About our Coalition |
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The National Horse & Burro Rangeland Management Coalition includes a wide range of sportsmen’s, livestock, wildlife, and land conservation organizations and professional societies. Collectively, we represent millions of Americans and focus on commonsense, ecologically-sound approaches to managing horses and burros to promote healthy wildlife and rangelands for future generations.
Horse and burros are greatly overpopulated on our nation's rangelands. Current population levels are well over the level that the rangeland can support in balance with other uses. This is not only a problem for the health of the native wildlife and rangeland ecosystem, but also the horses and burros themselves. Our coalition is concerned about the exponentially growing population of wild horses and burros on our nation’s rangelands. We believe more can and should be done to protect the rangeland ecosystem from further degradation by horses and burros. The Coalition was formed in 2012 in response to the steadily worsening degradation occurring on portions of our nation’s rangelands due to inadequate management of “wild” horse and burro populations. For many years, individual organizations concerned with rangeland health have attempted to influence the federal land management agencies’ effectiveness at managing these non-native, congressionally protected animals. When, in 2009, the Secretary of the Interior announced his plans to develop a new horse and burro management plan, these organizations provided individual comments to help improve the program. The Secretary’s plan has yet to be finalized and management has yet to improve. Frustrated by this inaction and the resulting rangeland damage, a core group of organizations—each with different memberships and purposes, from producer to conservation organizations—recognized they shared a common goal: rangeland health. They understood that rangeland health is essential for a thriving natural ecological balance on the rangeland—and essential to the clean air and water that the entire nation counts on. Thus, they created a coalition to proactively influence the management of the range. Cognizant that there would be diverging views in certain areas, they were determined to focus on areas in which they could collaborate. |
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