WEBVTT

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[music]

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I just thought horses were
domesticated animals.

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This is a remnant (inaudible).

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This is what the millions
look like that roam the West.

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These are incredible creatures and I find
that they fit where we see them out there.

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I\'m not going to live long enough to learn half the
things that I would like to know about wild horses.

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[music]

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We have a few wild horse herds

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around the United States. The prior mountain
horses have genetic markers in them

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that are unique to those particular horses
clearly linking them to the old Spanish horse.

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Then you have other wild horse herds

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where the link is much much closer to the
Morgan Horse or drought horse in them.

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If you took let\'s say 30 or 40

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domestic horses of a variety
of breeds and turn them loose

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and come back in 300 years and see what you
have they all pretty much look the same.

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Natural selection in a harsh
environment really slashes hard

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and leaves you with what
we call a primitive horse

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that shouldn\'t be meant in a deleterious
way biologically they\'re fit.

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They\'re much more fit for their environment

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than the horse that they evolve from over those 300
years and we seem to always get to the same place;

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a small tough horse that has some unique
characteristics meanillogically, nutritionally.

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When you spend some time with these
horses they\'re so different.

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They\'re so unique from
domesticated animals.

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I can go out there and watch
an old stallion no hurting

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a bunch of mares and things like that or seeing
two stallions fight. It\'s very very unique.

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Not too many people I\'ve ever
seen that in our country.

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I find going out and watching
these wild horses to be every bit

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as interesting more than interesting. From a
behavioral standpoint you start to name a bison,

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elk, deer, antelope go ahead name

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it you can\'t find anything out there with as complex a
social organization and social structure as the wild horse.

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We have the harem band a sexually
mature stallion in charge of a group

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of mares that could be anywhere
from one mare to 27 mares.

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With in the harem band you have social hierarchies. There\'s
a stallion but that stallion has only two purposes

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to keep other stallions away during the
breeding season and to breed those mares.

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He makes no decision about
when to feed, where to feed.

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There\'s a lean mare and she makes
those decisions and then you have

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at age three young stallions
are drummed out of the band.

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They\'re not allowed to stay there anymore and horses are
very gregarious. One of the cruelest things you can do

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to a horse is keep one alone. They
must have other horses with them.

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And in no time at all they seek one another out you
have Bachelor bands and The Bachelor bands are great.

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They\'re just like a bunch of teenagers

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and they\'re essentially checking out the action; where
are the mares, what\'s happening, what\'s going on

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and then you have the old lone
stallions which are drummed out.

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If they lose they\'re finally too old and the younger
stallion and they go off pretty much by themselves

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and they don\'t generally live very long after that happens.
An eyeball was attributed to the stress of being alone

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for the first time in their lives.
So you have both a social,

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behavioral, and even physiological

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change as we domesticate these animals,
and that may be part of the reason

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some people don\'t like to
look at the wild horse

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as a wildlife species because they
keep seeing a domestic horse.

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What do we bred domestic horses for? We bred
them for their size and their conformation

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and their color virtually everything
that\'s useless to a horse.

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What we have done is to take a wild
animal and we have bred it in the image

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that we\'ve created in our own mind for
a whole bunch of different reasons;

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to run fast around an oval track,
or to jump over a bunch of sticks

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or to whatever; whatever
we breed horses for.

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Wild horses are out there trying to survive

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and reproduction being able to
get by sickness on their own,

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nutrition being able to live
on substandard nutrition.

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Those are the important things to them and once you
see what they\'re all about you\'ll never be the same

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when it comes to wild horses.

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(inaudible) lot of people there (inaudible)
but you have to have a sense of history

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to appreciate something like that.

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[music]

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I like to take sort of the long view of history
(inaudible) and to me horses are actually native

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species in North America.

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That\'s an unpopular view in a lot of circles
I\'ve had people tell me that you know horses

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are nothing more than just like turning cows loose in a
pasture. That\'s all they are there\'s just another exotic.

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It is very clear that the
origin of the Equites

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was right here in North
America, Colorado, Kansas,

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Wyoming, western Nebraska
that particular region

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and of course we go through 60 million
years of evolution with the Equites.

