“We don’t see the world the same way,” Ethan Lane, vice president of government affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and executive director of the group’s Public Lands Council, said of animal welfare groups. The ranching groups say they had come to believe the opposite - that Congress, regularly besieged by impassioned pleas from horse lovers, would never permit the culling of a symbol of the American spirit. Goicoechea said the water was shut off in an effort to pull the wild horse herds away from the sagebrush and help maintain the plant species for grazing. RIGHT: Troughs where water used to be pumped at the Antelope Valley Complex, which is managed by the BLM, near Eureka, Nev.

LEFT: One of Goicoechea's cows crosses the road in front of his truck after getting through a fence. “We heard from key members of Congress that … they were leaning more and more toward letting the agency have the authority to kill horses,” said Gillian Lyons, a senior legislative specialist for the Humane Society Legislative Fund. The status quo, a bureau official told lawmakers in July, could result in half a million horses on the range by 2030. President Trump’s budget has called for sales and killing, as have House appropriators and the BLM’s wild horse advisory committee. Although the 1971 federal law that protects wild horses and burros allows the interior secretary to euthanize older and unadopted animals or sell them for slaughter, Congress has for much of the past three decades blocked those powers in annual appropriations bills.īut as the free-roaming and fast-reproducing horse and burro population mushrooms - from 40,000 in 2013 to 88,000 last year, according to the BLM - support for the animals has wobbled. The alliance behind the plan, which includes one prominent wild horse organization, dismisses that as a misrepresentation of their proposal - and of political reality. “It’s more business as usual that could end in the mass killing of America’s wild horses.” It benefits the livestock industry,” said Grace Kuhn, spokeswoman for the American Wild Horse Campaign. “This plan doesn’t benefit the horses at all, or taxpayers. Its final pillar is aggressive use of fertility control, such as PZP, an injection delivered annually by dart. Wild horse adoptions, which last year numbered about 3,100, would have to increase, the plan says. Those horses would live in private pastures or sanctuaries that provide cheaper and “more natural living situations” than the corrals the BLM now depends on. The 10-year proposal calls for scaling up the roundups, or “gathers,” that animal activists have long despised - capturing up to 20,000 horses and burros each year. Wild horses are taken there to be counted, separated and documented before being transported to an adoption center. Laura Leigh, founder of Wild Horse Education, stands in front of other wild horse advocates, documenting the BLM wild horse processing area near Ely, Nev. Ranchers and some environmentalists view the horses as feral pests that damage ecosystems, compete for resources with cattle and wildlife and should be culled or sold. Horse advocates call the roundups cruel, contend that millions of cattle do vastly more damage to public lands than thousands of horses, and insist mustangs must never be killed. The agency says caring for the warehoused animals devours most of its wild horse budget, leaving little for other approaches. To address this, the BLM, which is charged with managing most of the animals, periodically rounds up horses and now has nearly 50,000 in holding. Everyone agrees the situation is untenable: The government says three times more equines roam public land than the fragile terrain can handle. Goicoechea has long been on one side of the battle over wild horses and burros, an issue so contentious that Congress, animal advocates, conservationists, ranchers and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have long been in a stalemate. BOTTOM RIGHT: Goicoechea drives past his cows in Newark Valley, where he has grazing rights from the BLM. Though he insists he likes wild horses, he’s seen land he claims they ruined. BOTTOM LEFT: Goicoechea drives his tractor while harvesting hay for the winter in Newark Valley. The fourth-generation rancher is Nevada’s state veterinarian. Goicoechea's ranch home is bathed in dawn light.