My grandson says I’m a sucker for a flashy horse. He should know. He was with me, branding calves with a friend, when I got completely carried away watching a Tobiano paint horse with feet like a dancer. He was there as well when I fell in love with a big gray foxtrotter with the smoothest gait I ’ve ever seen. I plead guilty as charged. I have always loved horses, especially beautiful horses. Opinion But if you go back a couple of generations, the horses that my family rode were far from beautiful. The little rangy, hammer-headed mustangs that my grandfather Walt rode didn’t come from some posh horse sale or from some fancy bloodline. They came from the desert, on the business end of a lariat. They were feral horses, perfectly adapted for a good life in a hard country. They were survivors, and their descendants have remained such to this day.  I do not remember a time in my life when feral horses weren’t present. They were there at Elk Butte and Little Sandy Creek when I was barely tall enough to see out of the pickup window. There were feral horses in Salt Wells Creek and over toward Pine Mountain, south of Rock Springs. There were feral horses near Oregon Buttes and down toward Steamboat Mountain. Never a lot at one time, usually a stud with a small bunch of mares and their offspring. They were skittish, for the most part, and quick to put some distance between themselves and humans. They were iconic, in a way — very much a part of the wild desert country my family called home. But over time, things changed. Beginning in the 1970s, we began to see more feral horses in more places. You could read brands on some — somebody’s pet that they couldn’t afford to keep and couldn’t bear to put down. I even saw a feral mule east of Continental Peak one day. And every year, there were more. It was apparent that they were fast becoming a problem. And the problem remains to this day. Here are a few things we know about feral horses: Wyoming has a lot of free-ranging horses. We’re second only to Nevada in feral horse numbers. We have 16 herd management areas, mostly in southwestern Wyoming and the Bighorn Basin.  They’re not wildlife. They’re domestic horses released to the wild accidentally or on purpose, now feral. Any other origin story for them is fantasy. Multiple species of horses existed in North America, but they’ve been extinct for at least 10,000 years. They’re physically resilient and adaptable. Their anatomy (prehensile lips, narrow muzzle, long legs, single-chamber stomach) and their ability to shift what they eat in response to changing conditions (drought, severe winters, etc.) make them successful competitors with native wildlife, like sage grouse, pronghorn, mule deer, elk and bighorn sheep. They’re behaviorally resilient and adaptable as well. When resources like water are plentiful, they don’t spend a lot of energy defending those resources. But when those same resources are scarce, they aggressively defend their territories, limiting access to resources by those same native wildlife species. Their numbers were kept in check for more than a century by harvest from Indigenous people, and later by ranchers and other rural folks for their own purposes. Stockmen across the interior west captured young horses for domestication and shipped other captive feral horses to market for slaughter. The Wild Free‐Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 was a game-changer. With the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service tasked with the responsibility to manage feral horses on their lands, free-ranging horse numbers have risen to approximately three times the appropriate management levels established. At current population levels, feral horses are damaging habitat for many species of native wildlife. As the impacts of climate changes continue, this damage will increase. Out there on the ground, the future looks grim for both these hardy critters and the habitat they depend upon. Feral horse numbers on the range continue to increase. Holding facilities are full. Adoption programs account for only a small number of horses annually. The federal agencies have turned to off-range sites, usually on private lands, where the owner contracts to take a given number of horses for a given time and receives compensation. There are now almost as many free-ranging horses off-range as there are in the wild. Meanwhile, free-ranging horse numbers continue to rise. It would be easy to pin this on the BLM and Forest Service. Wyoming folks reflexively blame the feds, when given the opportunity. But I don’t think they are the problem. The problem is the Wild Free‐Roaming Horses and Burros Act. It has been around for over 50 years. The original intent was to protect feral horses and burros from abuse and ensure a place for viable populations of them on the public lands of the West. By any measure, that mission has long been accomplished.  It’s time for a change out on the range. Three simple recommendations: Reduce horse numbers to the existing appropriate management levels by executive order, if necessary. Those levels were developed collaboratively, using the best science available at the time.  If we need to change appropriate management levels, change them. And monitor population levels closely, using the best available science.  Increase emphasis on sterilization of free-roaming horses to keep populations at appropriate management levels. This is a stewardship issue. It’s not about the romance of the animals. It’s not about the feelings of their advocates or their critics. It’s about both the horses and the native wildlife. Most importantly, it’s about the native landscapes of the West we hold in trust for future generations. The post And the horses we rode in on appeared first on WyoFile . ...read more read less