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Horses originated here in North America
and then later went to other continents

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and that starts about 55 million years ago.

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So we have a long history of horse
evolution here in North America

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and then about 3.7 million years ago the great diversity of
horses that we had here in North America declined down to three

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but one of the three horses
included this skeleton right here

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which is the earliest representative of Equus which
is the group that all modern horses belong to.

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What we have here in Hagerman

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is the earliest known
representative of our modern horse.

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The horse family is a really a great example of
long-term evolution. The small horse (inaudible)

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which was the first horse.
The size of a small dog.

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It had four toes on the front
three toes on the back legs.

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As environmental changes came
about its legs got longer.

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It drops the side toes becomes
a one toed horse or hoof.

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This is a modern horse hoof. The modern
horse hoof has a much larger hoof

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then our Hagerman horse does.

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The Hagerman horse is so closely related
to today\'s horse and also they believe

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to the modern grebes zebra that lives
in Africa. As it continues to evolve

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this animal gets much bigger in size.

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It also changed its eating habits from
being a browser to being a grazer.

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At some point in their evolution they appear
to have disappeared from North America

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and prior to that some of
them migrated to Eurasia

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presumably over the Bering land bridge.

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Meanwhile what happened to the American stocks of the
North American stock it\'s pretty much a mystery.

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The big question is this business
of what happened to the horses.

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The fossil record tells us that around
11,000 years ago they disappear.

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Along with them disappear
our native camels,

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mammoths, mastodons,
ground sloths, sabercats,

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dire wolves and another 20 kinds of large
animals that I won\'t have time to mention.

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What happens around 11,000 years
ago the climate is changing

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and for the first time people are coming
into the new world in large numbers.

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Those two possibilities are the basis
of a really interesting debate.

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I mean horses constituted in some areas

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as much as 1/3 of the biomass
of the Pleistocene fauna

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and so it\'s kind of hard to wrap your
mind around the idea of that many animals

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going belly-up so fast. Of course the
bottom line is no one knows for sure.

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The most widely accepted theory

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is that the only epochal event that
coincided with the disappearance

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of the horse was the arrival
of man on the continent

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and just as with the mammoths the theory is
that they were simply hunted to extinction

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in a relatively short period of time. I think it\'s
a remote one but there\'s certainly a possibility

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that something people were accompanied by perhaps
diseases is involved in the disappearance of the horses.

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The reason I have to say that is
because there are no kill sites.

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There are no archaeological associations

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of Clovis points or other
artifacts with the horses.

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They disappear around the same time

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that we first see the fluted points of the
Clovis hunters and that\'s all we could say.

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It\'s hard to imagine if you just consider

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human overkill hypothesis that
people might have extinguished

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these large herds of horses that were quite
widely dispersed it\'s hard to imagine

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this at least it is for me. The
surroundings the grasslands

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were still a great environment
for horse survival.

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This is one reason I find it difficult to believe
that all the horses of this vintage died out

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around 10,000 years ago as the
received knowledge sales.

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I sometimes think that
we have one or two ways

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of solving a problem nature has
umpteen ways of solving that problem.

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So we\'ve got to be a bit humble when
we\'re stating these hypotheses.

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We know that there was a
glacial refuge in Alaska

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in which moose survived, the Wisconsin glacial period.
So it\'s possible the horses survived up there.

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It\'s possible that some survives somewhere else.
I\'ve been told there\'s fragmentary evidence

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that maybe they did make it but I think that in
general you can\'t prove it one way or another.

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Yes it is possible that some
horses I suppose survived

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the so called extinction. They would
have probably survived in little pockets

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and then with the arrival of the
reintroduced horse in very short order

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been deluded genetically,
very possible with horses

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but I don\'t make that argument simply because you
shouldn\'t go around and make arguments like that

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unless you have something
to back them up with.

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I have something to back me up with when I say
Equus Caballus was here 1.7 million years ago.

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It originated in North America and
it co-evolved with its habitat here

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and it was the same species that was brought
back by man of reintroduced wildlife species.

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And I\'ve always thought
that when they returned

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they really had come home.

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[music]

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with the reintroduction of wild horses
do we treat them as an exotic species

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or have we merely returned a native to its
homeland. The wild horses come from the caballine.

