Wild horses aren't free

One of the stockmen's victories has been a rollback in the 1971 law. When mustangs and burros are culled from wild herds, they are warehoused by the government and offered for adoption. In 2005, the rules were changed. Now, if horses aren't adopted on the third try, they "strike out," becoming eligible for sale to the lowest bidder along with mustangs more than 10 years old (not old for a horse). This means an eventual ticket to the slaughterhouse.

This policy is aggravated by federal grazing studies that, because of a lack of funding, are often out of date in terms of horse populations and favor the livestock lobby's version of "appropriate management levels."

"AMLs are frequently inaccurate and not determined in accordance with the law," says Patricia Fazio, an environmental historian who has monitored the mustang situation for more than two decades. "Where oh where has scientific management and substantive public input for federal lands gone?"

Wild horse populations also endure other stresses, such as unscheduled "gathers" during drought. (No other animal is rounded up under such conditions, and the horses aren't returned to the range after being given a drink.) And none of this is helped by media that parrot the view that the mustang is an invasive species.

In fact, mustangs are native to this continent, linked by DNA to horses of the Pleistocene. They evolved in the North American West, crossed the Bering land bridge to Asia and Europe, and then died out on their native turf in the Ice Age. They returned with the conquistadors in the 16th century, and for the next 300 years, roaming free or put to work as trailblazers, Indian ponies or cowboy transportation, they were an essential part of the West.

By the end of the 19th century, mustangs, along with the rest of the Wild West, were heading toward anachronism. A hydra-headed horseflesh industry arose. Mustangers ripped into the herds, trapping horses and selling them for chicken feed, or dinner in France, or service in foreign wars. So many were taken from 1920 to 1935 that the era is known in some circles as "the great removal."

Today, the roundups continue under cover of what is left of the law. Mustang posses are tax subsidized (although lone operators with guns hunt horses illegally as well). Federal contractors hunt "humanely" by helicopter. During the last eight years, about 75,000 wild horses have been taken from the land. There are now more wild horses in government custody than on the range.

Eighteen years after the first GAO investigation of the wild horse and burro program, a new one is underway. Perhaps it will uncover the absurdity of protecting wild horses and burros by reducing herds in unwarranted numbers, allowing them to languish in government corrals and making it ever easier to send them to slaughter.

In the meantime, our heritage is being stripped from the land, with roundups scheduled through the year. Now is the time for an immediate moratorium on wild horse removals, at least until population studies are brought up to date.

"We need the tonic of wildness," Nixon said, quoting Thoreau when he signed Wild Horse Annie's legislation. "Wild horses merit protection as a matter of ecological right, as anyone knows who has stood awed at the indomitable spirit and sheer energy of a mustang running free."