The Wild Horse Controversy
The wild horse controversy has many complex layers and could fill many books. To save you from the years of study I underwent exploring this issue in depth, I’ve made this post to highlight the critical points in order help you get to the heart of the “War on Wildness,” and find out what you can do to help put an end to it.
To make sense of where and when the conflict over the preservation of free-roaming wild horses in the United States began, we must take a long view of history.
Note: this article contains explicit content that might be too sensitive for young readers. Reader discretion is advised.
The Return of the Horse
North America in the mid 16th century saw horses take back to the land. As the early ancestors of today’s wild horses evolved in North America, it is no wonder that not long after their species reintroduction to the continent in the mid 1500’s, they took root, re-establishing themselves in their native habitat.
Populations of free-roaming horses exploded throughout the 16th-17th centuries as they found a hospitable home across thousands of miles of rangelands covering the Western United States.
As the domestic horse, brought to what is now America by Spanish Conquistadores, returned to the land — whether by escaping captivity, or being set loose intentionally — they acclimated and became more resilient. And simultaneously, they became more difficult to be captured and tamed by humans.
Many factors contributed to the domestic horse transforming into the free-roaming, wild horse in the early 17th century. Without realizing it, humans themselves were also contributing to their rewilding (Sandom, Donlan, Svenning, and Hansen, 2013).
Natural predators of the horse were being decimated and displaced by human population expansion and hunting. Horses aided in travel all across the West, and captured horses possessed a great value. This offered them protection among humans whose culture revolved around their ability to give flight, before machines that offered transportation were available. Therefore, humans tended the horses’ population growth as it served them to have them (Stork, 2010; Woodroffe, 2000).
As soon as the mustang began being viewed as competition with human agendas, though, namely sheep and cattle ranching, untamed horses became more valuable for their hide than their life.
With the establishment of large cattle ranches in the West by the 1800’s, the currency of grass far outweighed that of the perceived value of the wild horse.
This was the dawn of an era when it was dangerous to be a free-roaming, unbranded horse in the U.S., as “disputes over grassland inevitably escalated into shooting wars” (Cruise and Griffiths, 2010: 78).
Mustang Massacres
Between the late 1700’s and 1960’s, the mustang population throughout the West was chased to oblivion.
Texas ranger John Duval witnessed a herd of mustangs outside the Wild Horse Desert in Texas in the 1840’s, reporting:
“as far as the eye could extend on a dead level prairie, nothing was visible except a dense mass of horses, and the trampling of their hooves sounded like the roar of the surf on a rocky coast” (Stillman, 2009: 93).
The exact number of free-roaming mustangs when their population peaked sometime in the 18th or 19th century remains unknown. However, we do have an idea as to how many of them were massacred throughout that timeframe to result in an all-time low of roughly 25,000 horses and burros by the year 1971.
During the mission era in California, between 1769 and 1833, and following California’s inception into the Union in 1850, with the number of cattle ranches quickly on the rise, the largest population of free-roaming horses residing in California’s coastal region was an easy target for extermination. In a horrific extermination campaign, ranchers drove 7,000 mustangs off the cliffs of Santa Barbara in the 1850’s, and penned, starved and slaughtered thousands more with vaquero’s lances (Cruise and Griffiths, 2009: 82).
The same rangelands which were once refuges for thousands of free-roaming horses became inhospitable as free-for-all mustang massacres ensued all across the West. By the late 1800’s a majority of California’s free-roaming herds had all but vanished into arroyos and mountains where it was difficult for mustang hunters (mustangers) to follow.
Nevada became the last stand for mustangs, as the remoteness and lack of ranching interest provided, if only for a short time, a sanctuary.
The deserts of Nevada became home to as many as 100,000 feral horses in the early 1900’s, however these herds would only find sanctuary there for a short time. In 1934, Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act, which would forever transform the future of the mustang, and how they were managed.
The Taylor Grazing Act
The Taylor Grazing Act gave the Taylor Grazing Service – later renamed the Bureau of Land Management – responsibility for controlling and regulating 143 million acres of public lands” (Cruise and Griffiths, 2010: 84).
Under pressure from the powerful influence of big cattle ranchers, the Grazing Service cast a scapegoat to divert the blame for the degraded health and biodiversity of the rangelands from humans shoulders. In 1939, Archie D. Ryan, acting director of the Division of Grazing Service reported:
“A wild horse consumes forage needed by domestic livestock, brings in no return, and serves no useful purpose.”
What followed was the most efficient “range clearing” the West has seen, aided by the airplane; “officials estimated that fewer than 4,000 mustangs were left in all of Nevada by 1950” (Cruise and Griffiths, 2010; 86).
The shocking rate of extermination of the mustang from the western scene was slowed when a prominent advocate named Velma Johnston, also known as Wild Horse Annie, began campaigning for their protection. By 1971, Johnston’s grassroots campaign had grabbed the attention of the Federal government, and Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act which declared them “protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death” (United States Code: Title 16, Section 1331).
Protected From Capture, Branding, Harrassment, or Death-ish
The 1971 Act was a landmark victory for the free roaming horse, however the dangers didn’t exactly vanish. Threats to their lives continued to lurk around every corner.
The Free-Roaming Wild Horses and Burros Act tasked the federal agency the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) with managing them in a way that maintains “a thriving natural ecological balance on the public lands” (United States Code: Title 16, Section 1331).