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They represent a distinct
group within modern horses.

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We\'re not sure if there were true caballine horses here
in North America. Some people who work on fossil horses

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think yeah they were here. Other
people say no they weren\'t.

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The caballine horse is an old-world form. Certainly if we
say caballine horses were here and then became extinct

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then a reintroduction of a caballine horse
makes a little bit more sense ecologically

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that probably they\'re close enough. If we don\'t
have any strong evidence that the caballine horses,

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the domestic horse lineage group was here
then you are step closer to saying it\'s

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probably more of an exotic
species and not exactly

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an ecological equivalent of something
that disappeared 10,000 years ago.

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Certainly when you get up into the Yukon

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where we\'ve gotten frozen specimens you actually
have something that you can extract DNA from

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and and do a match up.

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[sil.]

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This is one of the best complete
skulls we have of Equus lami.

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This is the place (inaudible) Yukon horse.

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The radiocarbon dates
on these average around

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25 or 26 thousand years ago. So
it\'s almost exactly the same age

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as this carcass and they both
are of the same species.

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That\'s a (inaudible) horse in other words
it\'s very close to the modern horse.

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There are specimens of this kind of horse

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throughout Alaska into the Yukon

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and right along the adjacent
Northwest territories coasts.

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So it\'s all over North Western North America
and there were quite a number of herds

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and they\'re probably fairly large herds
according to the number of bones we find.

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In the Yukon and Alaska
the most common remains

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of Ice Age vertebrates are (inaudible)
horses these specimens here

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these are some of the bits
of horsehair that were found

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with this Pelt

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and there were a few remains of skin also.

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These are remains of the
skin that were found

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with this animal and
perhaps most interesting

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to a lot of people would be
this which is just a horse turd

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or dropping and that gives
us a lot of information

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on what they were actually feeding on

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and this consists almost
entirely of grass remains.

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So it suggests that the ancient
environment in this region

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was a grassland you know at least
there were large tracts of grassland.

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Horses basically evolved with the
(inaudible) the cool-season needle

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and thread type grasses needle grasses
spread across the West horses

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basically co-evolved with those grasses.

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Wildlife doesn\'t evolve
independent of its habitat it

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evolves to what it is because of that habitat. Wildlife
shapes the land and the land shapes the wildlife.

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And that is co-evolution. A good definition

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of a native species is one that
has co-evolved with its habitat

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and you wouldn\'t have to go any further with
the horse. It co-evolve with its habitat.

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Yes there was a ten thousand year gap but from the standpoint
of evolution of habitat that didn\'t make a difference at all.

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The major argument that\'s used that the
horse is not a native species is that

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the species that went extinct 10,000
years ago was not the same species

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that Cortez brought back in 1519.

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One could argue breeds but
one can argue species.

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The molecular biology evidence
shows that the (inaudible)

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horse was here in North America
1.7 million years ago.

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This is a species called Equus (inaudible)
this specimen from Rock Creek

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in Texas is about a million years old.

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This basic kind of horse
is a (inaudible) type.

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It\'s not far away from the
modern domestic horse.

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[music]

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Horse originated in North America.
It evolved to the (inaudible)

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1.7 million years ago which means the horse

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that left us ten thousand years ago was the
(inaudible) horse and it was simply returned

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by the hand of man to its native habitat.

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So what you have is a bunch of arguments over
breeds rather than species but that\'s convenient

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for those who would like to
keep the exotic label on it.

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And out of that sort of thing comes policy; whether or
not the policy has any scientific veracity behind it

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isn\'t important to state agency or a government agency.
They can put the label exotic on it that means

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they can manage it in ways
that they couldn\'t manage it

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if it was a native species.

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You know the idea that horses

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are native species to North America
is unpopular with a lot of people

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because of our assumptions
that what we we want

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the wilderness of North America to be

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is this landscape as it
was seen at the moment

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of first European contact and that was
a landscape without horses in it.

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We for a very long time had this notion

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that if animals weren\'t
on the scene at the time

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when Europeans saw the place they don\'t
deserve a place in the native (inaudible)

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but that\'s no magical time you know.
That\'s just one of the snapshots

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in a very long continuum.

