Alone on the Range

Gene Nunn reckons that any time you put a cowboy in a government job, there’s going to be some friction.

Straight-shooting, plain talk doesn’t always ride easy in a labyrinth of hierarchy.

“When you ask a wrangler a question, he’s going to tell you ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ You might call it the cowboy code. Where a politician will say ‘maybe,’ ‘I’m not sure,’ ‘I’ll check into that.’ Sometimes I wonder, ‘How the heck have I stood it for so long?’ ”

Nunn was a “horse specialist” long before it was a federal job title. Wranglers like Nunn were once the backbone of the Bureau of Land Management program for wild horses and burros.

But the cowboys are disappearing.

Tom Pogacnik, the chief horse specialist for the bureau, said that, as wranglers retire, they are usually replaced by biologists and animal researchers--partly because there aren’t many people left who grew up on the back of a horse.

“There are just fewer and fewer cowboys,” he said. “When Gene’s on a horse, it’s like you and me walking down the street. He’s out there with the horses. He sees them. When [the wranglers are] gone, we’ve lost that.”

Nunn, 63, has been with the bureau longer than any other wrangler--all of the 28 years that the agency has managed wild horses and burros.

“I am determined to ensure that we have wild horses and burros forever,” said Nunn, who is the lead wrangler in the Ridgecrest area in the northwest Mojave Desert, one of 22 wild horse and burro management areas in Southern California. “The horses and burros were key to the settlement of the West. They earned a right to be here. Maybe I just feel I’m paying back a debt.”

The bureau manages about 42,000 horses that still roam free. The goal is to keep herds down to a number that won’t damage the ecosystem or result in horses starving because of overpopulation. The horses that the bureau removes from rangelands are offered for adoption.

A wrangler is with a horse every step of the way.

In the roundups where the wild horses are captured, it’s the wranglers putting in the fast, all-out riding. They also provide initial veterinary care, move the animals from pen to pen, feed them, brand them and gentle them to humans.

But only three states--California, Arizona and Wyoming--still have such wranglers.

“The world’s changed. And the wranglers’ way of life is disappearing,” Pogacnik said. “Now it’s paperwork and monitoring habitat and public forums. But when Gene has something to say, everybody listens. The wranglers are the old guard. They know things.”

*

Nunn is the son and grandson of horsemen. Having a way with horses is something that turns up on his family tree like others’ musical talent or blue eyes.

In his torn straw hat, he has the look of a quintessential cowboy--not a square-jawed Marlboro type, but a kindly cowpoke given to grinning big and spinning homilies.

“I never met a horse that wasn’t good for something, and I sure can’t say that about some people,” he said, chewing a piece of straw.

Rex Cleary, then a bureau district manager, recruited Nunn, then a Montana cowboy, for the wild horse and burro program in 1970 after hearing of his horsemanship.

“Gene had a good sense of people as well as being an extraordinary wrangler,” said Cleary, a Nevada resident who now works as a consultant on public land issues. “He knows horses inside out.”

Nunn is more modest.

“I’m just a fellow who reads a horse,” he said. “I figure out what to do and not do to stay friends with him. The idea is to get the horse to do what you want him to do and make him think it was his own idea.”

As Nunn walked into a corral containing a group of 20 horses soon to be offered for adoption, a pretty, black-maned gentle-eyed brown mare of mustang build edged forward toward Nunn.

“She’s not afraid. She’s curious. She seems to like people. She’ll be perfect for adoption,” Nunn said.

And the horses who aren’t right to be tamed?

Nunn described the dust, the flying hooves and the beat of the helicopters on a roundup and, always, the one horse that won’t be caught.

“I’ve had horses look right at me and say, ‘Uh-uh, buddy, not today.’ And I have to respect that. That’s the horse I leave.”

*

Now, nearing retirement, Nunn is taking measure of the program he has made his life’s work. Not only has it been his career, but his two grown sons, Tom and Todd, have followed in his footsteps, becoming Bureau of Land Management wranglers and carrying on the lineage of a dying breed.

The agency’s early record included die-offs, which critics maintained were due to herd mismanagement, and hundreds of post-adoption deaths caused by neglect.

Nunn witnessed the missteps the bureau admits it made.

He ticks off a list of happier stories: an adopted mustang who placed third in a national jumping contest, a Marine color guard mounted atop palomino mustangs, a little girl who curls up with her family’s pet burro for an afternoon nap.

For the most part, Nunn figures his contribution to the plight of the wild horses and burros has been the kind that comes case by case. Edging a particular horse away from capture. Steering an adopting family away from one horse to another he thinks will be a better match.

It’s just lately that he has been daydreaming of the soapbox. He wants to tell Congress and the like that there isn’t room for politics when dealing with living creatures.

He wondered if there is enough of a marketing effort to let people know what loyal, spirited companions the mustangs become and that they’re available for adoption.

“I worked for a saddle maker once who taught me no one’s going to buy it if they don’t know it exists,” he said. “If folks can twist a piece of plastic and sell a million Hula Hoops, why can’t we create a demand for wonderful horses?”

But on the other hand, he said, “if I got on my soapbox in front of people with more education and whatnot, I’d probably just clam up anyway.”

Cleary, who worked with Nunn for 18 years, said the bureau should indeed listen to the wranglers--before they’re gone.

“When you’re dealing with horses, you have to listen to the cowboys.”

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Adoption Rules

* The Bureau of Land Management does not issue legal title for an animal until an adopter can prove that the animal has been well cared for over the course of one year.

* Applicants must be at least 18, a U.S. resident and have no convictions of inhumane treatment of animals.

* Adopters must have an enclosed corral with a minimum of 400 square feet per animal. Fences must be 4 1/2 feet high for burros and 6 feet high for untamed horses. The corral must contain shelter for the animals.

* Adopters should have the financial means to care for the animal and some experience training or raising a horse or burro.

* The minimum bid is $125 per animal. Qualified individuals may adopt up to four animals.

* For details, call (800) 951-8720 or go to www.blm.gov/whb