Battle to save America’s mustangs as government rounds up wild horses

For the first two hours of the bone-jarring drive into the Pryor Mountains you do not see much but rocks, scrubland and tree stumps charred by a recent forest fire. It is only when you reach the subalpine meadows at 8,000ft (2,400m) looking over the vast, red rock deserts of Wyoming below that the creatures begin to emerge slowly. They are a magnificent sight: wild horses, their lineage unbroken from the horses that arrived with Spanish conquistadors about 500 years earlier. This particular herd has even greater historical significance: its ancestors were tamed by the pioneering Lewis and Clark Expedition across the West but were stolen by the Crow tribe, who set them free. They have been living in almost complete isolation ever since, protected by a 1971 Act of Congress which declared that wild horses, or mustangs, be “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West”. Last week, however, the US federal government’s Bureau of Land Management began to round up the horses using a helicopter in an effort to reduce their numbers. It is part of a scheme that has resulted in 33,000 mustangs being caught, with only about 26,000 left to roam. Some of the horses will be put up for adoption. Others will be released, but only after the mares have been given contraceptives...LondonTimes

I'll let others comment on the historical accuracy and the objectivity of this article.