This is one of my most prized photographs. I wish I had a higher-resolution picture, but, for me, back in 2009, it was either my Blackberry or my faithful 3.2 meg Canon Digital Elf (the Ghosts of the Winter Sage to the PowerShot line) that I kept at all times in the glovebox of my truck. I carried that tiny camera with me since Canon came out with it in the late 90’s. It was great for just about everything, including shooting video, except in the event that years later I’d want to have some of my many great shots blown-up into something of “wall hanging” size. Still, I am lucky to have this pic at all as the subjects were virtually impossible to capture without the aid of a good telephoto lens.
I was living and working in Cortez, Colorado, running a new operations office for one of the larger natural gas exploration and production companies in the US. This one was headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma with operations throughout the Western US, including Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah. My job had me both driving long distances between assets and going back and forth between offices in Bloomfield, New Mexico, Durango, and Cortez in Southwest Colorado. Between where my work has taken me and my outdoor interests and activities, I have had the luxury of seeing wolves, mountain lions, bobcats, lynxes, wolverines, black bears, grizzlies, foxes, coyotes, eagles, ospreys, and virtually every prey species associated with that food chain.
My piece of the above project in North Central Colorado was relatively small in relation to the total cost and seven-year build cycle, but it was an important role and pleased me greatly to be a part of such a team of engineers and project managers. Including construction hands, hundreds of people had a hand in the work. I was responsible for designing and building the station inlet and outlet piping and equipment for this plant, which, when completed, became the largest gas processing facility of its kind. The area was called the Piceance Basin, and its location provided me with incredible opportunities to go on long runs with my dog and view untold numbers of elk and deer, and make the drive to flyfish the Flaming Gorge of the Green River, in Utah. Traveling to and from the site from my office in Cortez gave me even more wildlife viewing opportunities, including herds of wild horses in the distance. Unlike the rough, high desert ecosystems of so many other places that contained these animals, I can remember thinking that these wild horses (in the Piceance Basin of Central Colorado) had it made. Plenty of grass, water, and suitable terrain. I don’t think these horses had cause for much travel and probably lived their lives within thirty miles of their birthplace. But the point I wanted to make here is that oil and gas basins hold plenty of wild horses, thousands, and the horses have remained in this county even during the construction of larger projects and they continue to inhabit these pockets of extractive industry like mining and oil and gas production. Employees generally leave these horses alone, so their fear of mankind appeared to be non-existent. As long as they are left to be wild horses and do as wild horses do, they have no reason to move from a perfectly good area. There were large pockets of private range held by the nearby ranching community, so these horses had abundant access to those lands, and the area got plenty of snow and rain each year to keep the tall grasses in excellent condition. Unlike other parts of Colorado and certainly rangeland in Nevada and Utah where there is too much competition from both wild and domesticated animals, such as sheep and cattle, where the rangeland and all the creatures it supports are in serious need of management.
Over the span of thirty years in Colorado, I have had many otherwise rare opportunities to view thousands of animals in their natural environs. Wild horses were among the rarest. The picture was taken in an area I had come to know well. It is on a slice of BLM land which adjoins the Southern Ute Native American Reservation to the south and the protection of Mesa Verde National Park to the east. The entry to this particular area was accessed via BLM road that was often open to the public. I would hike with my girlfriend and dogs, go for extended runs and ride both my mountain and motocross bikes all over the related trails. Seldom did I encounter another human being and it had become an area I felt quite strongly about. If I did run into anyone, it would be a hunter, or two, back in hunting coyotes. I was a hunter myself, purely elk, and almost exclusivley good-sized bulls during the month long archery season, and, while I am vehemently opposed) to hunting coyotes for sport, their populations do need to be maintained and, in Colorado, a bounty could be applied to a corpse as long as the hunter held to the strict number of animals they could take with the proper licensing. Contrary to public opinion, these guys don’t tend to be monsters but are out enjoying nature in a fairly pure form, not leaving messes of campsite garbage in the field or, the thing that bugs me most, making all sorts of noise or breaking out a boombox and knocking back a few beers, and “plinking” (walking around with a smaller caliber gun and shooting at old cans and bottles scattered about these kinds of areas which really weren’t far outside the city limits). Depending upon where you are, the combination of drinking and shooting was illegal and I’ve put an end to these nefarious activities myself on many occasions.
