Last Chance Mustang

by Mitchell Bornstein

  The damage, nevertheless, had long since been done.

  The free-roaming Mustang had been deemed “in excess” of its proscribed and accepted population levels and, despite the protections of the ’71 Act, the roundups began where they had left off. Horses were surviving on the range at higher than estimated population levels, but those charged with managing the wild herds didn’t care. With faulty and misleading statistics as justification, officials once again targeted the American Mustang.

  By 1972, critics of the Mustang horse—angered by the passage of the 1971 Act and bolstered by an influx of money and resources—came out swinging for a new round of assault on the free-roaming horse. Once again, their focus was range degradation: the unchecked wild horse population threatened to destroy what little viable grassland remained. The BLM had a solution to the problem: the Adopt-a-Horse-or-Burro Program. For a mere twenty-five dollars, any citizen could own a walking, breathing symbol of the Old West.

  In theory, the BLM program seemed a good proposition. Purported excess horses would be removed from the range and sent to loving homes, the range would be saved from the wild horse’s allegedly destructive hooves and mouth, and the public at large would be given the opportunity to own a piece of American history. In reality, however, the Adopt-a-Horse-or-Burro Program was anything but ideal and for many of the horses that passed through its gates it was nothing short of a one-way ticket to slaughter.

  From its inception, animal welfare organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States and the American Horse Protection Association warned that the BLM program was poorly managed and incapable of handling the massive influx of horses. Worse yet, the average adopter had never seen, let alone handled, an untamed and untrained wild Mustang. What, the organizations questioned, would happen once newfound adopters discovered that they could not control their new horses? Rather than a solution to the alleged wild horse problem, the BLM program appeared a recipe for disaster.

  As the cautionary warnings and concerns went unheeded, the BLM adopted out Mustangs to any and all who petitioned. By 1977, the BLM announced that rangeland conditions were grave, sixty-five thousand wild horses overpopulated the frontier, and drought was imminent. Purportedly lacking sufficient water and forage resources, in just six years the wild horse population had somehow increased by forty-eight thousand head. Either the Mustang was a true survivor, a reproductive machine, the BLM population estimates for 1971 were too low, or the 1977 numbers were too high. It was a flashback to the past and a foretelling of the future, and Mustang advocates again questioned how the wild horse could be living, surviving, and reproducing on a range that allegedly lacked adequate water, shade, and forage.

  Questions were plentiful, doubt was abundant, but no answers were forthcoming.

  Despite public inquiry and criticism, and with 1,500,000 deer and 250,000 antelope roaming the very same drought-threatened lands, the BLM rounded up 10,000 of the frontier’s purported 65,000 wild horses. They were supposed to go to loving, caring homes. They never made it there. Months later while awaiting adoption, 146 Mustangs died and an additional 98 were put down after they froze to the ground—forgotten in a crammed BLM holding pen outside Reno. The following year, a BLM official conceded that 50 percent of the horses funneled through the adoption program ended up at slaughter plants. Several years later, a federal grand jury concluded that 90 percent of the horses adopted out to private owners eventually found their way to slaughterhouses. At least on the range, with allegedly no water and no forage, the Mustang still had a fighting chance.

  In theory, the BLM adoption program was an arguably well-intentioned means to preserve an American icon and the Mustang way of life. In practice, however, it was a death sentence for and a surreptitious way to remove the long unwanted and unwelcome wild horse. For years to come, the BLM’s Adopt-a-Horse-or-Burro Program would remain terribly mismanaged and utterly broken.

  By the mid-1970s, a once wild horse–friendly Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. The Act reclassified 261 million acres of public land for multiple-use management and significantly increased BLM responsibilities. Wild horse, grazing, mineral, timber, hunting, wildlife, and off-road vehicle uses all now fell under the BLM’s widened purview. In addition, the Act amended the 1971 law and authorized the use of helicopters and airborne-led roundups. Once again, the Mustang was to be chased, culled, and captured from above. Yet again, the free-roaming horse was in serious peril.

  It was a dark day for the American Mustang and the beginning of a new era with new enemies. On paper, wild horse supporters had fought a long and arduous battle with and defeated, the cattlemen and livestock interests. In reality, however, the 1971 Act was more Band-Aid, more stopgap than remedy. New adversaries now targeted the Mustang horse: off-roaders, hunters and the gun lobby, and the timber and mineral conglomerates. Individually, each of these adversaries had power, money, and influence. Together, they created a formidable alliance that had just one goal: to rid the range of the free-roaming American wild Mustang.

  As in the past, opponents of the Mustang horse turned to their PR spin doctors. The wild horse, they said, was a feral beast, a foreigner to our native soils, and a threat to indigenous wildlife such as the bobcat and the wolf. It was an illegitimate horse and an interloper, brought to our ranges—uninvited—by the early Spanish explorers. The glue that held these various special interests together, the one shared goal, was their common need for land. The land of the “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West…”19 The land where the Mustang was to be “protected … considered in the area where presently found…”20 Together, Mustang foes both old and new were primed for the next wave of battle.

