzzing within feet of the mustangs’ heads.
The herds scatter and scramble across rough terrain. Some are chased for miles. Others suffer broken legs or injuries that mean they must be put down. During each roundup, the BLM releases statistics on the number of horses killed.
Wild horse advocate Jerry Reynoldson has spent decades trying to get the BLM to try something other than rounding up the mustangs from public lands, often done in order to clear the way for private cattle to graze on the same range.
“The number killed will depend on how many are gathered, but there’s always a loss of life when the use of helicopters around them, always,” said Reynoldson.
Administrations come and go, but the BLM policy of scooping up wild horses never changes. Since the ’70s, that has meant helicopter roundups that are brutally efficient.
Nevada Congresswoman Dina Titus has worked on measures to manage and protect the mustangs since her days in the State Legislature but says a particular image was the last straw for her.
It’s the image of a colt, trying to escape from a helicopter despite a broken leg. The horse had to be euthanized, as did others during a Nevada roundup last month.
“The roundups with the helicopters are the worst,” she said. “They chased that little colt until he just ran down and they had to shoot him. What purpose does that serve? So we need to find another method, and the first thing we can do is to get rid of and outlaw those helicopters.”
On Tuesday morning, Titus spoke on the floor of the house in support of her bill to eliminate helicopter roundups of wild horses.
She thinks her bill will garner rare bipartisan support, not merely because of the animal cruelty issues, but because helicopter roundups are incredibly expensive, costing the taxpayers $500 to $800 dollars per captured horse, meaning more than 40 million public dollars have been paid to fewer than 5 private contractors who do the work.
After the surviving horses are captured, the expenses mount. They get shipped off to be warehoused for the rest of their lives at ranches owned by other contractors.
“I’m not saying you don’t need to manage wildlife on BLM land or forest service land throughout Nevada, but there’s got to be a better way to do it than running them into a canyon with a helicopter,” Titus added.
Images like the one that mobilized Titus are harder to come by in recent years. The BLM makes sure that public observers are kept far away from the actual roundups.
Reynoldson is among those who will support the Titus bill but predicts major opposition in the senate because of the big money that flows in a circle.
“What we have here is a big loop, we gather the horses to help the ranchers so they can have subsidized grazing. We pay millions to run a program that’s a huge loss to the taxpayers and then we turn around when we take them off and pay them. Millions and millions of dollars to hold them for the rest of their life,” said Reynoldson.
Congresswoman Titus hopes focusing attention on helicopter roundups might lead to broader changes throughout the wild horse and burro program.