How a romanticized wild west influences wild horse conservation
“Wild, wild horses,” Mick Jagger sings in the Rolling Stones hit song Wild Horses. “We’ll ride them someday”
References to wild horses such as this are scattered throughout pop culture, often emulating the same ‘freedom’ that is associated with the United States. This theme is prevalent in songs other than the Rolling Stones’ 1970s hit, including Wild Horses by Taylor Swift, Chasin’ Wild Horses by Bruce Springsteen, and The Wild Horse by Rod Stewart. A simple internet search of songs about wild horses will reveal a plethora of musical tunes, typically with the lyrics of a yearning to be riding a wild horse- or actually be a wild horse, running free across the western plains. It is glaringly obvious that these animals have instilled a particularly strong sense of inspiration, notably in the United States.
Beyond music, western artwork like that of the 19th century artist George Caitlin, television shows and movies like Tombstone, and album covers like Bob Seger’s Against the Wind, all in some way incorporate wild horses. Many times, wild horses are depicted in images running freely in an open western landscape, manes blowing in the wind, and their brown and tan coats blending seamlessly into the sagebrush beneath a fiery western sunset.
These images are so common most people may not realize how often the association between the wild horse and the history of the west is displayed in their day-to-day life. Wild horses are, at this point, synonymous with American western culture and historical events like manifest destiny. The way wild horses are portrayed and perceived by American society is not only symbolically significant, but has had a defining role in influencing their conservation.
The wild horse, also known as the mustang, is a protected animal commonly found in the American west, often on public land in the most remote deserts of the country. According to a 2021 National Geographic article , “86,000 free-roaming horses live on nearly 28 million acres of public lands across 10 western U.S. states, and 55,000 taken off the land now live in government-run quarters.” Although it is called the wild horse, it is not managed like most other wildlife. Most federally-protected wildlife fall under the Endangered Species Act for their ecological role. The wild horse, however, is protected by the government for its symbolism, with its own separate legislation- similar to the protection status of the bald eagle.
In the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the federal statute that still protects the animal, “Congress finds and declares that wild free-roaming 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.” The wild horse has clearly shown to have value to humans as a reflection of American culture and society, rather than any particular ecological niche. These animals are so popular that people flock to the western United States to see these living symbols of freedom in the American west.
With this reverence for the wild horse amongst the American people, it was a startling scene when in July of 2021, helicopters commissioned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) showed up in western Utah at one of the most well-known locations for “tourists, photographers, and horse lovers,” to round up the wild horses into holding pens. Wild horse advocates protested the event, as the BLM rounded up “435 stallions, mares, and foals from the Onaqui Mountain Herd Management Area.” Some of the horses were given fertility control injections, while others were sent to holding facilities where they will remain unless they are adopted.
While it may be surprising to some, these round ups are not uncommon in the management of mustangs. According to 2018 article in the Nevada Appeal, a petition in Nevada gathered 170,000 signatures to reduce the number of horses being taken from a heard the state. These roundups spark outrage and lead to huge protests from wild horse advocates.
So how exactly did these seemingly well-regarded animals become one of the most controversially-managed protected species in the country?
Wild horses, with their current genetic makeup, are not indigenous to North America. They were brought over as domestic animals by the Spanish conquistadors in the 15th and 16th centuries. “By the early 18th century, fur trappers, Indian scouts, drovers, soldiers, and pioneers coming out West came to depend upon the horse as a regular part of life.” These domestic horses slowly escaped captivity, and created new genetic diversity through reproduction. The word ‘mustang’ comes from the Spanish word, mesteno, meaning stray or free-running animal- which does not exactly exert the same nobility as the title of wild horse.
As a non-native species in North America, wild horses have no natural predators to moderate their population in. Coupled with their high reproductive rate, populations tend to skyrocket. Ecologically, this creates a overgrazing problems throughout their grazing lands. According to Dr. Barry Perryman, a rangeland ecology professor at the University of Nevada, wild horses are a massive issue for countless plant species because they are foraging all day, every day. “Any population of unmanaged large herbivores in an area, even if it’s a million acres, without predators can ultimately cause vegetation damage, whether its deer, elk, cows, sheep, horses, or bison.” Cattle and sheep populations would also grow exponentially if left unchecked, but there are limits as to “how many can graze, how long they can graze, and what time of year they can graze.” Under their protected statues though, there are limited ways for people to regulate the population of wild horses on their land.
The BLM is bound by federal law to manage the large herds of wild horses, but that isn’t their only job. They are also faced with the responsibility of managing the other native wildlife and the habitat as a whole. Public lands managed by the BLM are multiple-use lands. They support a variety of activities, “such as energy development, livestock grazing, recreation, and timber harvesting while ensuring natural, cultural, and historic resources are maintained for present and future use.” The BLM can’t create management plans that comprise of only protecting the wild horses.
But the ever-increasing population of wild horses is becoming a threat to not only to the habitat they graze intensively, but also to themselves. According to Jenny Lesieutre, a Nevada wild horse and burro public affairs specialist at the BLM, the ecosystem “cannot support the number of horses along with the amount of natural wildlife that exists there.”
