Mustang roundup highlights conflict

DEVILS GARDEN, Modoc National Forest, Calif. -- Two dozen wild horses rumbled from the shimmering heat-haze like a mirage, driven ahead of a low-flying helicopter toward a trap that would take them forever from the remote frontier between California, Oregon and Nevada.

For almost a century, from the 1870s until 1971, the mustangs that roamed the West were hunted to near extinction. Many ended up as dog food before federal protections 33 years ago preserved a species second only to the buffalo as an icon of the American West.

Now the burgeoning horse population has run into an age-old Western conflict between nature and agriculture over the region's sparse resources, particularly water. That fight, environmental activists said, is too often won by ranchers they accuse of exploiting recent drought-emergency wild horse roundups to return cattle to land where horses once roamed.

"The cattle ranchers had good political connections and the horses don't," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, after the last horses were removed this month from northwest Wyoming because of the drought.

The Bush administration began a drive three years ago to return all mustang herds to the levels determined 30 years ago by the law that protects the herds. So far, the effort has cost $27 million, and the administration is seeking an additional $19.5 million to finish the job by 2007.

On California's Modoc Plateau, the "horses are all real healthy. People wonder why we're taking them off the range, but it all has to do with range management," said K.C. Pasero, who oversees the federal Bureau of Land Management's wild horse program for northern California and northwest Nevada.

Cattleman Dennis Smith of Cedarville, in California's farthest northeast corner, said too many horses on the land would "eat themselves out of a home. Pretty soon there'd be no forage for cattle or horses."

An aerial count before the roundup found 701 horses here in what by far is California's largest herd, on land the U.S. Forest Service says should sustain only about 300. The count surely missed a hundred horses or more, officials said, with the herd growing at a rate of 20 percent a year.

Both projections are disputed by Karen Sussman, president of the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros, who accuses the government of routinely overestimating herds' population and growth.

In the past, older horses were returned to the range while the younger horses were put up for adoption. But under the new direction none of the 500 captured horses will be released. Those too old or ornery for ready adoption will be sent to sanctuaries in Kansas and Oklahoma, joining about 14,000 already roaming new fenced ranges with more abundant forage than in the arid Far West.

Most of the adoptable horses will go to auction in California, their new owners' promise of a good home monitored for a year by the government. By law, none can be killed, and government inspectors will seize horses that are abused or neglected.

There is plenty of demand even among the Amish for the stocky mounts found here in the Devils Garden region south of the Oregon border. Many are descended not from Spanish horses, but from farm animals that once tamed the soil of the high arid desert. Some weigh in at 1,300 pounds, with attractive colors and markings and a propensity to tame more easily than Spanish mustangs.

"As people bought tractors, they said 'So long' " to the draft horses they set free, said Rob Jeffers, who spent 27 years running wild horse programs for the BLM before switching last week to the Forest Service's mustang program.

The government recently began gathering genetic information to track captured horses' heritage and watch for danger signs like inbreeding.

"Each one (herd) has a little different characteristic," Jeffers said. "We're trying to maintain the integrity of each of those herds."

Critics like Sussman and Bobbi Royle, president of Wild Horse Spirit Ltd. in Carson City, Nev., accuse the administration of incrementally eliminating an iconic symbol of the Old West. What once were 303 managed herds have dwindled to 186, 70 percent of which have fewer than 100 animals -- too small a margin against harsh weather, disease and inbreeding, Sussman said.

Tom Pogacnik, head of the BLM wild horse and burro program in California, said managers are open to criticism from all sides. They can't let horses die of thirst or starvation, but removing them creates controversy and costs money the government hadn't planned to spend. Finally, removing horses leaves more food and water for those who remain, but that often leads to more pregnant mares and healthy foals, which boosts the population again.

The BLM is experimenting with birth control injections to slow the growth of the bands as a longer-term alternative. Recent versions will prevent pregnancy for two years or longer without harming the fetus in mares that are usually pregnant when captured, Pasero said.

The roundup itself combines old and new cowboy techniques, including using helicopters once banned by a 1959 law.

Pilot Rick Harman often flies at horse-head level, zooming up and over trees at the last instant. "It's low-level flying and it's tricky maneuvering," Pasero said.

"He's persistent," said Karen Cook, as Harman barnstormed off after two horses that slipped away from a larger band. Cook and her husband, Greg, run KG Livestock of Vernal, Utah, which has one of the two national capture contracts this year.

As Harman drives each band to the trap's entrance, a wrangler releases a decoy horse that races with the wild horses into the corral. But the decoy stops short, leaving the panicked mustangs to go banging in frustration at the suddenly closed gate, fighting, leaping and stumbling to find an escape that no longer exists.

The captured horses are swiftly loaded onto trailers despite rearing, kicking and biting to escape. They're separated into mares, studs and foals for the trip to holding pens outside Susanville to prevent the studs from fighting each other for dominance, and the foals from getting trampled underfoot.

But tragedy interfered. On the second day, a mare escaped and left behind a 2-week-old foal that Pasero had to find a volunteer to care for.

On the third day came a greater tragedy.

As frightened horses stampeded around the tiny corral, a mare got her head caught against the gate, which snapped her neck and killed her instantly. Pasero dragged the carcass away chained to a pickup truck.

"That's the first one (fatality) I've seen in the 15 years I've been here," said an upset Jenny Jayo, the Forest Service specialist overseeing the Modoc mustangs.

Despite the use of helicopters and tricks, sometimes it all comes down to old-fashioned cowboying.

One young stud flat refused to stay in the trap, racing for freedom with his tail held high as a rooster's, the helicopter hard on his heels.

The wranglers loped their horses out over the rocky treacherous terrain. Aaron Rees, of Loa, Utah, wearing a cowboy hat as big as a manhole cover, twirled his lariat and lassoed the stud, then tugged and coaxed him, still fighting, a half-mile into the corral.

"It takes a lot of practice to do that with a running horse, on a running horse," Pasero said. "Sometimes, when they don't respect the chopper, you've gotta go do it the old-fashioned way."

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