This particular location had become somewhat sacred to me because BLM could decide on any given day to close the main access gate out by the highway, so I didn’t want some group of lawbreakers ruining the access for everyone else. It was just a ten minute drive for me to get there and park, and take off on a long run with my dogs. You could say that I was vested in the place and didn’t want to lose such a recreational opportunity so close to home, particularly since I effectively had my own splinter-herd of wild horses to enjoy. Since I mostly ran with my dogs, I had them trained to leave the wild horses alone, but that was only when I made sure to keep us well away from them, at least by a quarter-mile, or so. While with the dogs, I maintained a rule for the three of us that we never got close enough to bother them in any way.
But there were days when I purposefully went alone to stalk this small herd to get in close enough to observe them for a couple and hours and, with any luck, snap a few good photos. As part of the greater Mesa Verde herd, they numbered between ten and fifteen individuals with the usual hierarchy, a single stallion and possibly a smaller stallion as tolerated by the big stallion, six or eight mares and several offspring. Depending on the time of year, this would include a couple of this year’s foals and several yearlings from the previous year. This is what the herd would be comprised of at its healthiest. Some days I’d have to run several miles, including some doubling back, before I’d spot them amongst the thick pinon, juniper, and sage. Rarely were they out in the open sage as they are shown in the photograph, but it had snowed several inches of heavy, wet snow overnight and the change to morning temperature had come up just enough to cultivate a thick fog which gave them a sense of security. Plus, they were cold from the hard night and needed to be up and about grazing and trying to get warm, catching whatever few rays of sun making their way through the low-slung clouds. There was no wind, so it was an absolutely perfect opportunity to close most of the distance by walking through a draw filled with pinon trees and rocks. I knew this draw, and by the time it ended, I would be within seventy five yards of them. I remained in the cover of the top of the draw and watched them mill about, pawing the ground to get at the grass beneath. I probably observed them for an hour before the urge to carefully approach and try to get a series of pics took over.
This would be the closest I’d gotten to them. I crested the head of the draw and, standing behind a couple of small pinon trees, I slowly stepped out into the open and stopped, just standing there looking disinterested and away. Two things could happen. They could quickly collect themselves and bolt or, because I wasn’t acting like a predator trying to sneak up closer and I was in the open, in full view, coupled with the idea that these horses had gotten to know me at a greater distance, they might just hold their ground and let me approach by another ten or fifteen yards. I did not want to blow this opportunity, so I decided I’d go roughly ten more yards and take some photos. It was frustrating not having a camera with a powerful zoom where I would have remained in the sanctity of the head of the draw and gotten my pictures from there. But getting this close had worked in my favor because I got to watch them form a defensive circle, with the powerful gray stallion pointing himself toward me and the mares closing-up around the young. The lieutenant took a spot toward the back of the circle. I was now standing about fifty yards away and had begun taking pictures. I was pretty certain that they wouldn’t oblige me for long, so, after ten minutes, the lead mare gave the sign and began to walk off with the others falling in behind, and the stallion remaining in back, always between me and his harem. I marveled at his size, looking very much like a weight-lifter on steroids. His head, neck, shoulders and hind quarters were massive and obvious even under his thick winter coat. I watched until they all but disappeared into the mist and walked the two miles back to my truck. I’d been fortunate to locate them so close to the BLM road that morning. They could have just as easily been five or six miles into the sage to the south.
I’d had a triumphant morning but, because of the dim lighting conditions and snowy, monochromatic background, this one pic was the best I could get. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my girlfriend of the encounter. It was an extremely rare glimpse into the lives of wild horses.
The plight of the Amican Wild Horse goes back for centuries. Among scholars, it is generally thought that the American Wild Horse is a descendent of those horses which came over during the discovery of the New World by the Spanish in the fourteenth century not long before the Aztec and Mayan peoples of Central America and Mexico vanished, many due to European disease brought to the shores of North America by the Conquistadors and other conquering factions, there were thousands of horses left behind, never to be shipped back to where they came. I could certainly be wrong about this as it flies in the face of what has been historically taught by people far more educated on the subject than me, but I believe that rather than a few horses wandering off and becoming feral, I contend that it was hundreds, if not thousands purposefully left behind rather than taking up valuable cargo space on the returning vessels headed back to their native European empires. It didn’t make economic or pratical sense to round them all up and return them by ship to their native lands while most of the explorers would be returning by the skin of their teeth with all sorts of plunder. It takes a lot of effort to hunt-down and annihilate or enslave tens of thousands of lesser armed natives. There would be additional militant explorers traveling further and further north over the following centuries and, by then, native American cultures in Northern Mexico and the what would later become the Great American Southwest had discovered these beautiful creatures of European descent roaming about by the thousands. Over the next several hundred years, many of these horses would be domesticated and become the single greatest factor in the advancement of the American Indian Horse Culture, which now spanned any number of tribes from the Great Plains in the heart of America to the great Pacific Ocean of what would eventually become California, Oregon, and Washington. The wild horses continued to evolve into mixed-breeds from various parts of Europe into a slightly smaller and stockier lineage that was predominantly from being once domesticated on the European continent and various other places in the world that had specialized in breeding their horses for a number of different purposes, to going back into the melting pot to take on new traits, as dictated by the new environments they found themselves in. Over the course of the next three-hundred years, more horses were brought to the Eastern shores of the New World, some of which would invariably spill into the American West both during and after the Indian Wars when various strains of horses from around the world were unleashed onto the Western landscape. There were also horses left behind from the American Civil War. As these horses were captured and reintroduced to domestication, the American West became a giant cauldron of domestication and breeding.
