Battle for Room on the Range

The whisper quiet of the snowy valley was broken by the distant flutter of an approaching helicopter. Flying 15 feet above the pinyon, juniper and sage, it weaved and bobbed, herding a dozen wild horses toward a holding pen.

The pilot wrangled the mustangs, snorting and whinnying, toward capture. Their coats gleamed with sweat; plumes of steam blew out of their nostrils.

As the horses approached the pen, partially hidden behind a rocky knoll, a cowboy on a nearby hillside swatted his Judas horse into action. It galloped ahead of the pack, and the wild horses instinctively followed the traitorous lead through a wide jute-fenced chute. The horses hesitated in confusion. The helicopter hovered menacingly low, scaring them forward, and they reluctantly trotted into containment.

The chopper pilot returned to the far reaches of the valley, looking for more animals. Eventually, 710 horses would be captured during this two-week-long, government-sponsored roundup to reduce the mustang population in Nevada’s eastern high desert. Most will be put up for adoption.

Such roundups landed the Bureau of Land Management in court last year over its strategy to solve a problem unique to the West: How to referee the use of 262 million acres of public lands between wild horses and commercial cattle, which compete for the same forage.

Wild horses are among the West’s most romantic and enduring legacies--offspring of castoffs from cowboys and Indians, miners and ranchers, pioneering settlers and the Pony Express. The future of the herds is jeopardized, horse advocates argue, by commercial cattle grazing, which depletes precious desert vegetation. They also complain that cattle fences block the horses from roaming freely.

Ranchers argue that they provide a valuable commodity--food for the table--and that if horses are allowed to overrun public lands, they will consume the cattle’s feed to the roots, promoting destructive erosion and noxious weeds.

Horse lovers have long been critical of the BLM’s roundups, which are conducted year round except during the spring foaling season, contending that smaller herds will bring less genetic diversity. The BLM announced in October 2000 a three-year campaign to capture nearly half the wild horses--much to the delight of cattlemen. Animal groups responded in September with a lawsuit challenging the herd reductions. A federal judge in Washington is expected to rule this summer on whether the BLM’s roundups are justified.

The BLM says it’s in a politically no-win situation.

“Every special interest group wants to maximize its ability to use public lands,” said Bud Cribley, the BLM’s senior wild horse and burro specialist in Washington. “The BLM is sitting in the middle . . . and trying to make fair decisions on who gets to use what. It’s tricky.”

About 45,000 feral horses and burros roam in 209 herds from New Mexico to Oregon, with half of the animals in Nevada. The horses can increase by 25% every year, doubling their population every three years.

The BLM wants to reduce the mustang population by 2004 to fewer than 27,000 animals, to save forage and save money with fewer horses to capture and put up for adoption.

The agency had announced plans to capture 13,000 horses this year--double the average taken in past years. The lawsuit, filed by the Fund for Animals and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, halted those plans. Last month, a federal judge in Denver gave the BLM permission to hold the Spring Valley roundup as the last of the big ones, at least for now.

Some Horses May End Up at Slaughterhouses

The BLM will cull ailing and older horses from the 710 captured and send them to pastures the agency leases in Kansas and Oklahoma. Only about 195 horses--those with less adoption appeal--will be set free again. The majority--the most attractive, younger, healthy ones with nice coloring--will be put up for adoption. A few may end up illegally at slaughterhouses, destined for dinner tables in Europe or Asia.

“The BLM is taking an aggressive [roundup] approach . . . for no good reason,” said Howard Crystal, a Washington attorney representing the pro-horse litigants. “The BLM is not taking a hard look at what else can be done to protect the range land.”

The options, he said, include giving horses contraceptive shots to prevent pregnancies for one to two years, limiting the number of cattle grazing on public lands and allowing predators to thin the herds.

Ranchers applaud the BLM for preserving forage for their cattle, which in areas like this consume 10 times as much feed as the mustangs.

“I have the feeling the American public believes the horses were always out there and we moved in on them and took their feed away,” said Steve Boies, president of the Nevada Cattleman’s Assn. “Well, the government asked us to settle this land . . . and they’ve given us grazing rights. There’s still room for horses, but they need to be managed.”

Such decisions--allocating how many and which kinds of animals can graze in the desert--are made at regional BLM offices, where the cattle industry has proved an effective lobbying group.

“It’s semi-science, semi-politics,” said Jared Bybee, a BLM wild horse and burro specialist overseeing the roundup in Spring Valley.

Andrea Lococo, a regional coordinator for the Fund for Animals, complains that, unlike cattlemen, horse advocates are unable to lobby at each BLM office. “We’d be running ourselves ragged, keeping track of every decision that impacts horses.”

The Wild West never encountered such bureaucracy. For 150 years and with no oversight, cowboys and ranchers caught horses and burros--some for work chores, most for market. By some estimates, a million or more of the animals roamed the West around 1900; since then, untold numbers have perished from drought, harsh winters or depleted forage due to overpopulation.

“My own grandfather would work 50 horses during the summer, to help run cattle, pull wagons and for other work,” said Boies. “When he was done with them in the fall, he’d open the gate and they’d head for the mountains.”

1971 Act Charged BLM With Protecting Herds

In the late 1950s, the horses found a passionate supporter in Velma Johnston. Known as Wild Horse Annie, the Reno woman was angered by the wholesale slaughter of mustangs and rallied public opinion to save the animals.

Her campaign led Congress in 1971 to pass the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. It assigned the BLM the job of protecting the herds, declaring the animals “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West.”

Cowboys could no longer capture wild horses at their whim. In finding that the animals “contribute to the diversity of life forms within the nation,” Congress ordered them “protected from capture, branding, harassment or death . . . as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.”

At the time, about 60,000 horses and burros ran loose.

But Congress didn’t tell the BLM how many wild animals to maintain, saying only that they should be managed on lands where they roamed freely in 1971. Other federal laws require that public lands be available for multiple uses, including cattle grazing. Today, ranchers pay the government about $1.35 a month for each cow that feeds on public land.

178,000 Animals Captured Since 1972

The BLM began culling horses and burros, and from 1972 to 2000 put up about 178,000 animals nationwide for adoption. It costs $2,000 to capture and hold each horse and then find someone to adopt it.

Last year, mustang fanciers adopted 6,202 wild horses. “They’re a part of Americana,” said retired Air Force pilot Jack Hildum, paying the $125 adoption fee in Las Vegas for a horse he’ll train for trail riding.

The BLM has been sued for not prohibiting adopters from slaughtering the animals. It agreed in 1997 to have the new owners sign affidavits promising not to use horses for commercial purposes.

Here in Spring Valley, Dave Cattoor stands next to the pen and watches the helicopter peel away to herd more horses. The pilot came back into view 30 minutes later, with 30 horses running ahead of the chopper. As the mustangs darted toward the right to escape the chute, the pilot maneuvered sharply to the right and cut them off, pushing them forward to their capture.

Inside the pen, agitated horses ran in tight circles, banging against the fence. Some bucked before quieting, but their wide eyes betrayed their upset.

During a break, a couple of cowboys warmed themselves around a camp stove and drank hot chocolate while Cattoor reflected on his work.

He’s one of several private contractors the BLM hires for roundups and is paid $200 for every horse his eight-person crew captures.

Cattoor began gathering mustangs in 1956, before the animals were protected. He estimates he’s caught 140,000 wild horses during his career.

Some of the ones captured this day had been caught in the last roundup here, four years ago, and were released back into the wild.

“Those ones can be tough to bring in a second or third time,” he said. “They remember this.”

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Times deputy graphics editor Julie Sheer contributed to this report.