8 Quotes by Alan Shepherd

When we do a gather to control populations, we remove down to the low end and allow it to build up over a period of three to four years, ... We allow them to have an increase over a period of time then take the population down to the low end of the range.

It is a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract

We are exceeding our management levels for these two wild horse populations.

The populations are so large it's taken a couple of gathers to get down to our target numbers. We don't want to do any further damage to the habitat they're in. The area is critical elk, deer and antelope winter range.

To do our job, we have to take all the resources into account, not just the horses.

We're placing them into good homes where they'll be loved and taken care of and used as a useful animal or just pets. The alternative is we either leave them on the range and they damage the public lands because they're overpopulated, or we put them into large-scale holding operations where they don't get used; they don't get touched; they just sit there.

There's nothing that you can't do with a domestic horse that you can't do with these. It's just time and effort and energy.

The adoption program is critical to us for the management of the wild horses. It's our mechanism to place our excess horses that are removed from the range.