  Across the Nevada highlands and dry lands, the free-roaming Mustang stood little chance against the low-flying, fast-moving helicopter. Congressional politics and campaign finance had dealt a serious blow to the cause of the wild horse. In the year following passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, Wild Horse Annie, in failing health and no doubt defeated by recent events, passed away to little mention. Times were dark for the Mustang and they were about to get darker.

  With the start of the Reagan era and the sagebrush rebellion, less government was better government. As bureaucratic agencies took a less active role, thousands upon thousands of acres of public land were returned to private ownership and the BLM’s Adopt-a-Wild-Horse-or-Burro Program faltered. Wild horse adoptions were on a steep decline while ten thousand Mustangs sat captive in overcrowded BLM holding corrals.

  Forgotten, ignored, and diseased, many interned horses wasted away; countless others died or were soon to be dead. The iconic, once free and beautiful wild Mustang was rotting away in undersized fenced mud lots ripe with the odor of death. Mud lots where disease, despair, and death were as far as the eye could see.

  The BLM needed and soon found a solution for its “excess” horses—the horses removed from the range and housed in its holding facilities. For any party willing to adopt four or more horses, the BLM would waive its $125 per head adoption fee. Those formerly known as “kill buyers” were soon labeled “lot adopters” and business was good, easy, and profitable for these lot adopters. By 1988, a federal appeals court had sided with a lower court’s findings that en masse single-party adoptions violated the legislative intent of the 1971 Act and permanently enjoined the practice of lot adoptions. The damage, however, had already been done.

  Between the years 1984 and 1987, nearly fifteen thousand Mustangs fell victim to lot adopters and fifteen thousand “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West” had met a violent end in slaughterhouses throughout the country. As wild horse advocates and opponents battled in the court of public opinion, the numbers and statistics could not be manipulated or disputed. In the case for the wild horse, the statistics spoke to the facts and the facts spoke to the truth. With regard to the 1980s, the truth was chilling

  From 1981 to 1988, 4,3
50,000 livestock and 2 million deer and elk populated and grazed on 41,500,000 acres of public land. Among the animals that grazed off the land, 68 percent were privately owned stock, 31 percent were game animals, and 1 percent were wild horses. Also present on public land and listed as an endangered species, 50,000 grass-grazing bighorn sheep. Ironically, at 50,000 head the bighorn sheep warranted endangered species protection. At 60,000 head the Mustangs needed to be gathered and relocated.

  On the range, the numbers had spoken: the free-roaming Mustang population was statistically insignificant. Still, the wild horse was to blame—and the only animal to be blamed—for range degradation, soil erosion, and any other damage that its critics could muster. At a cost of $100 million to taxpayers spread over ten years, the wild Mustang had been removed from the land that it had inhabited, the range that it had adapted to and survived upon, and the frontier where other species had failed and perished. In the pastures where Mustang bands had once roamed and galloped, grazing allotments were increased, permit fees were paid, and game was hunted. The story of the 1980s was the story of the 1970s and the 1960s: the cattle industry, game interests, and big money controlled.

  While the BLM emptied its holding facilities to the lot adopters and readied its mud lots and corrals for an influx of new lifeless, spiritless horses, the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Wild, Free-Roaming Horses and Burros issued its Final Report. Commissioned by Congress and comprised of impartial scientists, the committee reported finding “very few (wild horse) areas with heavy vegetation impacts, although we have asked the BLM to show them to us.”21 The facts, the statistics, and now the scientists had exonerated the wild horse. Those fighting to remove the Mustang from the range and the agency charged with its protection merely turned a deaf ear.

  As the 1980s drew to a close, over the course of several months five hundred Mustangs in Nevada were methodically harassed, chased, and shot. Nearly forty years since Wild Horse Annie had first encountered a bloodied stock truck on Highway 395 and Mustang blood was still needlessly flowing in the Nevada desert. Though it had escaped the hardships of time and history, the wild horse could not outrun its curse. Death at the hands of man—not nature and not predator—would forever be the Mustang curse.

  The decade also began where the 1980s left off, with a scathing report calling into doubt the BLM’s ability to properly manage and protect the nation’s wild horses. Released in 1990, the General Accountability Office Report to the Secretary of the Interior began with a decades-overdue declaration that debunked the alleged cause and effect association between the wild horse and rangeland degradation. As detailed by the GAO report, “BLM could not provide GAO with any information demonstrating that federal rangeland conditions have significantly improved because of wild horse removals. This lack of impact has occurred largely because BLM has not reduced authorized grazing by domestic livestock, which because of their vastly larger numbers consume 20 times more forage than wild horses.…”22 Disturbingly, the GAO also found that in areas where wild horses had been removed to protect the soil the BLM had not only failed to decrease livestock numbers but had actually also increased grazing levels.

  True to the long-standing claims of wild horse advocates, where Mustangs had been removed cattle were soon found.

