A Bioeconomic Livestock/Wild Horse Trade-off Mechanism for Conserving Public Rangeland Vegetation

The objective is to analyze a mechanism for controlling wild horse and livestock densities on public rangeland. The mechanism incorporates key ecological and economic parameters and is designed to be consistent with public interests in: (a) the multiple-use and sustained-yield management of rangeland vegetation, (b) the protection of wild horses, and (c) the prevention of economic harm to the western livestock industry. Key words: grazing, public lands, wild horses, Bureau of Land Management. The disposition of overpopulated wild horses on public rangelands is the focal point of a heated conflict between wild horse advocates and livestock interests. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is caught in the middle, searching for means to alleviate the grazing pressure exerted by competing herbivore groups on deteriorating public ranges. Early rancher efforts to relieve the compet-itive grazing pressure on their livestock, by rounding up and slaughtering wild horses and burros, resulted in the passage of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 (WFRHBA). The WFRHBA protects these an-imals from "... capture, branding, harass-ment, or death...."1 and directs public man-agers to "... manage wild free-roaming horses and burros in a manner that is designed to achieve and maintain a thriving natural eco-logical balance on the public lands."2 The WFRHBA authorizes the BLM to remove an-imals in excess of the natural ecological bal-ance ("excess animals") from rangeland by rounding them up for private adoption or for The authors are, respectively, an assistant professor in the De