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[music]

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Whether the Spaniards brought them back or
whether they came across on an ice floe

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doesn\'t really matter to me all that much.
The fact is they did get back here.

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The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was the event
that spread horses across the West.

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The Spaniards had founded New Mexico,
the colonies in northern New Mexico

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in the first decade of
the 1600s and by 1680

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or so the Pueblo Indians had
gotten sick of Spanish domination

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especially religious domination and
so they rose up and chased them out

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of New Mexico for 12 years and the process of doing
that they basically managed to capture liberate,

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all the stock animals that were
found in northern New Mexico

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all that had to happen was for
a few horses to get loose

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and in overnight terms they multiplied
into the millions. They reoccupied

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
the niche that had been sitting there
waiting for them for 10,000 years

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
and almost by five year
increments after 1680

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
you can sharp the acquisition of horses
northward up the Rocky Mountains,

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
the Navajos get horses, the youth\'s get horses, the
Shoshones get horses, the bannocks get horses,

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
the Salish get horses and this
is by about 1710 or so from

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
that avenue of diffusion horses are
funneled from New Mexico all the way

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
into what is now Saskatchewan and Alberta

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
and they spread eastward across the plains
too probably within about a decade.

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
I mean they\'re European accounts that
indicate that within a decade after 1680

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
the tribes of what\'s now Oklahoma and Texas all
have horses and all know how to ride horses.

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
Some of the historical
accounts in the 1800s

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
what travelers saw as they went west

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
were that the most common and wildest of
the native animals were their horses.

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
Think of the horse
historically in North America

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
it gave rise to a whole new culture. The
northern plains horse culture you know

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
it only survived for 200 years but it
caused the whole new culture to erupt

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
and flourish and then of course it
disappeared. We took care of that.

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
The first attack on wild
horses was to dismount

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
Native Americans so that they\'d be easier
to conquer and there was a huge program

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
of shooting wild horses in the thousands in the
United States and it\'s been well-documented.

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
So then we go from that which was utilitarian
means for attacking horses to an economic means.

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
Horses were shot by the hundreds
of thousands for dog meat.

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
You\'d get several hundred dollars for
a horse up until fairly recently

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
and so then we have this economic incentive to
get rid of them. They were basically vermin.

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
We (inaudible) the plains everybody knows that but
we (inaudible) we wiped out the prairie dogs.

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
We made war on Magpies even

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
and one of the animals that ended up
being decimated in the 19th century

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
was the horse. One estimate
is that there are probably

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
two million of them south
of the Arkansas River

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
on the Great Plains by 1800. Nobody\'s really made an effort
to try to estimate how many were in the West by 1850

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
but however many there were
basically were wiped out

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
by the process of a commercial trade

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
that essentially targeted
the wild horses of the West

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
as stock and domestic animals for
the advancing American frontier.

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
So there was a horse trade economy.

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
Parts of the West it was the major economy
for as long as a couple of decades.

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
It went on through the latter part of
the 19th century into the 20th century

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
in fact something like 300,000
horses were rounded up in the West

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
between the Boer War in 1898
and the end of World War I.

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
Now there was also by the
end of the 19th century

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
and especially in the beginning of the 20th
century there was a market for horse meat

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
in the United States and slaughterhouses
were set up down on the Texas Gulf Coast.

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
So that what you get is really kind of a remark
double thing and it\'s analogous to the buffalo story.

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
Image of the plains that in the 1850s were

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
swarming with horses and buffalo

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
and by 1915 - 1920 had neither animal;

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
absolutely empty landscape
except for that (inaudible).

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:13.000
[music]

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
From a historical point of view the U.S. grazing
service was merged with the General Land Office

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
in 1946 to form the Bureau
of Land Management.

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
Previous to that merger the U.S.
grazing service

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
had a unspoken policy to actually
shoot wild horses on site

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
and they were considered vermin pests

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
to be eliminated competition
with cattle and sheep basically.

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
Wild horses on the public lands
are driven down to anywhere

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
from 10 to 17 thousand by the early 1970s.

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
(inaudible) who was dubbed wild horse Annie

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
when she saw some very cruelly
treated wild horses in a truck

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
must angers were driving the
truck to apparently slaughter

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
and the horses had been very
severely injured and were bleeding

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
and she was following this truck that had blood
dripping from it and that was part of the beginnings

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
of her movement to save wild horses
from being so cruelly treated.

