The Wild Debate
The term mustang and wild horse are frequently used interchangeably in narratives by the public, federal and state government agencies responsible for their management, and horsemanship professionals.
Within academia though, there is a clear distinction between a truly wild horse and a mustang, as the former refers to equus species which have never been domesticated, such as Przewalski’s horse, and the latter is the North American feral horse, equus caballus (Morin, 2006; Dalke, 2010; Ransom and Kaczensky, 2016).
Throughout my academic studies on mustangs, I referred to them only as feral in order to demarcate them from biologically wild horses. My reason for rejecting the ‘wild’ label so frequently attached to mustangs was to grasp why our culture is so emotionally attached to the idea of ‘wildness’, for better or worse. Scholarship on the controversy over the management of mustangs often points to the polarized perspectives that seek to sway public opinion towards worshipping or criminalizing free-roaming horses (Morin, 2006; Stillman, 2009; Dalke, 2010; Guilfoyle, Kane, Warr and Ackley, 2014). Advocacy groups paint the mustang as a cultural icon and symbol of national heritage we are obligated to preserve on the one hand, while commercial or ranching interest groups who are virtually competing with horses for resources on multi-use public lands portray them more as an invasive pest that threatens the balance of the ecosystem (Morin, 2006; Dalke, 2010; Guilfoyle, et al. 2014).
Although mustangs are undoubtedly unique in their straddling the wild-domestic spectrum, I found the more I fixated on the complex web they are entangled in within the psyche of Western culture, the more I became paralyzed by contradicting images that were projected of them.
I gripped onto the feral classification to stay afloat within the tumultuous sea of representations that swayed between wild and domestic, savage beast and sacred symbol. I was dismayed to find that despite my intentions of demystifying emotionally-charged agendas of mustangs as parasites by opponents of their cause, my scholarship equally criticized advocacy groups who clung to classifying them as wild or native species in order to ensure their protections. A colleague and horsemanship practitioner friend of mine listened to me speak about the mustang controversy, and reflected that my insistence to refer to them as feral could potentially endanger their protected status, as she said that referring to mustangs as feral would only “give the bad guys fuel.”
Acknowledging my own reflexivity, I am a lifelong horsewoman specializing in working with untamed mustangs, and the last thing I wanted to do with my research was undermine their protected status. I came to an understanding with the ‘wild’ in the mustang in the following explanation by William Cronon (1996: 20) which details the cultural construction of emboldened fantasies of nature:
We turn them [places or species] into human symbols, using them as repositories for values and meanings which can range from the savage to the sacred. At one moment they can stand for nature red in tooth and claw; at another, they can seem to be the purest earthly embodiment of sacred nature. What we find in these places cannot help being profoundly influenced by the ideas we bring to them.
It’s the Horses Who Suffer
Protected under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the Bureau of Land Management is responsible for managing them “in a manner that is designed to achieve and maintain a thriving natural ecological balance on the public lands” (United States Code: Title 16, Section 1331). Wild horse activists frequently criticize the BLM for lack of utilizing proven on-range methods of managing horses, such as fertility control, and relying on roundups which are targeted as cruel and inhumane (Morin, 2006; American Wild Horse Campaign, 2019). On the surface, activist groups lead people to believe that if you value wild horses you should join the fight to keep them wild, period. However, it isn’t always that simple.
When keeping wild horses wild means they may be fated to die of starvation or dehydration during a drought season, radical activists mistake prioritizing the horse’s freedom for their welfare. As wild horse advocate Glade Anderson (Morin, 2006: 177), puts it:
“What these people don’t grasp is that it’s the horses who will starve to death or go without water. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in politics and in who did what to whom, and much harder to keep attention on the real issue.”
Unfortunately for activists who wish to see mustangs run free from human intervention forever, it seems it isn’t a matter of whether the horses will be rounded up, but when, as the management system that governs them is in disarray. There are insufficient natural predators of horses to control their population naturally, and unchecked herd numbers can double in size every four years (Bureau of Land Management, 2019a).
In an activist group’s promotional video, wild horse photographer Kimberlee Curyl (American Wild Horse Campaign, 2019) addressed the hesitancy for advocates to redirect their attention from on-range management issues to off-range management:
“Their [the horse’s] spirit is broken in holding... Even if we were to adopt 30,000 horses tomorrow, that just opens up 30,000 more spots for horses to come off the range...”
A mustang’s freedom is undoubtedly infringed upon when they are displaced from the range. The sudden and irreparable loss of freedom in the roundup process is a fact of life for many mustangs who upon being captured are made available for adoption or are slated for long-term holding (Bureau of Land Management, 2019a). Crossing the threshold from on-range to off-range is a traumatic shift for a mustang, as even with the efficiency of helicopter facilitated roundups as compared to horse facilitated roundups that were routinely practiced in the 1900’s, it’s common that not every horse survives the capture which sometimes is stretched out for days over many miles of rugged terrain (American Wild Horse Campaign, 2019).
While the beginning of a rounded up mustang’s life in captivity may cause great suffering, must we conclude that it marks a steadily downward decline in their welfare from thereon? If this were the case, wouldn’t it mean that horse welfare in domestic environments is fundamentally poor? Or that welfare of free-roaming horses on the range is so vastly superior that it renders domestic environments inferior?
There is no evidence to support that either wild or domestic environment has a profoundly better or worse impact upon horse welfare, however research on horse behavior in the wild is upheld as the ideal which we should compare the welfare of horses in domestic environments to and recent studies show deleterious impacts of housing horses in stalls (Broom, 1991; Waran, 1997; Cooper and McGreevy, 2007; Rues, et al., 2009).
One recent study on the welfare of domestic horses living in boxes or stalls concluded that a pasture environment where horses are allowed the freedom to socialize as a herd would vastly improve horse welfare and prevent stereotypic behaviors (Ruet, et al., 2019: 15). Horses living in wild environments do not face the same obstacles to their welfare as domestic horses, however given humans provide domestic horses the basic necessities for survival, horses in the wild must overcome greater obstacles to their welfare being subject to factors such as insufficient forage or water during droughts, disease and natural predators (Morin, 2006).
Paralleling the mustang in their liminal status and the controversy they stir, the Konik horse are a domestic breed undergoing de-domestication in one of Europe’s largest nature restoration experiments, Oostvaardersplassen (Gamborg, et al., 2010). Mortality rates of thirty to sixty percent have been recorded over winters when forage is insufficient leading critics of the experiment to say de-domestication is cruel as it sacrifices the welfare of the individual animal (Konik horses in this case) in order to achieve restoration of nature prior to human disturbance (Gamborg, et al., 2010). How the plights of the mustang and the Konik horse greatly differ, however, is that critics of de-domestication call for human intervention to promote welfare of Konik horses, whereas mustang activists call for less roundups and greater efforts to keep horses on the range (Morin, 2006; Gamborg, et al., 2010; American Wild Horse Campaign).
Author Paula Morin (2006: 12, 13) comes as close to neutrality in navigating the minefield of provoking attitudes toward the mustang which she expresses is “a conundrum at best”, as she writes, “My intent is to travel the corridor between polarities, to penetrate the world of wild horses while imposing my personal projections on them as little as possible.”
The wild debate that surrounds mustangs on- and off-range may continue for time immemorial. However, we may work to become better stewards of them by taking a note from Morin and navigating the “conundrum” with the neutrality they demand. As regardless of how wild horses who roam the wild west are labeled in bold script, they are at the end of the day, individuals. Just like us.
