ShareThisCARSON CITY, Nev. - Guapo's freedom ended one chilly morning on the grounds of a prison yard surrounded by snow-capped mountains and shrubby plateaus.
The shaggy, sleepy-eyed mustang was loping freely through the mountains of southern Nevada only a few months ago. But he was caught during a federal roundup, tamed by a prison inmate at the Northern Nevada Correctional Facility and put up for adoption on Feb. 13 -- one of 9,000 wild horses that will be captured by the federal government this year.
Critics say the government, in trying to control what it says is an overpopulation of mustangs, is systematically wiping out the species. Federal officials say they're protecting horses like Guapo from starvation and disease and saving the rest of the West from habitat loss.
"This is a highly emotional, very challenging issue with a lot of ethical implications," said Barry Perryman, associate professor of rangeland ecology at the University of Nevada-Reno. "If we do nothing, within a generation we'll have a million horses on the range, at the expense of everything else, from kangaroo rats to antelope."
Horse advocates say the horses should be left alone. If they are overpopulating, nature should be allowed to take its course. Banning the hunting of mountain lions, the horses' primary predator, is a good place to start, they said.
"The government is managing horses to extinction," said Ginger Kathrens, an Emmy-winning Colorado filmmaker who heads a nonprofit devoted to the plight of mustangs. "If some of them starve, well, so do elk and deer. Just let them be."
An estimated 36,000 wild horses roam through 10 western states. Some are descendants of the horses that arrived with the Spanish 500 years ago.
In the 1970s, after Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the government started rounding up wild horses and relocating them. Crews use helicopters to scare a herd of horses into running anywhere from 3 to 10 miles into a portable corral, where they're checked by veterinarians, sorted by sex and age, and the males are castrated. About 9,000 horses a year are captured by the government. In some cases, herds are thinned by 80 percent.
"We try to do this as safely and humanely as possible," said Alan Shepherd, who oversees the Bureau of Land Management horse program in Nevada. "It's not a perfect system, but overall we're doing pretty well, I think."
At a recent roundup in Nevada's Calico Mountains, 39 of the 1,922 horses removed from the range died. Most of the deaths were due to "extremely poor body condition" because of the lack of food, according to the bureau.
The roundups have enraged animal rights activists, some of whom have staged elaborate rallies and demanded congressional inquiries, saying the practice is barbaric, costly and pointless.
Most of the mustangs captured by the federal government are sent to one of dozens of pastures in the Midwest or large corrals scattered throughout the West, where they join about 32,000 other captive mustangs and spend the remaining 20 or 30 years of their lives. About a third of the captured mustangs are offered for adoption to the public.
The Obama administration is looking at alternative ways to control the herds, which officials say are growing by 20 percent a year due to lack of predators. Obama has proposed nearly doubling funding to pay for birth control and to create wild horse preserves where the public can view these elusive beasts.
Want ads may be full of horses for sale, but it's hard to top a mustang, bidders said. Wild horses tend to be stockier, more muscular and resilient.
"I love these horses because they're like the American people -- strong, true, honest, a hodge-podge of everything," said Anni Herborn, who fell in love with Guapo the moment she saw him on a bureau Web site.
"Watching that horse, I know it's worth it," said Herborn, who paid $1,200 for Guapo at the Feb. 13 auction. "He's an angel. I am absolutely thrilled."
Herborn, who has a ranch outside Oroville, Calif., adopted another wild horse at a bureau auction last year, and said she couldn't be happier with the shaggy, stocky additions to her barnyard.
"They're smart. They're wise," she said. "They're survivors."
(E-mail reporter Carolyn Jones at carolynjones(at)sfchronicle.com. For other stories, go to www.scrippsnews.com.)
wild horses
This issue is plugged with holes when presented by the animal rights groups. They fail to see that most of the states that the wild horses are in are drought states. The ar movement points fingers at cattlemen who graze on BLM land stating the cattle are eating all the grass. They state the BLM and farmers are fencing off water sources from the wild horses. The animal rights groups have never been in a courthouse looking at maps to see where privately held ranches stop and BLM land starts. The animal rights movement fails to see that water that is fenced off could be because it is a contaminated water hole. The animal rights people have been lying to the public and legislators by presenting film documents that were shot in other countries and or at different times. The animal rights groups are putting up a image that is full of lies and deception. They want those animals to starve to death.