The BLM faces additional pressures from ranchers and farmers, who view the animal as more of a pest. The horses compete for the same resources as cattle like land for grazing. The BLM must navigate a land-management plan that incorporates human uses, natural wildlife, and symbolic wildlife. These uses do not coexist easily. The BLM considers wild horses to be overpopulated, so a certain number of them are put up for adoption. Being that wild horses predominantly live in some of the most secluded parts of the country and the BLM has limited staff, they use helicopter roundups to ease the process of rounding them into pens. The BLM has also been recently using porcine zona pellucida (PZP), a contraceptive vaccination to control the population, something that wild horse advocates have been fervently against.
These circumstances depict a perfect example of asocial natures and social natures influencing the BLM’s management of wild horses. Asocial natures portray nature as separate from humans. This is common amongst the preservation movement, with environmentalists like John Muir, whose philosophy was to protect “nature” from the seemingly destructive nature of humans for our own pleasure. Environmental historian William Cronon discusses this mentality in his essay, The Trouble with Wilderness, where he describes what he calls the “frontier myth,” of the “wild unsettled lands of the frontier.”
In many ways, current management strategies match the asocial views of wild horse protection advocates- wild wild horses are wild, and deserve staunch protections that keep humans and mustangs separate. The logic behind the Wild Horses & Burros act is the same that Angelo & Jerolmack describe in Nature’s Looking Glass- Rather than pushing for a management plan that regulates the number of wild horses, the whole habitat- which is the setting for numerous human activities- is taken into consideration. A “culture of enchantment” that is evident in the narratives of the environmental movement, which often focuses its attention on the majesty of rugged mountain peaks or charismatic fauna (rather than, say, a suburban park or snails). The implied ideal is preserving, and even reconstructing, “pristine” nature.
The outward appearances of animals also develops an interesting phenomenon that has created strong emotional responses from wild horse advocates. Coined the “Bambi effect” or “Bambi syndrome” based on the 1942 Disney film Bambi, the personification of these animals made them seem more innocent and victims of humans and nature. This film and similar animated animals films have created many animal advocates who want to prevent the killing of certain animals based on their ‘cuteness’.
The Bambi syndrome may explain why wild horses receive this emotional response to protect from harm, whereas animal like feral pigs for instance, do not. Feral pigs have a similar history in North America as wild horses, yet one is given the adjective “feral”, and the other is called “wild.” Like wild horses, feral pigs were introduced in by Spanish settlers in the 1500s, and poor livestock management practices led to the establishment of their wild populations in the US. Yet the United States Department of Agriculture identifies feral pigs as a “dangerous, destructive, invasive species.” Despite the similarities, they are managed in quite possibly the most opposite way compared to the wild horse, and there is no federal law mandating their protection.
From an empirical perspective, it could be argued that wild horses cause the same negative impact to the environment as feral pigs. Unquestionably, ‘feral’ as “having escaped from domestication and become wild,” describes the presence of mustangs. If these animals are empirically the same, then they should be managed in the same manner. So, why are they not? In this case, we again see that the beauty, strength, and elusiveness of wild horses, characterized with freedom and the unique history of the American West, has created a powerful societal perception that has determined the sociological approaches to horse conservation.
Opposite of asocial natures, social natures present the concept that humans and nature are inherently intertwined. The BLM must enforce the legislation protecting the wild horses, but they adhere to a more social view of nature. From the perspective of their scientists, the wild horse is an animal that may not have a “natural” place in the habitat as far as predation goes, but they are part of the ecosystem now regardless. Their job is to manage all habitats and activities that occur on public lands, and wild horses are now within that scope. And in their estimation, helicopters are the most efficient way to gather the mustangs up and get them to their holding pens to prevent them from intensively grazing the land, which negatively impacts the other species they manage.
Ranchers and farmers also hold a social view. From their standpoint, horses should be either managed in the same way as their cattle, with limits and regulation, or they should not be protected. In their social view, the label of wild horse is not accurate, and they shouldn’t be protected to the same degree.
The social view of the BLM and the social view of ranchers and farmers conflicts. While the BLM must see the ecosystem holistically, to ranchers and farmers, the land and the cattle are commodities under human domain, and the competition from wild horses threatens their way of life. Wild horses can exist, but their symbolic protections are unnecessary.
Asocial natures enforce many of the perspectives and policies in the United States. Americans are regularly romanticizing the “wild west” and the days when the western United States was a seemingly empty land of opportunity. There is a shared desire for the days of “manifest destiny” and the urge to settle down where the land is open, wild, and free.
As the federal law itself states, wild horses are “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.” This enrichment is similar to the that which the American people receive from driving through a National Park. The added utility comes from the idea that there can still be something wild and natural preserved in a world full of an increasing human footprint, even though these horses could just as easily be described as feral and invasive.
Wild horse advocates defend that the animal is native, not invasive, because it is simply a descendant of the early horse, known as the “dawn horse,” that originated in North America around the same time as animals such as “the American Camel, Saber Tooth Tiger, and Wooly Mammoth.” They argue that “the early horse migrated over land bridges to other parts of the world such as Spain and Portugal and developed into the animal we know as Equine/Equus today.” Certainly, this is an interesting debate, but does the wild horse being a native species to the US legitimize its strong protections that are damaging the ecosystem?
Asocial natures create genuine feelings that wild horse advocates feel, and to dismiss them would be callous. Their concerns over humane treatment for the animals could be extended to any other animal rights issue. However, the problem lies in the fact that the BLM has to manage multiple different uses on public lands, and by trying to appease both ranchers and wild horse advocates, they have angered both.
By: Andrew Berreyesa
