Mustangs: How to manage America's wild horses? The debate rages

Just after dawn, a dozen mustangs stampede across the high desert, harassed by a white helicopter that dips and swoops like a relentless insect. Frightened stallions lead a tightknit family band, including two wild-eyed foals that struggle to keep up. Three animal activists watch through long-range camera lenses as wranglers hired by the federal Bureau of Land Management help drive the animals into a camouflaged corral. The private-contract pilot is paid $500 for each captured horse, dead or alive. After a 10-mile run, one band of horses storms past the corral, prolonging the chase. While most of the horses enter the trap, a few break for open territory, the chopper in pursuit. Few escape. The roundup corrals 180 mustangs, often employing a tactic that sets the species up to betray itself: A wrangler holds the reins of a tame horse at the mouth of the trap. As the mustangs draw close, the worker releases the animal — known as a Judas horse — which dashes into the corral, followed instinctively by the others. The decades-long debate over how to manage America’s wild horses has descended into an often-rancorous feud between animal advocates and state and federal authorities. BLM officials say the mustang population is out of control. Activists insist the agency has scapegoated an animal whose poise and dignity make it an apt symbol of the West. The two sides disagree on just about everything: on how to stem the growth of mustang herds, whether domestic cattle or wild horses do more damage to range land and whether mustangs are a native or invasive species. They can’t even agree how many wild horses are left on the range. This wasn’t the scenario envisioned when the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 directed the BLM to maintain a “natural ecological balance” among horses, wildlife and cattle...more