Wild horse populations in North America and Australia create complex welfare challenges involving overgrazing, drought, helicopter roundups, and long-term captive holding.
Wild horse welfare involves competing interests: rangeland health, cultural values, public costs, and the welfare of individual animals. Helicopter roundups cause significant acute stress and injury — mares sometimes abort foals, family band disruptions cause lasting social trauma, and horses in holding facilities may be kept for years in barren pens. PZP fertility control is now proven effective, humane, and cost-competitive with roundup-and-hold when implemented consistently. Targeted removal of specific individuals rather than whole-herd roundups reduces welfare impact. In Australia, aerial culling — when conducted by skilled shooters — may be more humane than alternatives given the scale of the problem and difficulty of mustering in rugged terrain, though this is contested.