Breed evolution: More than 400 years ago, Spanish explorers voyaged to the Americas bringing select Iberian Horse stock. Breeding farms raised tough, strong, beautiful horses. Over generations, stock was traded, stolen, or escaped to become the wild herds of North America.
Some of the wild mustangs roamed near ranchers or cavalry who would introduce a large stallion, such as a Thoroughbred or Tennessee Walking Horse, into the herd in an attempt to increase the horses' size. Later, their offspring would be rounded up and trained for use on ranches or in the military. In these wild herds, the original Iberian blood was diluted.
However, this dilution didn't occur in some geographically isolated wild herds or the wild mustangs domesticated by Native Americans. Each tribe zealously guarded their horses and kept detailed pedigrees, oral and written. The horses that retained significant Iberian blood have been known as the Original Indian Horse or Spanish Mustang, and are now called the Colonial Spanish Horse.
With the passing of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, 47 million acres of public land were assigned to support wild horses in 303 Herd Management Areas. The BLM, and in rare instances the United States Forest Service, were charged with managing the HMAs and the wild mustangs that call them home.
Since then, more than 223,000 wild horses and nearly 37,000 wild burros have been removed from the HMAs, and 102 of the HMAs have been, in BLM terms, zeroed out - emptied of wild horses and burros.
Gary McFadden, top wild horse specialist at the Burns, Oregon, BLM office, reveals that this year the agency hopes to reduce the numbers of wild horses and burros to 24,000, a sustainable number on the remaining HMAs. He hopes that with 6,000 to 10,000 animals gathered annually, and the same number of adoptions every year, the target populations will be stable and healthy.
Today, the number of wild mustangs and burros living in government holding pens exceeds the number that run free on their home range. According to recent statistics issued by the Bureau of Land Management Program Office in Reno, Nevada, there are an estimated 27,000 horses and burros living wild in Herd Management Areas in the Western states. Living in BLM captivity, awaiting adoption: an estimated 30,000. In 2006, there were just 5,172 adoptions.
Owners tell us: Nancy Kerson is a BLM Wild Horse and Burro volunteer and creator of Mustangs "4" Us! - an online gathering ground for mustang enthusiasts. "Mustangs are incredibly intelligent - not that domestic horses necessarily lack intelligence, but mustangs just have a depth, a complexity, as well as what, for lack of a better word, I will call 'wisdom' than other horses," she says. "They're more interesting to work with for that reason."
Kerson believes mustangs that have spent time on the open range in a functioning herd make especially good trail horses. "Until being captured, their everyday life was an endurance ride and a trail ride, averaging 18 or more miles per day," she points out. "They know where their feet are. And they don't want to get hurt. Their surefootedness and their ability to make sense of the movements, sights, sounds, and scents along the trail rival that of the best mules, in my experience."
