Nevada’s feral horse problem is a policy failure-and BLM land is proof

By McKenli Williams
Nevada Policy

I grew up on a cattle ranch in northern Nevada. I’ve watched creeks dry up, springs trampled to mud, and native grasses replaced by invasive weeds. I know what an overgrazed rangeland looks like. I also know who wrote the rules that allowed this to happen and why those rules must change. 

Let’s talk about the word “wild”. It does a lot of the heavy lifting in the media. The horses on Nevada’s public lands are not wild animals in any real sense. They are feral- descendants of domesticated horses that were released or escaped during the centuries of human settlement. Calling them wild is a political campaign, not a biological choice rooted in ecology. And it has shaped policy framework that prioritizes symbolism over land stewardship. 

The framework is Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, which declares that horses are “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the west” and tasked the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) with protecting the herds and maintaining a healthy rangeland. For over 50 years, BLM has been unable to manage either. 

The results of such a policy are obvious across Nevada’s rangeland. The BLM manages 83 herds that cover around 15.6 million acres. The Appropriate Management Level (AML)– the number of animals the land can sustainably support- is 12,811 animals. As of March 2026, the estimated feral horse and burro population is over 42,500, or more than 3 times the threshold. Some individual herds are over 1,000% of their sustainable levels. 

Part of what makes the damage to land so severe is how horses graze, which is fundamentally different from cattle, sheep, and goats- animals classified as ruminants. Ruminants have no upper front teeth. They use their tongues to wrap around grass and tear it off, limiting how close to the ground they can graze. Horses on the other hand have teeth on the top and bottom, often pulling grass out by its roots. The result is that when these animals graze, the destroy the grass entirely. On Nevada’s already fragile rangeland, this is catastrophic.

Horses also graze 10 to 14 hours per day with no rotation or recovery period, unlike permitted livestock, which operates under strict BLM grazing allocations, seasonal restrictions, and number limits. 

The ecological record reflects this overgrazing. A United States Geological Survey in Nevada found that springs protected from horse grazing showed greater plant growth. Meadows excluded from horses showed vegetation nearly three times taller than the horse-grazed area. The Nevada Department of Wildlife’s 2024 report to the state board called the current situation “unsustainable for horses, rangeland ecosystems, wildlife and habitats.” Seven Nevada counties have passed emergency declarations citing feral horse damage to public lands.

The BLM’s solution has been to spend more money. The program budget has gone from less than $40 million annually in 2009 to $142 million in 2025, with $101 million going towards feed for horses held off the range. That is not management. It is an expensive holding pen, all while the land continues to degrade. 

The 1971 Act’s requirement that feral horses are “an integral part of the natural system” has essentially paralyzed the BLM’s ability to conserve the land, compounded by litigation from horse advocacy groups. Proposed solutions have missed the mark. The Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act of 2025 would have restricted helicopter gathers without providing any replacement capable of rounding up horses. Fertility control is another solution mentioned for slowing growth, but does not address the existing herd which is already 30,000 animals beyond capacity.

What Nevada needs is a reformed framework that treats feral horses as the land management issue they are and not the cultural icons the 1971 Act made them out to be. That means honest conversations in policy: these are feral animals on multiple-use BLM land and every acre that is over-grazed wreaks damage to Nevada’s water tables, native wildlife, the ranching economy, and taxpayers. 

I’m not against horses; I love them and grew up around them. But I also grew up understanding that land has its limits. Ignoring those limits has consequences that no budget, romanticized wording, or symbolic legislation can fix.

McKenli Williams is a Research Assistant at Nevada Policy, focused on land and water issues. Raised on a ranch outside Wells, she holds a degree in Agricultural Communications from Utah State University and has worked on Capitol Hill, on a U.S. Senate campaign, and as a writer for The College Fix.