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Cover Story - Spanish Version

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Western Roundup

Spanish Translation

Kathryn R. Hoffman

The horses stand alert. A few paw the ground; others shake their manes in the wind. They are uneasy. A helicopter hovers above them in the sky. The stallion snorts and nudges the others forward.

Soon the horses are charging across the open range, their hooves churning up clouds of dirt. The helicopter has roared within a few feet, forcing the horses into a tight group. They are headed right into a trap! When the dust clears, the frightened animals are penned within a corral.

This is a wild horse "gather," performed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The federal agency, which controls millions of acres of wilderness in the United States, rounds up wild horses and then puts them up for adoption. The goal is to control the growing horse population. But the idea of rounding up mustangs—a beloved symbol of the wild West—is troubling to many Americans.

Reining in the Population
More than 45,000 wild horses and burros (or donkeys) roam freely in 10 western states. The BLM hopes to reduce that number to around 27,000 by 2004. In September, the Fund for Animals and the Animal Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit to stop the BLM from carrying out its plan.

The BLM says herd reduction is necessary because current numbers stress the area's natural resources. "Any habitat has a limit to the number of animals it can support," says David Jaynes, who works for the BLM in Montana. Jaynes points out that there are no longer many predators such as wolves hunting mustangs, so the population has grown out of control. Many horses are starving because the land cannot support such a huge herd.

The BLM is also being pressured by ranchers who need open areas to graze livestock. As horse herds grow, there's less food and water for cattle. "It's not only hurting our livelihood," says Nevada State Senator Dean Rhoads, a rancher. "It's also hurting the deer, the antelope and the elk."

But animal-protection groups say the horses should be allowed to run free. Bobbi Royce of Wild Horse Spirit complains that the BLM unfairly favors ranchers. She claims that cattle, not mustangs, destroy the land: "There is one horse to 500 cows here in Nevada."

Horse advocates also complain that the BLM's adoption program just isn't working. Not all the horses find homes. Even then, some adopted horses end up in slaughterhouses after a year, when the owners are allowed to sell them.

All the Pretty Horses
The mustangs are the descendants of the horses of pioneers and explorers. One hundred years ago, 2 million wild horses roamed the West. People have struggled for a long time to find a way to manage the horse population. In the 1930s and '40s, the horses became such a nuisance to people that they started shooting them. Before long, the population had dwindled to fewer than 17,000. In 1959 and '71, Congress passed laws to help protect the mustangs.

Efforts to protect the wild horses continue. Kids in Las Vegas, Nevada, have been working for three years to make the wild horse one of Nevada's state animals in the hope that the mustangs would get more attention. Last year, a bill reached the state legislature, but it was defeated by one vote. Many ranchers opposed it, but the students will try again.

There is No Easy Way
to resolve the fate of wild horses. Dayton O. Hyde is both a mustang lover and a rancher. In 1988, Hyde took a small step toward solving the problem. He used his own land and money to open a sanctuary for wild horses near Hot Springs, South Dakota. He has taken in many "unadoptable" BLM horses. Today, about 400 mustangs live on his 11,000 acres of land. "One answer," he says, "is for caring people to support sanctuaries just for wild horses." That way, these beautiful animals will have a place where they can continue to run wild and free.

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