Wild horse populations in North America and Australia are managed through helicopter roundups and removals that cause significant acute welfare harms, while alternative approaches including fertility control offer more humane population management.
Wild horse management involves an unresolved welfare crisis. Roundups using helicopters drive horses at speed for kilometers, causing heat stress, injuries from falls, and deaths — with foals most vulnerable. Pregnant mares may abort from the stress. Animals captured and placed in long-term holding face years of confinement in conditions that prevent natural behavior. The welfare argument for fertility control is compelling: PZP vaccination requires darting individual mares at manageable population sizes and prevents the need for roundups entirely. However, fertility control requires sustained funding and access to horses across large landscapes. In Australia, aerial culling is defended as more humane than starvation from overpopulation, but animal welfare organizations dispute this framing and support expanded fertility control programs.