The Wild Mustang Crisis
Confronting the Overpopulation of Wild Horses in the United States
In the beginning of 2015, a young mustang roams freely across the wide-reaching Washington landscape with her fellow wild horses. With pale yellow coloring and a distinctive white stripe down her face, she stands out from the rest of the herd. This hardy young mare spends her days galloping across the vast public lands, grazing on native vegetation and interacting with her herd.
The low rumble of a helicopter in the distance alerts the herd to trouble. As the machine gets closer, the group begins to run. The low flying helicopter chases the panicked wild mustangs over miles of open land and finally, into a funnel of temporary fencing that leads to a corral. Exhausted and terrified, the yellow mare huddles with her herd in the center of the enclosure. Other horses, overcome by panic, hurt and kill themselves trying to jump the fences and escape the confines of the corral.
Pulled away from her herd, the yellow mare eventually ends up alone in a transport truck. A few hours later, she arrives at a quiet barn with other horses in a field. This mare is one of the lucky few wild mustangs to get adopted into a loving home and now has a name: Winnie.
Despite her continued wariness of strangers, Winnie begins to enjoy her life as a domestic horse and welcomes the company of a few particular people. Winnie’s trainer helps her to become comfortable with her new surroundings and to understand what people expect from her as a domesticated horse. Her owner, providing constant reassurance, treats and affection, helps Winnie to build bonds with and learn to trust people.
Winnie now lives a happy and comfortable life as a domesticated horse; all of the people and horses at her barn adore her. With a quiet and compassionate demeanor, Winnie takes care of new riders and comforts nervous horses. And with her classic mustang sure-footedness and confidence, she performs her job as a show pony with enthusiasm and ease.
The fate of Winnie’s herd remains unknown. While she escaped the horrific conditions that face many rounded up wild mustangs, the rest of her herd likely did not find this same luck. The vast majority of captured wild mustangs never experience Winnie’s happy ending. Most of these horses spend their lives in dirty and cramped government holding pens waiting for adopters that will never come. Some of these mustangs leave the holding facilities only to end up in the hands of kill buyers, people who purchase animals for their meat.
Wild horses in the United States currently face a crisis that few members of the public realize. With their numbers growing too quickly for the land to sustain, wild horses remain the subjects of inhumane and ineffective management practices. By largely focusing on this issue as an environmental problem, the United States government often loses sight of the individual animals, and allows many of the horses to fall through the cracks in the system. But how did this ecological challenge take on cultural and moral elements and grow to crisis proportions in the first place? And with limited governmental resources, what alternatives to the status quo are even viable?
Ironically, wild horses exist within the United States both as an invasive species and as powerful symbols of American freedom and independence. This duality complicates the national interpretation of wild horses as these animals become pests, national treasures or pets in different communities. For ranchers whose livestock compete with wild horses for grazing land, these horses are invaders and nuisances that should be eradicated. In contrast, animal enthusiasts and activists appreciate the beauty and rawness that wild horses embody and advocate for the protection of these horses in the wild. For horse riders and trainers, wild horses feel familiar yet mysterious, and provide an enticing challenge to the few who attempt to domesticate them.
More generally, the American media, in television shows, movies and books, attaches the image of the wild horse to rugged cowboys and free-spirited Native Americans. For most people in the United States, wild horses evoke nostalgic national memories of heroism and exploration during the conquering of the American frontier, and when connected to Native Americans, highlight the melding of native and colonial cultures and display the bond between humans and nature. Through the feelings of national power, beauty and adventure that wild horses foster, Americans who do not otherwise interact with horses construct an imagined community around wild horses and honor these animals as emblems of the nation's founding.
About 500 years ago, European colonists brought domestic mustang horses to the United States and allowed their populations to grow naturally on the open grazing lands of the American West. Without human interaction, these mustangs became feral and organized themselves into wild horse herds. Today, the descendants of these first American horses continue to roam the western landscape as wild animals, and occupy states including California, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, Arizona and Texas. After hundreds of years in the United States, wild horses now claim American grasslands and mountains as their home, and remain fixtures of the landscape. However, given that wild horses are not native to the United States, these animals do not face any significant pressure from predators and their populations naturally grow beyond sustainable levels.
