My grandson says I’m a sucker for a flashy horse. He should know. He was with me, branding calves with a friend, when I got completely carried away watching a Tobiano paint horse with feet like a dancer. He was there as well when I fell in love with a big gray foxtrotter with the smoothest gait I’ve ever seen. I plead guilty as charged. I have always loved horses, especially beautiful horses.
Opinion
But if you go back a couple of generations, the horses that my family rode were far from beautiful. The little rangy, hammer-headed mustangs that my grandfather Walt rode didn’t come from some posh horse sale or from some fancy bloodline. They came from the desert, on the business end of a lariat. They were feral horses, perfectly adapted for a good life in a hard country. They were survivors, and their descendants have remained such to this day.
I do not remember a time in my life when feral horses weren’t present. They were there at Elk Butte and Little Sandy Creek when I was barely tall enough to see out of the pickup window. There were feral horses in Salt Wells Creek and over toward Pine Mountain, south of Rock Springs. There were feral horses near Oregon Buttes and down toward Steamboat Mountain. Never a lot at one time, usually a stud with a small bunch of mares and their offspring. They were skittish, for the most part, and quick to put some distance between themselves and humans. They were iconic, in a way — very much a part of the wild desert country my family called home.
But over time, things changed. Beginning in the 1970s, we began to see more feral horses in more places. You could read brands on some — somebody’s pet that they couldn’t afford to keep and couldn’t bear to put down. I even saw a feral mule east of Continental Peak one day. And every year, there were more. It was apparent that they were fast becoming a problem. And the problem remains to this day.
Here are a few things we know about feral horses:
- Wyoming has a lot of free-ranging horses. We’re second only to Nevada in feral horse numbers. We have 16 herd management areas, mostly in southwestern Wyoming and the Bighorn Basin.
- They’re not wildlife. They’re domestic horses released to the wild accidentally or on purpose, now feral. Any other origin story for them is fantasy. Multiple species of horses existed in North America, but they’ve been extinct for at least 10,000 years.
- They’re physically resilient and adaptable. Their anatomy (prehensile lips, narrow muzzle, long legs, single-chamber stomach) and their ability to shift what they eat in response to changing conditions (drought, severe winters, etc.) make them successful competitors with native wildlife, like sage grouse, pronghorn, mule deer, elk and bighorn sheep.
- They’re behaviorally resilient and adaptable as well. When resources like water are plentiful, they don’t spend a lot of energy defending those resources. But when those same resources are scarce, they aggressively defend their territories, limiting access to resources by those same native wildlife species.
- Their numbers were kept in check for more than a century by harvest from Indigenous people, and later by ranchers and other rural folks for their own purposes. Stockmen across the interior west captured young horses for domestication and shipped other captive feral horses to market for slaughter.
- The Wild Free‐Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 was a game-changer. With the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service tasked with the responsibility to manage feral horses on their lands, free-ranging horse numbers have risen to approximately three times the appropriate management levels established.
- At current population levels, feral horses are damaging habitat for many species of native wildlife. As the impacts of climate changes continue, this damage will increase.
Out there on the ground, the future looks grim for both these hardy critters and the habitat they depend upon. Feral horse numbers on the range continue to increase. Holding facilities are full. Adoption programs account for only a small number of horses annually. The federal agencies have turned to off-range sites, usually on private lands, where the owner contracts to take a given number of horses for a given time and receives compensation. There are now almost as many free-ranging horses off-range as there are in the wild. Meanwhile, free-ranging horse numbers continue to rise.
It would be easy to pin this on the BLM and Forest Service. Wyoming folks reflexively blame the feds, when given the opportunity. But I don’t think they are the problem. The problem is the Wild Free‐Roaming Horses and Burros Act. It has been around for over 50 years. The original intent was to protect feral horses and burros from abuse and ensure a place for viable populations of them on the public lands of the West. By any measure, that mission has long been accomplished.
It’s time for a change out on the range. Three simple recommendations:
- Reduce horse numbers to the existing appropriate management levels by executive order, if necessary. Those levels were developed collaboratively, using the best science available at the time.
