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BLM’s LEOs must keep in touch, work closely, and coordinate with fellow federal, state, and local law enforcement officers. In the Trump Administration, they joined state and local law enforcement in arresting dangerous suspects in Cortez, Colorado; responded to a request from a rural sheriff in Arizona to rescue a family stuck in freezing temperatures; and, teamed up in an all-hands-on-deck effort to locate a missing American Indian teenager in rural Montana. More important, western LEOs need the assurance that the BLM LEOs with whom they work are professionals who report through a professional chain of command.

Wild Horses and Burros. In 1971, Congress ordered the BLM to manage wild horses and burros to ensure their iconic presence never disappeared from the western landscape. For decades, Congress watched as these herds overwhelmed the land’s ability to sustain them, crowded out indigenous plant and other animal species, threatened the survival of species listed under the Endangered Species Act, invaded private and permitted public land, disturbed private property rights, and turned the sod into concrete. BLM experts said in 2019 that some affected land will never recover from this unmitigated damage.

There are 95,000 wild horses and burros roaming nearly 32 million acres in the West—triple what scientists and land management experts say the range can support. These animals face starvation and death from lack of forage and water. The population has more than doubled in just the past 10 years and continues to grow at arate of 10 to 15 percent annually. This number includes the more than 47,000 animals the BLM has already gathered from public lands, at a cost to the American taxpayer of nearly $50 million annually to care for them in off-range corrals.

This is not a new issue—it is not just a western issue—it is an American issue. What is happening to these once-proud beasts of burden is neither compassionate nor humane, and what these animals are doing to federal lands and fragile ecosystems is unacceptable. In 2019, the American Association of Equine Practitioners and the American Veterinary Medication Association—two of the largest organizations of professional veterinarians in the world—issued a joint policy calling for further reducing overpopulation to protect the health and well-being of wild horses and burros on public lands. The National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, a panel of nine experts and professionals convened to advise the BLM, endorsed the joint policy. Furthermore, animal welfare organizations such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Humane Society of the United States recognize that the prosperity of wild horses and burros on public lands is threatened if herds continue to grow unabated.

The BLM’s multi-pronged approach in its 2020 Report to Congress* included expanded adoptions and sales of horses gathered from overpopulated herds; increased gathers and increased capacity for off-range holding facilities and pastures; more effective use of fertility control efforts; and improved research, in concert with the academic and veterinary communities, to identify more effective