Fertility Control and the Welfare of Free-Roaming Horses and Burros on U.S. Public Lands: The Need for an Ethical Framing

To be effective and publicly acceptable, management of free-roaming horses and burros in the United States and elsewhere needs a consistent ethical framing of the animals and the land they occupy. In the U.S., the two laws that largely govern wild horse and burro management, the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act and the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act ("FLPMA"), rest on conflicting foundations, the former based on an ethic of care and the latter on largely utilitarian principles. These conflicts specifically fuel debates over the selection of appropriate fertility control agents for horse and burro management. Because land-use and management decisions are largely controlled by the FLPMA, and because the ethical treatment of animals is typically considered under conditions established by their use, both the larger debate about equids and land management and the specific debate about fertility control are dominated by cost/benefit calculations and avoid broader ethical considerations. In our view, the long-term health and ethical treatment of free-roaming horses and burros, the lands they occupy, and the wildlife and people they share it with will require the replacement of the resource-use model with a more holistic, care-based approach.