Reducing wild horse roundups a good plan

We love there are wild horses here … and bears and deer.

We’re even OK with skunks, raccoons, and a variety of other varmints that Carson Valley residents live with.

They remind us we are still living in the frontier.

This week the Bureau of Land Management plans to round up more than 300 horses living in the Pine Nut Herd Area.

The plan includes dosing mares with a fertility drug, PZP, to reduce the number of horses on the range.

Presumably, that will also reduce the number of times the BLM rounds up the horses, and reduce the legal wrangling that accompanies each round-up.

The horse round-ups are a waste of time and money that results in the warehousing of thousands of horses in the hopes they will be adopted.

Our taxes are going to support those horses.

It’s hard on the horses and on taxpayers.

So is letting them breed to the point where they starve to death.

We all got to watch over the last couple of summers as their Pine Nut forage went up in smoke.

If they were truly wild, like deer and bears, people wouldn’t try to feed or water them.

But they’re not. In fact, federal law has essentially turned them into collective pets. Responsible pet owners spay or neuter their animals.

We don’t know what the best way to do that is, but we think finding a way to reduce the number of round-ups is easier on the horses and taxpayers’ wallets.