The Bureau of Land Management's advisory panel on wild horses and burros sent what some could read as conflicting messages on the use of lethal methods to control exploding populations of feral animals trampling federal rangelands. The National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board voted yesterday at its first meeting in nearly a year to approve a recommendation to BLM stating the panel would prefer that BLM use nonlethal management options for population control purposes when possible. The recommendation — approved 4-3 by seven of the nine members present on the advisory board — breaks from recent board actions, particularly in 2016, when it approved a resolution supporting humane euthanasia for animals that could not be adopted. And the panel last year approved a resolution calling on BLM to remove all "excess animals" from federal rangelands within three years. But the panel also voted yesterday to support a BLM proposal it submitted to Congress last spring that calls for lawmakers to "remove prohibitions" placed into appropriations bills that forbid BLM from using euthanasia and limit its ability to sell animals, as authorized under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.
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