The United States government acknowledges the rights of wild horses to remain on public land, but also works to balance the needs of free-ranging horses with the surrounding ecosystem in order to prevent large numbers of wild horses from dominating the space. In 1971, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), under the United States Department of the Interior, took control of managing wild horse and burro populations on federal public lands in the American West. While the BLM understands wild horses as “ an integral part of the natural system of the public lands,” they manage wild horse numbers in order to “achieve and maintain a thriving natural ecological balance on the public lands.” Public lands in the American West sustain wild horses, but also provide a variety of other services, such as facilitating mining and forestry, extending grazing land for livestock, and giving habitat to a variety of native vegetation and animals. When overrun by excessive numbers of wild horses, the land begins to degrade and struggles to provide necessary resources to a variety of other beings.
Wild horse populations, left unchecked, grow by approximately 20% percent each year and do not reach levels controlled by food shortage or space availability before irreversibly damaging the land, native vegetation and other animal species. Hoping to protect the public land from this destruction, the BLM periodically intervenes to decrease the number of free-roaming wild horses. The BLM uses low flying helicopters to drive wild horses like Winnie across the open terrain and into corrals. From these temporary holding areas, wranglers separate the horses based on sex, age and health, and officials determine where to send each horse.
While the overpopulation of wild horses in the American West demands attention and management, the BLM currently depends on inhumane and ineffective practices to control wild horse populations. Unprepared to give individual attention to each horse, the BLM often fails to uphold their commitment to these wild horses after roundup and sacrifices the well-being of the horses for the short term preservation of the land. The vast majority of captured wild horses live out their days in overcrowded and unsanitary government-owned pens. Without the space to organize into herds and with minimal human attention, these horses live out their lives in the middle ground between wild and domestic, and waste away as nameless objects in these long-term holding facilities.
In addition to disrespecting the freedom, sensitivity and intelligence of wild horses, this practice of keeping wild horses in captivity fails to address the target goal of combating the overpopulation of wild horses on public land. Analyzing the environmental impact of this management strategy, one specialist articulates, “[the] population growth rate [of wild horses] could be increased by removals through compensatory population growth from decreased competition for forage.” By removing wild horses and holding them in captivity, the BLM simply opens up more space on public land for new free-roaming horses to occupy. In this way, holding facilities actually increase the population growth rate of wild horses and exacerbate the overpopulation problem.
As of June 2018, government holding facilities housed 43,886 wild horses . All of these horses were gathered from public land, separated by sex and age, castrated, branded and doomed to a life of sitting in pens that resemble livestock feedlots. Stripped of their former wild lifestyles, the horses will remain in these pens until they die from natural causes or sustain injuries that require euthanization. By keeping these horses in governmental care, the BLM spends incredible amounts of money feeding and providing medical attention to them. Maintaining captured wild horses in holding facilities costs taxpayers approximately $133,225 per day . With these holding facilities draining the majority of the BLM’s resources, money and time, the organization currently struggles to focus on other wild horse management practices. However, by minimizing the use of long-term holding facilities, the BLM can redirect their focus and money towards strengthening more humane and effective approaches to wild horse population control.
In order to avoid the problems associated with these long-term holding facilities, the BLM could introduce fertility control and adoption as their primary practices for combating wild horse overpopulation. While currently utilized on small scales, these practices provide the opportunity to humanely decrease wild horse populations, and deserve increased research and attention. Fertility control includes two options: injecting wild horses with fertility controlling drugs or performing procedures on these animals to spay or neuter them. Both of these methods prevent the horses from reproducing, while also allowing them to continue their lives as free, wild animals. In contrast, adoption gives these horses the best life possible in captivity. Wild horses, as adaptable and intelligent creatures, often thrive in homes that provide them with systematic training and individual attention. By increasing the use of fertility control and adoption, the BLM might be able to successfully manage wild horse populations, without sacrificing the well-being of these horses and wasting government money on wild horse holding facilities.
FERTILITY CONTROL
Both methods of fertility control, surgery and injections, allow wild horses to continue living as free wild animals, while preventing them from reproducing and contributing to the overpopulation of the species. Providing hope for controlling wild horses populations without removing them from their habitats, fertility control for wild horses nevertheless requires more research and experimentation before deserving widespread implementation. Fertility control measures not only limit a horse’s ability to reproduce, but also alter the animal’s behavior in ways that could change the dynamics of its herd or make the target horse less successful in the wild.
