The U.S. Land Management Bureau plans to drastically reduce the number of wild horses and donkeys on public lands, the advisory group reports.

After numerous lawsuits and public protests, the bureau horse management teams were limited to the emergency removal of horses and donkeys.

Long-standing wild horse advocates fear it will be difficult to reduce approximately 90,000 wild horses and donkeys in the country to 26,715 — a number that the bureau considers environmentally sustainable.

Wild mustangs and donkeys, descendants of runaway horses from the pioneering era of the United States, are freely distributed in 10 states, protected under the Wild Free Horses and Burro Act of 1971.

Agency officials say that due to the small number of natural predators, their population has grown too much and that some herds can double in four years. Animals roam private lands, overgraze in fields and pastures, and deplete water resources.

“These are difficult situations that require difficult choices,” said board member Steven Yardley, a livestock owner in Utah. “We are facing an environmental disaster.”

In 2019, the bureau removed 7,276 horses and donkeys from pastures in accordance with a schedule published on the Internet. Most of the animals caught go to long-term pastures in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Since March, a program to find hosts for horses and donkeys has been offering people $ 1,000 for every animal taken. The agency reported that more than 7 thousand horses and donkeys were taken. Meanwhile, the commission agreed to recommend that the Bureau continue the controversial plan to sterilize female horses on rangelands.

Wild horses, however, cannot be to blame for pasture destruction, and there is no need to remove them from them, some of those who commented on the situation say.