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
The Wild and Free-Roaming
Horses and Burros Act

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
has been amended several times but the
basic premise of it has never been altered

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
and that is to protect wild horses on lands

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
that are managed by the U.S. Forest Service
and by the Bureau of Land Management.

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
Congress in 1971 passed

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and
Burros Act which basically said

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
horses are to be managed
as an integral part

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
of the ecosystem on the lands that they are currently
found. I think the Bureau of Land Management

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
before the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act was
passed had pretty free rein on how they managed wild horses

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
and it was an intrusion on
their their ability to manage

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
as they so pleased and if there were horses

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
that were they felt we\'re competing with a ranchers livestock
or a rancher felt that horses were competing with her sheep

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
then they could be moved. So
strangely enough the agency

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
that has been mandated to protect them has
historically not protected them in fact

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
had the view that they should be eliminated and I think
unfortunately that historical view has carried through.

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:53.000
[music]

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
I\'ve read a lot of accounts

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
of the capture of wild horses in the

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
1700\'s and 1800\'s and those accounts

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
are are pretty evocative.

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
The Spaniards for example
had a whole vocabulary

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
to describe why so many horses
died after being herded into pens

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
and being captured.

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
They had a term called
de spatio which referred

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
to the death of horses from
nervous rage over capture.

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
The Mustangers and Texas and New
Mexico in the 18th century had a term

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
sentimiento which referred to horses
that died from heartbreak at capture.

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:23.000
[sil.]

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
Those kinds of of historical accounts

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
make me think of horses as truly wild
animals. I think they probably reacted

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
the way Elk or Bison

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
or most wild animals would have reacted.

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:58.000
[sil.]

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
That\'s a maybe sounds silly to some people
because they don\'t think of wild horses

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
as a natural species but
when you break up a family

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
they\'re undergoing a tremendous amount of stress
and sometimes injury and sometimes death even.

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:33.000
[sil.]

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
Over the last 30 years the BLM has determined
where the animals should be managed

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
and that\'s what we do today.

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
We manage wild horses and burros
in herd management areas.

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
To be a Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros the animal needs
to live on or come from one of those herd management areas.

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
[sil.]

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
The desire is that the BLM
would manage these horses

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
so that they are living
on healthy rangelands.

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
It\'s very important that the range be healthy
because there are not only wild horses

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
but there are cattle,
livestock such as sheep,

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
other animals out there wildlife
so to have healthy horses

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
you really need a healthy rangeland.

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
FNevada has about 24 to 25
thousand wild horses right now.

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
This next year they\'re trying to increase
the numbers that they want to remove

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
and I believe it\'s up to over 6,000. It\'s an
attempt to remove a larger number of animals

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
to make a difference.

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
[sil.]

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
We manage cattle on BLM
land by when they go on

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
and off the land. They go on
at certain times of the year

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
and they come off at certain times
of the year. Wild horses and burros

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
are on all year long and they\'re managed

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
mostly by removing the excess
and leaving a population

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
on the land that is sufficient to take care
of the you know where there\'s enough water

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
and vegetation to take care of
that population you leave behind.

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
The BLM has repeatedly

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
sacrificed the interests of wild
horses for livestock interests.

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
In fact they have bent over backwards to accommodate
livestock. And while they are supposed to manage

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
these ranges primarily for
horses as the 1971 Wild

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act says they are
they still very much manage these areas for cattle.

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
We have a few thousand wild horses

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
on literally millions of acres of
public land and on those same lands

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
we have millions of cows and sheep. And the
BLM will say we\'re having some damage.

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
It\'s from horses. We need
to get the horses off

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
and they will keep the cattle on that range
while lowering the number of horses.

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
People tend to think of this as
a single issue and it\'s not.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
It\'s really a multiple use issue. Congress says we\'re
going to have wild horses and burros out there

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
that they\'re part of the legacy of our western
heritage but it\'s not exclusively managed

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
for wild horses and burros. With rare exception
it\'s managed for all these different uses.

