Fifty million years ago, a small dog-like creature called Eohippus, meaning “dawn horse,” evolved on the North American continent. In fact, this forerunner to the modern horse was traced to the Tennessee Valley and was about the size of a fox; it made its home in swamplands, feeding off plant life. Eohippus slowly evolved into Mesohippus, the size of an average collie. Mesohippus had three toes and eventually became an inhabitant of the prairie. Its shape changed in conformity as its habitat changed: It grew taller, its teeth and middle toe grew longer, the latter growing into a hoof. The evolution continued until Equus caballus—the horse as we know it today—was formed. After disappearing into Asia and Africa presumably 11,000-13,000 years ago, the horse returned to our soil with the Spanish in the early 1500s. From their hands, a few escaped onto the American canvas and reverted to a wild state. The horse had come home—but the welcome has only proved deadly.
According to Western writer J. Frank Dobie, their numbers in the 19th century reached more than 2 million. But by the time the wild horse received federal protection in 1971, it was officially estimated that only about 10,000 of them roamed America’s plains. More than 1 million had been 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 Johnston, 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.
But it was mass public outcry that 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 non-war issue in U.S. history. There wasn’t a single dissenting vote, and one congressman alone reported receiving 14,000 letters. President Nixon signed the bill into law on December 15, 1971. And so the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and 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; and that these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene.” The Act was later amended by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 and the Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978.
By the people, of the people, for the people. There has never been a truer case—nor one so blatantly ignored.
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. Ranchers no longer viewed horses as necessary tools for moving cattle, but as nuisance animals and competitors for grasslands upon which their cattle fed—marking the beginning of the mass slaughter of horses.
In cattlemen terms, wild horses are referred to as “sonsofbitches,” eyesores, habitat destroyers, and misfits; in BLM terms, they are “shitters.” History, on the other hand, will bear them out as scapegoats: Contrary to popular belief, wild horses are not destroying public lands where they are found among six million heads of cattle and sheep. In fact, a 1990 General Accounting Office Report showed that livestock consumed 81% of Nevada’s forage in the four studied horse areas.
The animals also bear the brunt of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—comprised of cattle ranchers—and the government agency appointed to manage the West, horses and all—making it the biggest horse wrangler in the country. And it is 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.
Despite numerous attempts by vested interests to cripple the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971, not a single amendment has passed. Americans have made their intentions known over and over again: They want wild horses—these feral, exotic, “sonsofbitches”—left in the public domain. And they wrongly believe the government is granting their wish. The Act states, “It is the policy of Congress that wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death.” And yet, unabated, the BLM, the Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Forest Service continue to engage in all those acts without reprimand.
The Numbers Game
The history of wild horse management is as complex as it is controversial, a tragically grim and deadly tale of systematic elimination. Those entrusted with the power to enforce the people’s law have been using it to the detriment of the horses—and doing so behind the people’s backs.
In fact, the BLM refers to roundups as “gathers,” making them more palatable to public opinion. When the 1971 Act was passed, wild horses and burros were assigned 305 Herd Management Areas (HMAs), representing some 80 million acres of public land in 16 states to call their home. Over the years, agency regulations—not legislative amendments—have stripped the horses of their homeland; they are now managed in 186 HMAs on less than 44 million acres in just ten states.
The 1971 Act stipulated that the wild horse be managed at its then-current population level, officially estimated by BLM at 17,000. To the horses’ detriment, both sides of the wild horse issue agreed to allow the government to manage wild horse populations at that “official” 1971 level. Eleven years later, a study by the National Academy of Sciences found BLM’s 1971 estimate to have been “undoubtedly low to an unknown, but perhaps substantial, degree,” given subsequent census results and taking into account the horses’ slow growth rate and the number of horses since removed. But the damage had already been done; “management levels” had been etched in stone, and processes for removal of “excess” horses were well in place.
In 1975, determined to remove the wild horses, but unable to capture them on horseback, the BLM amended the 1959 law (prohibiting motorized vehicles for captures), thus allowing them the use of aircraft, such as helicopters. It also couldn’t settle on whether the 1971 Act referred to the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Agriculture to oversee the enforcement of the law. The lands—and the rules—were split: the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service would be bound by Interior regulations; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would operate under Agriculture. In short, the BLM now has the power to use motorized vehicles to capture wild horses, but it can’t kill them, whereas the other agencies can kill horses; they just can’t use motorized vehicles to catch them.
So just how many horses could the BLM legally remove? Underfunded, the agency agreed to settle the numbers question through the 1982 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 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 was passed into law. What they didn’t find, however—and nor could the BLM prove it to them—was any negative impact on grazing by wild horses. 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.
Enter Senator James McClure (R-ID), head of the Committee for Energy and Natural Resources and for Interior and Insular Affairs. Himself a man of the West, and believing the horse to be a useless free-loader on public lands, he set out to help rid public lands of them, despite their existing legal protections. A stacked deck of officials was appointed to the BLM based on McClure’s ability to fund the agency, and—as some activists describe it—a “new kingdom” emerged. New trucks. New positions. And a new plan.
So, the BLM created its Adopt-a-Horse program in 1976, mainly as a means to rid the west of wild horses—but this time with the public’s permission. Since the program began, more than 200,000 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 since been sent to slaughter—and often with the BLM’s help.
In 1984, for example, 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 (or not any that anyone knew about), horses were still being taken from the public domain to the killing plants, one way or another. To 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.