Disinformation
Actually, the Calico range had more rain just before this roundup than it had for several years and the range was in excellent condition. In fact, just a few days before the Calico roundup, the BLM had stated that ALL the ranges were in good condition!
You have NO clue what you're talking about. First - we are NOT PETA, we are NOT "animal rights activists"! Do you think anyone who objects to what's happening to our Public Lands is some kind of radical? Anyone who objects to lies, cruelty and unlawful acts is a radical? You need to learn the difference between animal "rights" and animal "welfare."
The govt. fences the horses off the ranges AND water that is supposed to be dedicated to the horses under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act so cattle can have it. No matter who likes it or doesn't like it, it's the LAW, and no one is supposed to be able to ignore laws and get away with it, right?
If you think the wild horse advocates have never been to the courthouse, you are more uninformed than I thought. These people LIVE in the states where the herds are; they have been watching and advocating for these horses for as long as 30 years. Why in the world would you think they don't know what is going on when they've BEEN THERE the entire time? Where do you live?
Every time I read your post, it gets crazier and crazier. The horses are NOT starving. Do you own a horse? Do you live in the West? You sound like a professional disinformation spreader, using the tired old rhetoric over and over again.
You are SO confused about what "animal rights" and "animal welfare" mean that you don't even know that they are polar opposites. If you folks don't educate yourselves so that you understand the difference, the "rights" people will win and they WILL go after your rights - not only to eat animals and hunt animals - but to even OWN pets.
One more tid-bit - on the approximately 262 million acres of Public Lands, there are less than 30 thousand wild horses and 6-8 MILLION head of cattle. Now, WHO is eating all the grass?
wild horses
This topic is laughable!! The thing we all need to realize is that what is a so called "protected" species(the Mustang) no longer exists. The Mustang (through various means) has evolved throuh the years into todays Wild Horse. The Wild Horse is not endangered! I can create a Wild Horse by releasing a domestic horse into the "wild". Incidently there are horse owners who release their horses onto the open range because they cannot afford to feed them. They become part of the "Wild Horse" population. If we stop protecting the Wild Horse the problem will take care of itself - and I promise the Wild Horse will not become extinct!!
wild horses
For years wild horse advocates asked BLM to seek alternatives/additional methods of population control such as birth control, including some sterilization. We do want genetic diversity to be maintained in herds which does require that some horses be put back in the case of massive roundups. BLM disputes the geneticists numbers and make up their own of what is necessary. Before, BLM said they didn't have enough money. Now that they have a lot of money they talk about these things, but then they conduct big gathers and are closing some Herd Management Areas- HMA's. In the case of the Calico roundup they rounded up as many as they could - claimed that there were "probably" 500 left and is not planning on putting any back - which was their original claim for this particular roundup. One person who went looking to see what was left found nine horses, there are likely more. BLM said that many of the horses probably ran into the adjacent HMA across into California, so now of course they are going to conduct a massive "gather" there. The roundup or "gather" has thus resulted in the deaths of over 70 adult horses who were healthy before and the deaths of dozens of nearly full-term foals. Over 100 horses are now dead from the Calico roundup. None of them were starving.
Wild horse advocates do not claim that modern wild horses are a unique species. What research has found is that overall, modern horses lack much genetic diversity, and that the last native horses in North America included three species, two that didn't survive the end of the Ice Age and the modern horses. Thus horses are native here, even if they have been reintroduced. Today's wild horse populations reproduce without the kind of human involvement that domesticated animals have. As a result they have a selection process based on what is best for survival, and the isolation of bands helps create greater diversity for the over-all species and it's ability to survive whatever challenges lie ahead.
As to the numbers of animals out there and how they are going to be overwhelming in the future, that is all supposition. First they need to conduct aerial surveys with neutral observers. And then keep in mind that grazing animals of any kind help cut back the fire danger. Horses eat a wide range of plant materials including brush. Domestic horses need to have their teeth filed because their diet is too limited. I am told that the biggest reason for the poor quality of the range is Global Warming (polar ice melting etc), and some experts claim that with all management practices aside - at the current rate of change the Mojave Desert could reach all the way up to Winnemucca in northern Nevada in eighty years.