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
We consider personally that
we are in a partnership

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
with the federal agencies where we
lease land from the federal government

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
either the Forest Service or the BLM
and we try to work closely with them

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
in a partnership capacity to protect the resource
and to enhance the resource and not to degrade it.

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
There is a tremendous amount
of subsidy going on right

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
now to encourage livestock
grazing on public lands.

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
It probably cost a child
more to feed a hamster

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
on a monthly basis than it does to sustain
a cow and a calf on public lands.

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
There\'s a lot of difference I believe from authority
agencies to livestock permitees who have more influence.

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
A lot less livestock permitees

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
are the smaller ranching families we\'re
seeing large corporations in there.

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
They control the majority of publicly an
interest when it comes to livestock grazing.

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
There\'s still the myth in the
West that cowboy is king

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
and unfortunately that myth is being

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
sustained at the health of our public land.

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
We have one property of BLM land
that we have a number of wild horses

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
and they are quite a problem to the range.

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
They have a tendency to go to the same
area and they over graze tremendously

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
and they absolutely destroy the range

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
and yet we are out there and trying
to implement the most sophisticated

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
and modern range management policies
relative to livestock grazing.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
The horse can\'t even get in the same
ballpark with domestic livestock

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
when it comes to destroying range. Now
that\'s not an indictment of all ranchers.

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
Many ranchers manage their range very well.
Many don\'t. If it\'s competition for grass

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
and its public lands well I\'m not sure
that the horse is always the culprit there

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
particularly when the cattle and
the sheep outnumber the horses

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
so greatly but we\'re moving
now from the topic of horses

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
into the new West versus the Old West.

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:13.000
[music]

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
As far as I know everything that\'s been studied is
tried to look at what the detrimental impact of horses

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
are but not what they\'re functioning
role is in an ecosystem.

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
How do they fit into the ecosystem? Do they play
a role? And are the integral components of that

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
ecosystem in which they live?

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
Through eons of time this area wild horses
were part of the ecology of the landscape.

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
Horses are hurting animal.
Their characteristic

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
is to move into an area do their
thing where there is water or feed

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
and then move a little bit inherent like
the Bison you know it used to rumble

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
into an area and water up and when they leave it was
obvious that they were there and they left their impact

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
but they would not return to that location

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
for some time and so that gives
your resources a chance to recover.

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
Grazing animals that\'s how a lot
of these rangelands developed

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
over time and through it because
of animal impact or soil surface.

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
As far as damaging the range any
kind of species of animal can damage

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
their resources for a short
period of time but we tend

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
to think in short terms of two or three
years if you look at at a 30 to 40 year

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
period I would bet that it\'s a
bleached sustaining level of resource

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
because back to the herding know they\'ll do
something to a piece of ground and move on.

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
Sportsmen raised this issue all the time.
They say that if you allow a wild horses

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
in deer range pretty soon we\'re
not going to have any deer.

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
So we\'ll get rid of the horses but you know
it\'s one of these gut feelings that they get

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
because it looks as though they should be competing but the studies
that I\'m aware of indicates that that in fact isn\'t the case.

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
The Colorado State studies
and the Pryor have shown

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
that there\'s no overlap or not any
significant overlap and even diet.

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
The competition between bighorn
sheep and horses is not a reality

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
and the competition between mule deer and horses
is not a reality. It\'s really more of a perception

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
than the fact that they have any
bearing on wildlife populations.

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
If horses were allowed to
range freely across the land

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
as they really should be they would be able to spread out
that impact and they would certainly move from area to area.

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
The problem is that they are fenced in
they are constrained to particular areas.

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
They have literally constructed
hundreds of thousands of miles

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
of fences on our public lands, at taxpayer
expense to create for all intents

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
and purposes nothing more than livestock
pastures to control livestock

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
but not only are they controlling
and confining livestock

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
they\'re also confining wild horses and that\'s
impeding the free movement of these animals.

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
What we have done for the most part
we have forced wild horses into

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
some of the most inhospitable
places that you can find simply

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
because there was desired land
use for these other areas.

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
So we have artificially shoved
large concentrations of horses

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
into places where they obviously
will never in large concentrations.

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
[sil.]

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
It seems like the the horse is losing
out to all kind of special interests.

