A new bipartisan bill proposes to add a unique wrinkle to the ever-evolving problem of managing growing wild horse and burro herds across millions of acres of federal lands.
The bill sponsored by two East Coast lawmakers — Democratic Rep. Eugene Vindman of Virginia and Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida — proposes using drones to assist the Bureau of Land Management in rounding up and removing wild horses from overcrowded BLM rangelands in the West.
H.R. 5829 calls for allocating $100,000 a year from BLM’s annual wild horse and burro program budget, for five years, to fund a pilot program to test whether drones could be used — instead of helicopters — to herd the animals into temporary holding pens, where the horses would then be transported to off-range corrals.
BLM spends millions of dollars a year to contract with companies that have the expertise to use helicopters to herd the animals off federal rangelands. But the roundups have been heavily criticized by wild horse advocates and some lawmakers because they often result in injuries to the frightened horses, including broken necks that result in death.