  The GAO report then took aim at the BLM 1980s roundup of eighty thousand wild horses, stating that, “… despite congressional direction, BLM’s decisions on how many wild horses to remove from federal rangelands have not been based on direct evidence that existing wild populations exceed what the range can support.”23 Having assailed the BLM for failing to conduct the mandated carrying-capacity studies and range evaluations, the GAO concluded: “Despite the lack of data, BLM has proceeded with horse removals using targets based on perceived population levels dating back to 1971 and/or recommendations from BLM advisory groups comprised largely of livestock permittees.”24 For the Mustang and wild horse advocates, it was vindication. Vindication twenty years in the making and twenty years too late.

  Last, the GAO evaluated the BLM Adopt-a-Horse-or-Burro Program and again the picture of a corrupt, mismanaged agency with a hidden agenda came into focus. In its assessment of the practice of lot adoptions, the GAO found that “inhumane treatment and commercial exploitation” ruled the day.25 The report continued: “BLM did not always comply with its regulations and internal guidelines for approving and monitoring these adoptions. This noncompliance resulted in the inhumane treatment and death of hundreds of horses during the one year probation period when the horses were still owned by the government. Most adopters sold thousands of wild horses to slaughterhouses.”26

  The 1990 GAO report only confirmed what wild horse advocates had been saying for years. Mustangs had been unjustly and illegally removed from the range; federally protected horses had been shipped to slaughter. It was a sad and oft-repeated story. It was the heartbreaking and unfortunate story of a forgotten American icon.

  As the twentieth century came to a close, shocking news hit the airwaves: thirty-four Mustangs had been hunted down, mutilated, and shot in Nevada’s Virginia Range. It was a gruesome and telling scene: carcasses were strewn across the range, a mare lay dead with her foal still in the womb, legs were broken, lungs collapsed, and one horse had its eye knocked out with a fire extinguisher. The three local men—two of whom were enlisted Marines—charged with the offenses eventually pled out to misdemeanors and received light sentences.

  Despite the passage of years and decades, Mustang hunting remained a sick, perverted form of entertainment. To a select few it was a sport; to others it was pest control. Much time had passed, but so little had changed.

  Shortly after President George W. Bush took office in 2000, the BLM accelerated its wild horse roundups. Within three short years, Mustang population levels had dropped from 25,000 to 17,900.

  By 2004 Mustang advocates were once again clamoring for reform as five Mustangs housed in a BLM holding corral died after suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Left unattended in Nevada’s scorching sun with no freshwater source, the horses had been removed from the range due to alleged drought-like conditions. The incident was tragic, avoidable, and quite telling. Wild horses on the range were persevering and surviving; captured Mustangs housed in BLM holding facilities were suffering and dying. The new century was off to a very sad start and the barn walls were about to cave in.

  As the final days of 2004 were winding down and as senators finalized their debate over appropriations for the upcoming year, Montana senator Conrad Burns attached a stealth rider to the Fiscal Year 2005 Appropriations Act. The rider amended the 1971 Act and instituted what came to be known as the “three strikes rule”—any wild horse who was ten years of age or older or had been passed over three times for adoption would be eligible for immediate and outright sale. Senators rushing home for the Thanksgiving break passed the Appropriations Act, stealth rider and all, the three strikes rule became law, and the BLM finally had its long-coveted outright sale authority for wild horses.

  Nearly twenty years in the making, the assault on the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act had come full circle. With the first blow struck in 1976 and at the prompting of various special-interest groups, Congress had dealt the final and fatal blow to a law intended to protect both the free-roaming and captive Mustang. For a three strikes Mustang, the Burns Rider was a death sentence. For wild horse advocates, it was a game changer. Where the gates to former Mustang rangeland remained closed and locked, the gates to the slaughterhouses now opened.

  In the weeks following passage of 2004’s Burns Rider, buyers descended upon BLM holding facilities and purchased as many three strikes Mustangs as their trailers could carry. Horses who once graced the West’s vast ranges, wild Mustangs who had survived Mother Nature’s unflinching fury and had escaped the hunt of untold predators, found themselves packed into stock trailers barreling down the interstate to Texas and Illinois and the nation’s three remaining slaughterhouses. I
t was an outcome that officials said would not, could not, occur under the BLM’s sale authority guidelines. It was an undignified end for the noble and proud Mustang horse. It was an end not befitting a national treasure.

  Antislaughter advocates let out a loud cheer on June 30, 2007, when Cavel International complied with a U.S. District Court Order and shut down operations at its DeKalb, Illinois, slaughterhouse. Congress had defunded horse slaughterhouse inspections, the courts had ordered the USDA to stop inspecting, and the last domestic slaughterhouse was now closed, but that didn’t mean the three strikes horses were any safer. Slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico were still paying by the pound and the Mustang carcass remained a marketable commodity. By late 2007, the Bush era was nearing its end when cattleman and president George W. Bush signed an executive order increasing the number of grazing permits available to livestock interests. It was another year and a different administration, but clout and politics still trumped facts and statistics.

  As the first decade of the new millennium neared its end, the stage was set for catastrophe. Public apathy, a push to round up greater numbers of wild horses, and a government agency run amok would equal a disaster in the making. The battle between Samson and I was just getting started, but the war between the BLM and the American wild Mustang was about to claim further mass casualties.