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
I think the developers are moving

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
in those areas and moving
up to the hilltops.

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
And as the feed gets less and less
they do come down into the communities

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
and therefore everybody starts griping
and they start gathering these horses

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
and then creating a bigger problem

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
with supposedly excess horses.

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
In 1971 when they passed the act

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
there were many many areas with wild
horses. The BLM has arbitrarily decided

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
whether those ranges should be removed or
not and they have removed many of them.

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
[sil.]

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
What\'s happening is they\'re zeroing
out the herd management areas

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
and they have not as far as I know counted
been counted for a very long time.

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
So I don\'t think we\'re going to know
when we\'re getting dangerously close

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
to not having any more wild horses.

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
There\'s a feeling for stomping out a piece of history.
The risk isn\'t you get down to the last animal

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
the risk is you get down to a critical threshold
whereby the population becomes inbred

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
and then if you get a very severe
environmental event the whole bunch could go.

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
There\'s certainly not an endangered species
but they do have some characteristics

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
that they\'ve developed that are
you know make them a great horse

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
for especially something
like endurance riding.

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
This facility is set up to
prepare horses for adoption

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
and they are animals that are brought in here.
They\'re aged checked over by the veterinarian

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
and we freeze mark them and inoculate
them for all the major equine diseases.

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
The younger horses are then shipped out for
adoption events all across the country.

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
Now minimum bid on any horse is $125.

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
The main method we have a
placing excess wild horses

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
and Burros is our adoptive horse program

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:29.999
and we have well over 170,000 adopters in
the United States since this program began.

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
They\'re rounding up wild horses and putting
them in holding facilities sometimes

00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
for months and even years at
a time because the pipeline

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
that the BLM has is full of horses at times and they
can\'t adopt all the horses out that they\'ve gathered.

00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
So you know it\'s not only bad for the taxpayers
to be paying all this money for feeding

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
and taking care of horses and holding facilities
waiting for them to eventually be adopted

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
but it\'s bad for the animals themselves.
They\'re withering away.

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
[sil.]

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
And it\'s driven by supply.

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
It\'s not we have 50 qualified adopters who want
to adopt a horse who can give a horse a good home

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
it\'s that we have in Wyoming they\'re
saying 2,000 surplus horses.

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
So they remove them from their natural habitat and then
try to generate enough people to absorb those horses.

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
So it\'s kind of a backwards
adoption program.

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
The marketing now is to adopt and
that\'s creating the funnel for them

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
to take more horses off of the lands.

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:45.000
[music]

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
Congratulations you\'ve just joined thousands
of Americans who\'ve adopted wild horses

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
through BLM\'s adopt a horse program.

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
BLM and the Forest Service manage these federal lands
for a balance among all the animals that use them;

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
livestock, wildlife, and wild horses.

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
To sustain a thriving natural ecological balance and maintain
healthy herds these agencies gather wild horses from the range

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
and give United States residents like
yourself the opportunity to adopt a horse.

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
For saddle and pleasure
riding, reining competition,

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
endurance riding, or using
your horse as a pack animal.

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.999
And since the inception of the
adaptive horse program in 1973

00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.999
over 100,000 wild horses have been
successfully adopted by Americans by BLM.

00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:54.999
Some people fall in love
with these noble creatures

00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:59.999
others like their sure-footed adaptive nature.
When you feed and care for your animal properly

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.999
you\'ll see the signs of a healthy horse.
A sleek glossy coat, alert eyes,

00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.999
and a smooth body line
with no bony protrusions.

00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:14.999
Adopting a wild horse can be highly satisfying and
an adventure in itself. Remember the more humanely

00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
you treat your horse the more rewarding the
experience will be. Enjoy your living legend.

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:25.000
[music]

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
People are fascinated when they find out about
this program. It\'s one of the greatest things

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
that many of our Western states have
going for them. There\'s nothing like

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
the spirit of the American West and
they see it in the wild horse.

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
We adopted seven of them only to get them out of
the range and we don\'t even plan on using them.

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
They\'re so worthless. They\'re course
they\'re heavy footed and they\'re they\'re

00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
just something that you would
not want really to break.