All sorts of factors would define what would become the American mustang and what their regional popultions might be at a given time. As natural predators were eradicated throughout the Western United States and the cycle of naturally occurring fire had changed drastically due to larger and larger areas of white settlement, the ecology behind the history of the American Wild Horse became tremendously complicated and mired in debate. I will not attempt to cover it here. Suffice it to say that Wild Horse management is complex and seldom will you find three experts in ten who agree on the kinds of policies that need to float to the top and become legislation. Combine that with the fact that environmental conditions for these animals change considerably from region to region and state to state. Each herd has its own set of special circumstances that combine to help that herd thrive or see it struggle, on the edge of oblivion.
The thing that I find most disconcerting is the language used on the many sides to the equation is different when it comes to defining what species of flora and fauna are truly native to this part of the world. This is because species that are determined to be native get first billing when it comes to the level of managed protection they are given. The debaters tend to throw wild horses (and centuries old populations of wild burro) in with cattle and sheep, though one could argue that wild horses have been here far (hundreds of years) longer. If the legislators at the top of the food chain were to view this one difference as point of fact and were to capitulate, it would change everything downstream of that single perception. But even this gets complicated because of good, old fashioned American capitalism. Ranchers of both cattle and sheep are paying custumers when if comes to range management policies. Though each rancher pays an inordinately small contribution to operate their leases on BLM and Forest Service lands, as a whole, it amounts to a tastey sum of funds for the goverenment. There are no users of public lands that pay the way for their precious Wild Horses and these animals, all ungulates, compete for the same grass and water, which, in the drought-stricken west, is at an all time premium. Still, look at the term “Wild Horses” and you’ll see the word “Wild” as the chosen descriptor. We all know that these animals represent the truest form of wildness, as we look upon them with nothing short of awe. I think we’d all agree that there is nothing more breathtaking in this world than fixing our gaze on a herd of wild horses out doing their thing, “being wild”. Why would we dare think that these animals don’t deserve every protection afforded other wild and native creatures?
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Some facts as put forth by Wild Horse Advocate Laura Moretti:
“Fifty million years ago, a small dog-like creature called Eohippus evolved on the North American continent. In fact, this forerunner to the modern horse was traced to the Tennessee Valley. After evolving into Equus and disappearing into Asia and Africa presumably 11 to 13 thousand years ago, the horse returned to our soil with the Spanish in the early 1500s. From their hands, a few escaped onto the American canvas and reverted to a wild state.”
“According to Western writer J. Frank Dobie, their numbers in the 19th century reached more than 2 million. But by the time the wild horse received federal protection in 1971, it was officially estimated that only about 17,000 of them roamed America’s plains. More than 1 million had been conscripted for World War I combat; the rest had been hunted for their flesh, for the chicken feed and dog food companies, and for the sport of it. They were chased by helicopters and sprayed with buckshot; they were run down with motorized vehicles and, deathly exhausted, weighted with tires so they could be easily picked up by rendering trucks. They were run off cliffs, gunned down at full gallop, shot in corralled bloodbaths, and buried in mass graves.”
“Like the bison, the wild horse had been driven to the edge. Enter Velma Johnston, a.k.a. “Wild Horse Annie.” After seeing blood coming from a livestock truck, she followed it to a rendering plant and discovered how America’s wild horses were being pipelined out of the West. Her crusade led to the passage of a 1959 law that banned the use of motorized vehicles and aircraft to capture wild horses. In the end, it was public outcry that ended the open-faced carnage — and it came from the nation’s schoolchildren and their mothers: in 1971, more letters poured into Congress over the plight of wild horses than any other non-war issue in U.S. history; there wasn’t a single dissenting vote, and one congressman alone reported receiving 14,000 letters. President Nixon signed the bill into law on December 15, 1971. And so the Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Actwas passed, declaring that “wild horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people; and that these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene.” The Act was later amended by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 and the Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978.”