In domestic settings, knowledgeable horse people can often easily detect changes in a familiar horse’s behavior after the animal undergoes fertility management. The vast majority of domesticated male horses undergo castration at a young age, often before they turn two. Uncastrated horses (stallions) often present opinionated, assertive and sometimes aggressive behavior, and require significant training from experienced people in order to become well-behaved and respectable domestic animals. Castrated horses (geldings), on the other hand, are known for their easy going, level-headed, and docile nature. Geldings, like any other horse, require systematic training and present temperaments that vary widely based on breed, age and education level; however, geldings do not experience the same hormones and impulses that stallions face in domesticated environments.
Spaying horses, in contrast to neutering, is a significantly less common practice; most female domestic horses retain their reproductive capabilities throughout their lives. However, female domesticated horses can undergo similar hormone changes to geldings by taking medications that disrupt their reproductive cycles. These medications are intended for breeding purposes since they suppress a mare’s natural reproductive cycle and will send a mare directly into heat (a period of increased fertility) when she is taken off of the medicine. Despite this specific intended use, horse owners often use these drugs on their mares for behavioral reasons. Depo-Provera and Regumate, two of the most commonly used hormone medications, can relieve anxiety, and make a mare less reactive and temperamental.
Given the known behavioral alterations that fertility control procedures and medications cause domesticated horses, the BLM and other organizations who study and manage wild horses should proceed with fertility control practices carefully and with significant investigation into the social implications of these drugs on wild horses. Critics of fertility control argue that neutering wild horses is “ an insult to the horses’ wildness, a threat to their survival and disruptive to their herds' social structure.” However, a variety of scientists and horse management experts remain hopeful about the possibilities of fertility control to successfully manage free-roaming horse populations in the wild.
Surgery
Spaying and neutering provides one option for managing the fertility of wild horses. The surgical removal of reproductive organs definitively renders these horses infertile and does not require follow-up maintenance. With appropriate sedatives, vets can perform these surgeries humanely and effectively on wild horses. Given the anatomy of horses, the spaying of mares is an invasive and complex procedure that requires approximately a week of recovery time. The castration of male horses involves less risk and recovery time, but complications still arise approximately 10% of the time . In order for these procedures to make an impact on wild horse populations, a significant number of the population would need to undergo these surgeries. This widespread implementation would require substantial amounts of money to perform the surgeries and care for the recovering horses. In addition, these surgeries, even when conducted humanely, cause wild horses stress by forcing them to interact with people, undergo painful procedures and remain in captivity while they recover.
Contraception
TJ Holmes , a wild horse advocate, became involved in the research and implementation of PZP (a birth control drug) after witnessing the brutality of wild horse roundups. Holmes set out to prove that effective and humane fertility control measures can reduce wild horse overpopulation, and allow current wild horses to remain on the range. Demonstrating the injection of PZP on a wild mare to a journalist, Homes explains, “‘Pretty amazing isn’t it?’... ‘The PZP fertility control in this dart can keep a mare from becoming pregnant for a year, prevent a colt from being born, so that BLM doesn’t have to do roundups that lead to horses sitting in holding pens.’” Holmes injects mares with PZP in the Spring Creek Basin of Colorado. Since gaining approval from the BLM in 2001 to apply PZP, no roundups have taken place in her area, which indicates the success of Holmes’ management. With the injection of PZP, wild horses continue to live dignified and free lives on public lands.
As an alternative to surgery, Porcine Zona Pellecida Vaccine (PZP) , an immunocontraceptive, presents the most viable option for managing the fertility of wild horses and remains the most extensively researched strategy. When administered with a dart or injected as a shot, PZP motivates a mare’s immune system to respond to the foreign compound by producing antibodies that bind to the mare’s eggs and block sperm from fertilizing any of the eggs. Once injected with PZP, mares remain infertile for a year before needing a booster shot. While requiring follow-up maintenance, this strategy inflicts little stress on the horses and demands minimal recovery time.
Vets, scientists and horse management experts can inject mares with PZP in the field, without forcibility capturing these animals and traumatizing them. By shooting a wild mare with a PZP dart at a safe distance away from the animal, a person can render a mare infertile, while preserving the integrity of the mare’s life and the herd’s dynamic. In addition, the PZP drug, with a highly specific target (the exterior of a mare’s egg), involves minimal health related side effects. Even pregnant mares, when injected with PZP, do not experience any dangers, and can carry their babies to term and give birth to healthy and fertile offspring.
By utilizing fertility control procedures and medicines, humans can successfully prevent wild horses from reproducing, while allowing them to continue living on the open range. These practices avoid the use of long-term holding facilities, and respect the rights of wild horses to remain independent and free. Fertility control measures can alter the behavior of wild horses; however, this strategy might still provide one of the best options for these horses. Fertility control gives free-roaming horses agency, and allows them to maintain their freedom and dignity as wild animals.
