Native horsepower on the border

The latest recruits in the effort to tighten security along the rugged U.S.-Canadian border are well qualified for their new jobs.

Before training, Roscoe and Felix roamed remote stretches of Northern California and Wyoming, as their ancestors have for centuries. They have plenty of experience making their way through rivers and streams, up mountain trails and over densely forested land.

Roscoe, a muscular bay gelding with alert black eyes, and Felix, who is just a little smaller and darker, are part of Operation Noble Mustang, a pilot project of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Spokane sector that uses horses captured from the estimated 31,000 still roaming wild in the West.

Known for their sure-footedness, strength and endurance, mustangs also represent potential savings for the federal government.

They are adopted for $125 each from the federal Bureau of Land Management and are trained by prison inmates in Canon City, Colo., for $900.

And the only compensation they require is wild grass, some hay, and maybe the occasional carrot.

Here in the remote northeast corner of Washington state, nearly 100 miles north of Spokane, the border is in many places simply a barbed-wire fence in a 3-foot-wide clearing. The terrain is rugged, with shale on the mountainsides and thick forests of Ponderosa pine on the flats.

“We’ve been riding them through all of the conditions we face,” says Senior Border Patrol Agent Joe McCraw, stroking Felix’s neck, “through rivers, on mountain trails, through woodland debris up to their shoulders.”

The wild horses of the West all descend from horses that were owned by Spanish explorers, Southwestern ranchers, U.S. cavalrymen and American Indians. The animals are intelligent and loyal to their caretakers.

“It really is a situation of survival of the fittest with these horses,” says Rick McComas, Bureau of Land Management wild horse and burro specialist for Washington.

“The weaker ones, the slower ones, won’t make it in the wild, and certainly won’t pass on their genes.”

Protected by Congress since 1971 under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the wild population is managed by the bureau. About 31,000 horses and burros range over 10 Western states. The bureau calculates that the food and water available to the animals in the wild can sustain a population of only 27,000.

The horses have no natural predators, and the herd doubles about every four years. The bureau periodically captures horses in various locations around the West and offers the animals to the public for adoption. Since the program began in 1973, more than 200,000 horses and burros have been adopted.

Roscoe was captured in Northern California near Susanville, and Felix in Wyoming.

The Spokane sector of the Border Patrol is responsible for 309 miles of the border, from eastern Washington into Montana. Much of its territory is almost impossible for humans to reach by truck, all-terrain vehicle or even on foot.

The Border Patrol uses horses in many areas along the border with Mexico, but the Spokane sector is the only northern sector to use mounted patrols.

“We’ve been leasing horses here from local ranches since 2004,” says Agent Danielle Suarez, public affairs officer for the Spokane sector. “They give us access to areas we can’t reach any other way.”

Each of the seven stations in the Spokane sector spends $25,000 annually on the leased horses. Though no cost estimate is yet available for the horses’ yearly maintenance, the program’s potential for significant taxpayer savings is evident.

Of the first eight horses, four have been assigned to the Oroville station in Washington, and the others -- including Roscoe and Felix -- will soon move to their permanent station in Whitefish, Mont.

The program is being watched in Washington, D.C., Suarez says, “and it may expand to other areas on the northern border, and possibly to the mounted patrols on the southern border.”

“They’ve made a convert of me,” says Senior Border Patrol Agent Steve Kartchner, who says he has been around horses all his life.

“I was a skeptic. The wild mustangs have a reputation among horsemen for being hard to train, hard to work with.”

Kartchner and along with other Border Patrol agents involved in the program visited the Colorado Corrections Department training facility last year. “I hope we get more of their horses,” he says. “The inmates really do a great job.”

McCraw, who has worked with the horses every day since they arrived in April, agrees.

“These horses are a great match for us,” he says.

“I am really going to miss them.”

lynn.marshall@latimes.com