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
So they\'re basically worthless you don\'t want to put
the investment into breaking a 17 year old stud

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
that is required to make a decent horse (inaudible) so
what you do is just end up adopting them to get them off

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
the range and that\'s what we did.
Until something changes

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
I think adoption is going to remain our primary method
of about taking good care of the excess animals.

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
Adopt the horse has been a
fascinating lesson in biology.

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
As you reduce the densities of ungulates
reproduction becomes more efficient.

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
Animals breed at a younger age.

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
They breed more often. The survival of
the young is greater than it was before.

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
So as we gather these horses
and then gather all the young

00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
it\'s like throwing an on switch for those
mares that we turn back on in the range.

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
They are now going to come into estrus and they\'re going to breed and they\'re going
to breed successfully and adopt a horse if it has done nothing else except cost

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
the taxpayer an immense amount of money

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
has proven the textbooks right. There is
compensatory reproduction and as you reduce

00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
the density reproduction speeds up.

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
They don\'t have any desire
to live with humans.

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
They don\'t have any desire to see humans
or be fed by humans or cared by humans.

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
They have an interest in maintaining their freedom
and maintaining their wild free-roaming nature.

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
So I certainly do not think
it would be okay to take.

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
I don\'t agree that it\'s okay to take a
wild animal and take away their freedom

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
even if we provide the best home
on Earth for them that\'s better

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
and mistreating them but still it takes away that the most
important thing to that animal which is their freedom.

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
We do get a lot of people that
come in and look and think

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
you know it\'s kind of like getting a puppy from the
pound and it\'s not. These horses are totally wild.

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
We do not work with them here. We don\'t have a program
where we can channel them down at our facility.

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
So most of the horses probably going through
the adoption program have never been handled.

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
We ask these animals to become domesticated

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
and in many cases some never do. It\'s very
difficult to try to keep these animals

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
and to train them and domesticate them.
It is not as simple as it appears.

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
Many of these animals end up in
sale barns and the only people

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
who purchase these animals at
sale barns are slaughter buyers.

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
BLM still has ownership of these animals for one year and
then title passes to the person who adopted these animals

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
and there has been evidence where these horses
that have been sold to slaughterhouses a day

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
or two after titles passed.

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
One could theoretically adopt
a horse from BLM for $125,

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
keep the horse for at least
a year before title passes

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
and then sell that horse for $600
or $700 and there is a market

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
for not only wild horses but
horses being slaughtered for meat

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
and that the market is
overseas in foreign countries.

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
There\'s a tremendous worsening market.

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:23.000
[music]

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
Unfortunately the government does not
believe that they have any responsibility

00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
or authority over these animals
after that adoption period

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
because they believe it\'s perfectly legal for these
animals to be sold and they do go for commercial uses.

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
Perhaps maybe our failure

00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
with so many of these animals going to slaughters
that we are attempting to domesticate a wild animal

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
and the adoption pipeline is a direct
consequence of the authority agency refusing

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
to manage and protect these horses
on the range where they belong.

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
Being in conservation biology I
don\'t see any biological issues

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
any more conservation they are political
or economic or social or cultural

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
and these poor animals like wolves and Bison and horses
are just symbols for the different sides to rally around.

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
If you have a natural aversion to something
it\'s pretty easy to drum up a case

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
whether it\'s horses or anything else
that makes what you have an aversion

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
to look bad and everything else look good and here
we have a case where a whole group of animals

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
that was very successful in the
millions in North America at one time

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
has been castigated and blemished

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
and for reasons that are basically unfounded. It\'s
very hard to bring something back when it\'s gone

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
and I think that that would
diminish the richness of life

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
that you and me and everybody else has and I
think it applies to everything not just horses

00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.999
but everything else that we would have the chance to
keep and answer for one reason or another we obliterate.

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:04.999
And they should be venerated by the
management agencies, the BLM, or whoever

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
as something more important
than an unfortunate accident.

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.999
If we wrote them off would we understand
that they came from a lineage that not only

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:19.999
was native in the new world but had evolved
in the new world for millions of years.

00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.999
North America is there
home, their heartland.

00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
I firmly do think

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
that wild horses belong in North America.
Horses are wildlife species

00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:40.000
that be out there on the landscape.