Credit: Laura Moretti in “The History of America’s Wild Horses”, American Wild Horse Conservation
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- 19th Century: According to historical accounts, the number of wild horses in America during the 19th century reached more than 2 million
- Early 20th Century: Many wild horses were conscripted for combat during World War I, and by the mid-20th century, their numbers had dwindled due to various factors, including being hunted for their flesh and sport
- 1971: By the time the wild horse received federal protection under the Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Act of 1971, it was estimated that only about 17,000 wild horses roamed America’s plains
- Early 21st Century: The population has begun to recover, and by the most recent figures, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) estimated the total American wild horse population to be 33,000 animals
- 2024: The BLM’s 2024 estimates show a marked difference of 73,520 federally-protected wild horses and burros on BLM-managed public lands as of March 1, 2024. I have no idea as to such a major discrepancy from 2023 to 2024, but using the higher number as a reference, almost 74,000 is nearly three times what scientists estimate public lands can sustainably support.
I say, “says who?!”
A quick Copilot AI search reveals these population estimates from the turn of the nineteenth century to most recent estimates. You’ll note that wild horse numbers over the last two hundred years are very similar to estimates of North American Bison over the same period, though I have seen estimates during the highpoint of bison populations as high as sixty million. I have also read 6 million. Who the heck knows except to say that, at their peak, various species of American Bison were found throughout North America and not limited to the American West and they were mighty and many.
Wherever you choose to get your numbers, what is important is that the populations of American Wild Horses have fluctuated wildly over the centuries.
More recent numbers reflect the ongoing policy, efforts (and failures) to manage and protect the wild horse populations in the United States. One thing that stands out since 1971’s Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro act is the misuse of the term “federal protection”, which is front and center in the language of this act, but has yet to be seen while these horses have been administered by BLM and other agencies acting under the auspices of the federal government.
Because herd numbers naturally vary considerably on their own and land use policy is an ever-changing storm, and, because the wild horse is generally out of the public eye unless it is in severe difficulty (when their numbers drop so low that herd gene pools are no longer viable to create healthy individuals) or someone catches a BLM helicopter which is alamingly close to the horses being rounded up for separation to public sale, or shipment for euthanization, and that one video gets loaded to YouTube and goes viral, the public finally gets to see what’s going on public (BLM administered) range-lands throughout the Western US, every year. The media only covers their plight when numbers become dangerously low or when verifiable reports of mistreatment get leaked to the public. Each time this happens, perhaps once every six to ten years, there is a huge public outcry to save these animals. Things go so far as to get heated between members the government and wild horse advocacies or people who simply care enough about what’s happening to take action and take a militant stance. Personally, I’m currently of that mindset myself and believe, as with many controversial issues, there comes a time when it becomes a final solution. The only solution. The debate has been raging since long before I was born (in 1961) and, while important legislation has been passed which should have been the template for protection of these precious animals, the government allows its agencies free reign in acting in any manner they choose. The time has come for anyone and everyone who feels a deep affinity for these key players in the history of the American West, the beautiful and historically necessary creatures that evolved alongside mankind, to choose a side: that of the American Wild Horse or their nemesis, the United States government. I want nothing more before I pass than to see this issue resolved once and for all, leaving the grandest symbol of the American West to run free for generations to come. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care how it happens, as long as it happens. Time always tells and I have a deep-seated feeling that if we simply leave things to time, there will one day soon be no more Wild Horses to debate over. They will be forever lost to time.
Please do something. Give to a wild horse advocacy group, educate yourself on the subject. Go to YouTube and see what happens during these BLM Wild Horse roundups. I guarantee that once you come to know what’s actually happening out there on “Public Lands”, you won’t be able to help yourself from getting involved. Many people travel to these Wild Horse roundups (the times and places are a matter of public record) to prevent mistreatment that would otherwise happen, well away from watchful eyes. The more eyes we put on them along with obtaining the names and positions of those responsible, the more we can provide much needed pushback on agencies such as the BLM and the local infrastructure that is in place for them to hide behind. Many people have a hand in the destruction and are compensated for their part in the doing.