According to the BLM, the Appropriate Management Level (AML), which would allow wild horses and burros to live in balance with the land and wildlife is approximately 27,000. This AML is criticized by activists as catering to private interests, as it was set at the time when the law was passed when populations were “fast-disappearing.”
In spite of protest by activists, the BLM emphasizes “gathers”, or “roundups”, which aim to remove overpopulated herds, which they refer to as “excess horses”, and transition them into private homes or off-range facilities.
As the BLM strategically eliminates populations from the range, wild horses cross into the domestic world and are made adoptable through the Wild Horse and Burro Program (WHBP). While there is much outrage from activists over round ups which employ helicopters, the round-ups themselves are not the only thing to be worried about with bringing wild horses into the domestic realm.
While the free-for-all extermination of wild horses permitted by the U.S. government by gunning them down on the range has ceased, as the number of rounded up horses and burros rises so does the risk of what comes next for them.
The Burns Amendment
In 2004, the Burns Amendment was introduced as an amendment to the 1971 Act. It essentially unraveled decades of advocacy work which protected the horse from slaughter.
While it is illegal to slaughter federally owned mustangs for human consumption in the U.S., the 2004 Amendment allowed for the sale of “excess horses,” and those deemed “unadoptable” by being either over 10 years of age or offered unsuccessfully for adoption three times.
Today 60,000+ horses live in off-range holding facilities (unadopted or unsold).
Adoption demand has never met, nor exceeded the number of horses and burros removed from the range. More than 7,700 horses and burros were adopted in 2022, while 20,000+ were removed from the range.
Unadopted or unsold animals are cared for by BLM for the remainder of their life at off-range facilities in the best case scenario.
In the worst case scenario, unadopted horses who are passed over three times are then given sale authority, which means that anyone can buy them for just $25 USD. These horses have an incredibly high risk of going into the horse slaughter pipeline.
Cold Cases
73,000+ horses are estimated to roam on public lands nationwide today (as of 2024).
Though they may face less dangers at the hands of humans than their rounded-up kin, wild horse populations on the range are still not entirely safe either.
Haunting instances of killings have been directed at mustangs even since being granted federal protections. Many cases of mustang murders over the last half century sadly have resulted in “few arrests and even fewer convictions” brought forward (Stillman, 2009: 498).
A particularly gruesome case ended in the deaths of at least 500 mustang, as they were gunned down over a period of months outside Lovelock, Nevada in 1989 (Stillman, 2009: 390). While not every mustang murder case has been cracked, what we do know is that only extreme emotions could have brought about such extreme violence.
Hope For the Future
The unstable ground the mustang occupies in human minds, as legal, biological and cultural representations of the wild horse clash with the modern world that’s rendered them largely “useless”, leaves the mustang especially vulnerable to ill-intentions. Masters (2017) summarizes:
“Wild horses in the American West are the perfect example of how species classification in politics is much more interesting than in biology class.”
The dangers faced by the mustang are perhaps just as great today as they were in the days of Wild West shooting sprees, though they may be less obvious.
Gone are the mustangers being paid and permitted by the U.S. government to gun down wild horses and send them down the road.
Gone are the ranchers with lances pushing them off the cliffs.
Only today, we have a very complicated work of legislation that grants them protection “from capture, branding, harassment, or death”, while at the same time incentivizes kill buyers to purchase an unadopted, sale authority mustang for just $25 USD (United States Code: Title 16, Section 1331).
Moreover, we have a federal agency managing them on- and off-range which routinely is sued by advocacy organizations and frequently criticized as unscientific and catering to big livestock operations.
Understanding history is important, namely because as they say, it tends to repeat itself.
While the cynic in me can easily see how grim it is today for wild horses, the optimistic part of me prays that it is in fact better than it was a century ago — before the mustang had any federal protections, or any prominent advocates looking out for them.
At least now, they have us.
Takeaways
On that note, here are a few things you can do to help ensure the darkest parts of history doesn’t repeat itself for the wild horse:
Stay up to date with the American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC) and other advocacy organizations who are on the front lines
Sign petitions, call your representatives, & show up to demonstrations
Share on your social platforms why wild horses matter
Adopt a wild horse and save a life that might otherwise be deemed “unadoptable” and sent down the road
Donate to a wild horse sanctuary or rescue to support horses who have found refuge
Volunteer at a wild horse advocacy group as many hands make for light work
Educate yourself through continuing to read The Wild Side Archive and related material
Get Involved in the wild horse world through The Wild Side Community
Resources
Cruise, D. and Griffiths, A., 2010. Wild Horse Annie and the Last of the Mustangs: The Life of Velma Johnston. Simon and Schuster.
Masters, B. (2017a). Wild Horses, Wilder Controversy. National Geographic. [online] Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/environment/wild-horses-part one/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2019].
Sandom, C., Donlan, C.J., Svenning, J.C. and Hansen, D., 2013. Rewilding. Key topics in conservation biology 2, pp.430-451.
Stillman, D., 2009. Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Stork, N.E., 2010. Re-assessing current extinction rates. Biodiversity and Conservation, 19(2), pp.357-371.
Woodroffe, R., 2000, May. Predators and people: using human densities to interpret declines of large carnivores. In Animal Conservation forum (Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 165-173). Cambridge University Press.
