Mestengo. Mustang. Misfit. America’s Disappearing Wild Horses

Fifty million years ago, a small dog-like creature called Eohippus evolved on the North American continent. In fact, this forerunner to the modern horse was traced to the Tennessee Valley. After disappearing into Asia and Africa — as well as into the evolved form of Equus — 17 horses returned to our soil with the Spanish in the early 1500s. From their hands, they escaped onto the American canvas. The horse had come home — but the welcome has only proved deadly.

It is believed that the horse is the only domesticated animal capable of reverting to a wild state after escaping human bondage. It did so 300 years ago, and its numbers reached more than 2 million. But by the time the wild horse received federal protection in 1971, it was believed that only about 18,000 of them roamed America’s plains. More than 1 million horses were conscripted for World War I combat; the rest had been hunted for their flesh, for the chicken feed and dog food companies, and for the sport of it.
      They were chased by helicopters and sprayed with buckshot; they were run down with motorized vehicles and, deathly exhausted, weighted with tires so they could be easily picked up by rendering trucks. They were run off cliffs, gunned down at full gallop, shot in corralled bloodbaths, and buried in mass graves.
      Like the bison, the wild horse had been driven to the edge.
      Enter Velma Johnson, a.k.a. “Wild Horse Annie.” After seeing blood coming from a livestock truck, she followed it to a rendering plant and discovered how America’s wild horses were being pipelined out of the West. Her crusade led to the passage of a 1959 law that banned the use of motorized vehicles and aircraft to capture wild horses.
      In the end, it was public outcry that finally ended the open-faced carnage—and it came from the nation’s schoolchildren and their mothers. In 1971, more letters poured into Congress over the plight of wild horses than any other issue in U.S. history to date; there wasn’t a single dissenting vote, and one congressman reported receiving 14,000 letters. And so the Free-Roaming Wild Horse & Burro Act was passed, declaring that “wild horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people.”
      By the people, of the people, for the people. There has never been a truer case.
      Wild Horse Annie’s 1959 legislation allowed the mustang (from the Spanish word mestengo, or “stray beast”) to get a desperate foothold in the American West. Wild horse numbers grew and consequently encouraged the wrath of ranchers who paid to graze their cattle on the public domain. The animals also annoyed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which was appointed to manage the West, horses and all—making the agency the biggest horse wrangler in the country.
      And it’s a war as old as the West itself. What is useful is used, what is not is destroyed—with contempt. In a mechanized world, not even the cattle industry has a need for living horsepower.
      The 1971 law also stipulated that the wild horse be managed at its then-current population level—a figure that had yet to be determined. But it’s that number that lies at the core of this deadly controversy.

The Numbers Game
The history of wild horse management is as complicated as it is controversial. The BLM created its Adopt-a-Horse program in 1976 as a means of ridding the west of wild horses—with the public’s permission. Since the program began—two and a half decades ago—more than 176,000 horses and burros have been rounded up off public lands and sifted through the adoption pipeline. The BLM claims it has adopted out 157,000 of the animals, though many of its captives have been sent to slaughter — and often with the BLM’s help.
      In 1984, the BLM waived its fees to encourage more adoptions, and thousands of horses began arriving at slaughterhouses for profit. Little had changed in the West: although there were no slaughters on the open range, no mass graves, horses were still being taken from the public domain to the killing plants.
      To counter the mass killings and appease public sentiment, the BLM then enacted a titling program that stipulated that an adopter couldn’t technically “own” a wild horse until one year after its adoption, thereby making it illegal to sell it to anyone else. In effect, it made the expense of caring for a horse during that time outweigh its meat price.
      The BLM was caught in the crossfire. Cattle interests wanted to see the horse removed; the public and activists wanted to leave horses on public lands. So just how many horses could the BLM legally remove?       Underfunded, the agency agreed to settle the numbers question through a National Academy of Sciences study. Six years and $6 million later, and partly based on the number of horses being rounded up and adopted, the Academy reported that there was a base wild horse population of 50,000 animals at the time the 1971 Free-Roaming Wild Horse & Burro Act was passed into law. What they didn’t find, however—and nor could the BLM prove it to them—was any wild horse impaction on grazing. Of course, the finding wasn’t good enough for some. Though the figure settled the question of how many horses the 1971 Act protected, the BLM’s estimate of “excess” horses was, well, outnumbered. It had to leave 50,000 animals on public lands after all.

continued on next page

Top of Page • Close Window