ADOPTION
Four friends, shortly after graduating college, adopted 16 wild mustangs and set out on a mission to ride these horses from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. Traveling across America’s vast public lands, the men strove to test themselves and their horses and to advertise the heart of these incredible animals. Ben Master s, the leader of the group, explains his motivation for the trip, “I wanted to prove the worth of these mustangs.”
After adopting the mustangs from BLM holding facilities, the men sent the wild horses to work with professional trainers for the first 30 days, and then took over the training for the next 3 months and prepared the horses for the trip. Discussing the training of these horses, Thomas Glover , one of the young men, explains the danger involved in the process, “You gotta keep your head on a swivel, keep your awareness about them and never get complacent, because as soon you get calm and comfortable around them that’s when they’ll turn around and kick you or bite you.”
Another one of the men, Jonny Fitzsimos , adds his input on the adoption of wild horses more generally, “I would like to see as many mustangs adopted as possible if it’s done responsibly. …[But] when you adopt one of these horses, more often than not, you’re going to have to spend 90 to 100 days working with that animal every day. … Adopting a mustang is a big responsibility.”
After working with the horses intensively for months, the men set out on their adventure. Traveling over rough, grueling and dangerous terrain and battling injuries, natural disasters and other obstacles, the men and the horses persisted on their journey. As hearty, strong and determined animals, the mustangs thrived in these difficult conditions. The men and the horses became teammates and worked together to conquer the challenges in front of them. Masters explains his faith in his wild horses, “The mustangs we adopted were pretty cheap, but they out performed our domestic horses in every way.”
Once successfully reaching the Canadian border and after months of hard travel, the men reflected on their adventure. Masters articulates his commitment to and pride in his horses, “What matters is the land and these horses that have proven themselves time and time again. There’s an honesty in their actions that I really admire and I’m grateful.”
Fertility control, while a promising option, cannot manage the overpopulation of wild horses alone. The sheer number of free roaming horses in the American west demands a multifaceted approach to this environmental, cultural and moral problem. Adoption gives these horses the best chance of living happy and productive lives in captivity, and allows potential owners to appreciate the fortitude, dedication and steadiness that these horses can offer. By sending horses to adoptive homes, instead of into long term holding facilities, the BLM can decrease the pressure on the government to house and care for the horses, and can give these animals a higher quality of life. The mustangs on this border-to-border adventure, Winnie and thousands of other captured wild horses narrowly avoided darker futures by getting a second chance with adoption.
The training that goes into these horses remains foundational to their long-term success and fundamental to the safety of those around them. While captured wild horses can transform into friendly, loyal and docile pets after spending months or years in adoptive homes, these wild animals, shortly after the initial roundup, should never be underestimated and require the utmost respect and caution. Newly rounded up mustangs, as strong, powerful and terrified animals, pose incredible risks to people, especially amateur riders and trainers.
Wild Horse Inmate Program
Hank Curry , a horse trainer who works in a Nevada prison, teaches inmates who often have no prior experience with horses to desensitize and train recently rounded up wild mustangs. Reflecting on his role and his belief in the program, Curry explains, “I’m a counselor, a teacher, a horse trainer… You establish pride in the guy and pride in his job, he’s going to be a lot more successful when he gets out of here.”
The men under Curry’s guide work one-on-one with the horses and learn how to communicate with and gain the trust of these animals. One of the inmates, John Harris , illustrates the difficulty of working with skittish and strong-willed horses and the emotion involved in the process, “One time I fought with a horse for two hours to get him to walk three feet to a post. … I was worked up. The horse was worked up.” Explaining the patience and compassion he has since learned, Harris reflects, “I was a lot more aggressive with my training. … I wanted something done now. That didn’t work. You have to take your time.” Harris learned a softer approach through his work with Curry, “Hank had to kind of gentle me.”
In order to make wild horses more adoptable and more likely to succeed in their new homes, a variety of programs throughout the country work with these horses to gentle them. Gentling takes the first steps in the long process of desensitizing wild horses to life in captivity, establishing a foundation of trust between horse and human, and training the horse (both on the ground and under saddle). The Wild Horse Inmate Program (WHIP) stands out as one of the most resourceful and mutually beneficial gentling initiatives in the country. Participating prisons take horses directly after roundup and teach trustworthy prisoners to systematically work with and build connections with the wild horses. These programs benefit both the prisoners and the horses by giving the prisoners a feeling of responsibility and purpose, and by making the horses more adoptable to the public.