Then, in the summer of 1993, the BLM estimated the wild horse population in Nevada to be 24,000. Determined to show that the BLM’s figure of “excess” horses was inaccurate, wild horse advocates logged more than 250 hours in the air, along with Michael Blake, author of Dances With Wolves, counting wild horses. They found 300 skulls and only 8,300 free-roaming horses. “This government is taking our horses when and where they please,” Michael Blake told the press. “They are taking them in the dark of night. The wild horses not going to the slaughterhouse floor—where their throats are cut for money—are traveling to points of incarceration.” The BLM recommended the removal of more than 9,600 animals—1,300 more than horse defenders and Blake could even find on the entire Nevada desert.
In 1997, Associated Press reporter Martha Mendoza exposed widespread corruption within the Adopt-a-Horse program in seven articles that ran throughout the year. That same year, a federal grand jury collected evidence that showed BLM officials had allowed the slaughter of hundreds of wild horses, falsified records, and tried to prevent investigators from uncovering the truth. The case was eventually closed down after federal officials intervened.
A few years later, in 2001, the BLM obtained a 50% increase in its annual budget to $29 million for implementation of an aggressive removal campaign. Twenty-four thousand horses were slated for capture with an “appropriate management level” target of 26,000. By its most recent figures, the BLM estimates the total American wild horse population to be about 33,000 animals (of which about half can be found in Nevada).
In 2005, BLM’s wild horse and burro budget was increased by another third. In Fiscal Year 2010, it received another 30 percent boost, now costing the taxpayer $64 million a year to allow the BLM to continue to round-up and pipeline thousands more wild horses. Today, some 36,000 wild horses are awaiting their fate in holding facilities such as Palomino Valley in Nevada, and Susanville in northern California. Four-year contracts have been awarded to private ranchers in Oklahoma and Kansas to manage long-term holding facilities. Each can hold 2,000-3,500 horses.
Put them somewhere. Put them anywhere. Just get them off public land. If you can’t legally kill them, that is.
The Name and the Lands Game
Why is there such determination to rid our public lands of wild horses? For many—the livestock lobby, government agencies, and even environmental and wildlife protection organizations—the wild horse isn’t a wild animal at all, but a domesticated animal gone feral. This mongrel of a horse is not, they argue, native American wildlife. Considered an “exotic,” it competes for habitat with such species as elk and pronghorn antelope, and it decimates rangeland used by domestic livestock. It must be controlled, removed, and, if necessary, gunned down.
Today, one can easily adopt a wild horse for as little as $125 a head. The cost to taxpayers for removing that animal from the wild is more than ten-fold. Why pay so much to remove one horse from the public domain? It boils down to money: Under the Department of Interior’s “multiple-use” principles, only so many cattle, so much wildlife, and so many wild horses are allowed on federal lands. Wildlife is “paid for” (in part) by hunters’ licensing fees (and general taxpayer dollars). Cattle are “paid for” (in part) by the meat industry: $1.35 per head per month to graze the public domain (and taxpayer funded subsidies). Horses, on the other hand, take up one “Animal Unit Month” (AUM), but no one is paying their way. Each horse removed from the West frees up another AUM for cattle or sheep or game antelope. It goes something like this:
Say, for example, you acquire a government permit to run cattle on public lands. And let’s say that permit costs you $1.35 per cow per month, and a portion of that permit money you spend comes back to you from the government in “range improvement funds.” The cost to run your cows has just been reduced.
In order to acquire that permit, however, you would have to own a “base ranch” from which you run cattle onto public lands. And let’s say your ranch will run a thousand head of cows. Those 1,000 cows use up 6,000 AUMs (six months of AUMs times 1,000 cows). Because all ranches are sold on an Animal Unit (AU) basis with an average going rate of $3,000 per AU, your 1,000-head ranch is hypothetically worth $3 million in AUs.
Now let’s say there just happens to be 200 wild horses on those federal lands you are leasing. If you remove these wild horses and put another 200 head of cattle in their place, you have increased your AUs by 200, and the value of your ranch automatically grows by $600,000.
Factor in that roughly 35% of the cattle ranchers on BLM and Forest Service lands—corporations like Texaco, Metropolitan Life, Anheuser-Busch, Hunt Oil, and the like—dominate more than 80% of the Western public range, and you will get an idea of the kind of money exchanging hands out there.
Misfits Among Us
In response to numerous attempts by vested interests to cripple the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Act, Americans have made their intentions known time and again: they want wild horses—these feral, exotic, “sonsofbitches”—left in the public domain. In 1985, a provision aimed at allowing the government to sell our wild horses to slaughter came to a vote in Congress and was defeated. In 2004, the horses were not so lucky: Senator Burns (R-MT) managed to bypass the democratic process by slipping his slaughter provision into the 3,300-page federal budget. The slaughter of America’s wild horses was rubber-stamped, the will of the people ignored.
It can be said that no other animal in human history has had the impact on our lives as much as the horse. Millions have lost their lives in human wars. They have been used to transport us and our belongings across continents, to deliver our mail and network our civilizations, and they have plowed the fields that feed us. In these modern times, the horse is an entertainer, an athlete, an icon, and a friend—with more than six million of them in the care of American horse “lovers.”
We have long celebrated the horse, in art and mythology (the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the winged Pegasus, the Centaur) and in literature and symbolism (we still measure power in horses). But we have abandoned this animal of the plains. Though we owe them civilization as we know it, we no longer hear the wind in their wild ears; we cannot see the fire in their eyes. In return for the sacrifices of their ancestors, we have done little else but annihilate and degrade them.
They are sonsofbitches.
Shitters.
They are misfits.
And shame on us. Instead of demanding that Congress enforce the existing law that protects these animals in their homeland—a law brought about by the people, mind you—we sit idly by and accept the government’s figures and its biased portrayal of what is happening in the West. We prefer the taste of hamburger over the image of wild and free-running horses. And we line up at auction yards to adopt what are now fireless, broken-spirited wild ponies.
