Why is wild horse and burro habitat managed primarily for rapidly expanding industry? Everything that happens on public lands has a site-specific management plan. Plans for everything proposed on public lands, from massive mining all the way down to things like cutting Christmas trees, go through a public planning process that addresses the environmental impact of the action; how will the proposed action impact existing industry, recreation, cultural resources and environmental resources.
When it comes to wild horses and burros, a public resource, BLM treats any planning as if it is simply a part of a system to accommodate industry. Instead of treating wild horses and burros as a resource they need to protect, BLM simply creates population growth suppression (remove/fertility control) operations and does absolutely nothing to protect habitat for wild horse and burro use or herd integrity. In fact, BLM continues to call the numbers Congress found “fast-disappearing” in 1971 when the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act was passed “appropriate,” instead of ever setting a species recovery number.