In these programs, the wild horses and the people, both prisoners in their environments, work together to rehabilitate each other and to establish a foundation of trust and understanding. Providing equine therapy to the inmates, WHIP holds an impressive 15% prisoner recidivism rate , compared with the national average of 70%. The WHIP horses, also benefiting from the program, often transition into homes after spending a few months with their designated prisoners. Over the 25 years that the BLM has coordinated with prisons, prisoners have successfully helped train and adopt out about 5,000 wild horses . While better equipped for new homes, WHIP horses, after graduating from the program, still remain far from acting like the average domestic horse and require experienced owners and trainers to help them continue to learn and become acclimated to captivity.
WHIP represents only one avenue through which wild horses can find adoptive homes. In addition to going through WHIP or a similar gentling organization, a potential adopter could adopt a wild horse immediately after roundup or from a holding facility. Regardless of how an adopter acquires a captured wild mustang, a new owner should pursue the adoption of a wild horse with a long-term goal in mind and prepare themselves to spend months earning the trust of their new partner.
While many mustangs make amazing pets, show horses and work animals, potential adopters need to appreciate the challenges associated with the domestication of these wild horses in order to successfully and safely adopt a recently rounded up mustang. After adoption, these horses will need years of significant (and expensive) professional training before potentially becoming suitable for their riders. Even with this investment of time and money, the horse might never become safe for its rider or successful in its new job. Adopters need to realistically analyze their ability to provide the necessary training and time to these mustangs before pursuing adoption.
The adoption of a wild horse involves a significant commitment and challenge; however, if you can earn a mustang’s trust, they will let down their guard and become incredibly kind, obedient and hard working. With the appropriate time and training, most mustangs not only thrive in their new jobs, but also develop strong bonds with their trainers, owners and caretakers. Domestic mustangs, more so than other horses, become acutely aware who their people are, and seek comfort in these familiar relationships.
My relationship with Winnie began when she arrived at our Eventing barn in Massachusetts less than a year after her roundup. Hoping to turn Winnie into a successful lower level event pony and a safe trail horse, Erin Risso, the resident professional trainer, began working with Winnie, along with my help, as the assistant trainer. When she arrived, Winnie, with a stoic attitude and a wary eye, was suspicious of people and hesitant to willingly engage with anyone.
Catching Winnie from her paddock posed the greatest challenge. While some days she greeted anyone who came to her gate and happily walked into the barn, most days she would glance at the person entering her paddock and walk the other direction. Carefully remaining just out of reach for hours on end, she would continue this game until the intruder gave up and left her alone. After participating in this frustrating dance for months and experimenting with a variety of different strategies, I, one day, finally gained Winnie’s approval.
I slowly approached her gate with a bag of goldfish in hand, determined to wait her out. When she heard the gate open, she instinctively began to walk away, but as I called over to her, she stopped and turned to look at me. With her ears pricked, she waited for me to come over to her. Patting her on the neck, I gave her a goldfish as a peace offering. She gingerly took it from my hand and immediately spit it out, but appeared to appreciate the gesture. I casually clipped the leadrope to her halter and we walked into the barn together. From this moment on, I became her person.
As a gentle, reliable and patient pony, Winnie often gave lessons to children, but they could never catch her in order to start their rides. One day, a frustrated child came into the barn and reported that Winnie kept running away from her. Walking over to the paddock, I saw Winnie, clearly annoyed, as far from the gate as possible with her head down and hind end towards the gate. But, as soon as I called over to her and started walking in her direction, her disposition changed immediately. Ears perked, she turned and trotted up to me.
Winnie, accustomed to her wild past life, knew that she did not need people, but would come to me (and Erin) because she wanted to. While Winnie was just one of many horses in our training program, I thought of her as my pony. Winnie and I went to shows where we beat out significantly larger and fancier horses, but we also went on bareback adventures through the woods together and hacked to the local beach.
Our role with Winnie was to train her to become a proper riding horse and after accomplishing this task, we said goodbye to her and she left on her next adventure with her owner. Winnie now lives back out west with the woman who initially took her in after roundup and acts as a breed ambassador for other captured wild mustangs. Going to symposiums and demonstrations, Winnie highlights the dedication, patience and intelligence of mustang horses and encourages other people to adopt these special animals.