- If we need to change appropriate management levels, change them. And monitor population levels closely, using the best available science.
- Increase emphasis on sterilization of free-roaming horses to keep populations at appropriate management levels.
This is a stewardship issue. It’s not about the romance of the animals. It’s not about the feelings of their advocates or their critics. It’s about both the horses and the native wildlife. Most importantly, it’s about the native landscapes of the West we hold in trust for future generations.
This is an excellent and well-thought-out article based on actual facts, not just sentimental emotion. Land and habitat have carrying capacities, and the large numbers of wild horses in some areas are showing the stressors that the author lists. We often hear stories of too many elk or deer or wolves or bears or whatever. Professional wildlife managers have learned through decades of experience how to manage numbers and habitats of those species. It’s time to realistically consider different and more effective management options for these horses too, with all parties involved in the conversation, preferably without any lawyers or politicians in the room.
Very good article, thanks Walt!
We’ll said Walt. I agree, feral horses need to be managed. The words carrying capacity come to mind. I worry about “executive orders”. Seems like a way to avoid the use of science.
Oh look, another “cowboy” claiming to know whats right for America and her public lands. You have been given the access to public lands for grazing, I am taking it. But you do not have the right to prejudice and dismantle law which protects the land and the animals upon it. Wild horses are defined by the Supreme Court as those free roaming, unbranded, and without an owner. They have been protected, as a group by the first unanimous Public Law to pass through Congress and shortly thereafter signed into law by President Nixon who stated the law was the signal that America was paying its debt to the horse by providing sanctuary on land they had roamed for generations – land that would provide for their migratory and social needs.
The protection of the wild horses was mistakenly placed under the care of the Bureau of Land Management, which at the time was acknowledged to be placing the care of the caged canary into the claws of the cat. Shortly after taking the management (and budget) of the wild horses, BLM began installing hundreds of regulations to short circuit the law of protection which prohibited the capture, branding and sale of wild horses. Senator Burns responded to a meeting of cattlemen and sheepmen by placing a rider into the 1975 appropriations that allowed the capture and sale of wild horses.
As for the local landscape, Wyoming was world renowed for the beauty and striking appearance of its wild horses, being directly blood related to the horses set wild by the Conquistadors. Those blood lines were revered even by the local livestock for their ability to lend their ancient and stout physical and spiritual toughness into domestic stock. Unfortunately, livestock men lost their connection with reality and now prefer to move out any diverse breeding for their line bred and incapable horses (more money that way I suppose). Ignoring the FACT that the modern quarter horse is a descendent of breeding with wild horses but thats a future memo.
Take a walk out on the Pilot Butte. BLM rounded up a few thousand last year and in came the sheep, who grazed down ever blade of grass, destroyed sage brush and cratered hundreds of trails which allow runoff, destroying what little topsoil remain after hundred years or so of badly managed public land.
This smarmy opinion piece is like so many thousand other propaganda pieces to the public. Disappointing that a state whose wild horses brought greatness to Wyoming now resides as a memory. But you keep publishing these self serving puff pieces. Your wild horses now reside at $5.00 per head per day on these same ranches that guffaw at this man’s baloney. Unfortunately, their stock will die off, as every stallion is brutally gelded as soon as possible after capture.
Walt hit the target pretty close to the center. A few feral horses are neat to see, but large bunches can sure mess up the habitat for lots of native species.
Yup, sounds right. I hate it, but can’t argue much except when herds are zeroed just so someone can make money. I’ve seen that happen. So, okay Walt I wish there was a better way.
You know, I’ve always loved “flashy horses.” You must have gotten along with them better than mules….:) I couldn’t agree more with your article. I’ve found that it appears to me that some groups have found a means to point the finger at livestock producers while they wreck the range. I always thought that the best control would be in the hands of those who work out there every day. There are too many things that detrimentally affect our wildlife resources and to me, this is just one more.
Great, balanced summary of a complicated problem. Thank you.
Thanks Walt. Very informative and accurate.