Fires and Droughts Endanger Wild Horses
Aug. 20 -- As wildfires char more than a million acres of the West, conservation officials are trying to save a much-loved part of its heritage: the wild horses and burros.
About 42,000 wild horses and up to 5,000 wild burros roam in herds through just about every state west of the Rockies. But this year, with a record drought stealing their water supply and wildfires roasting their habitat, this already large population faces its hardest times ever.
The Bureau of Land Management is trying to help, speeding up a program that rounds up some of the animals and finds ranchers to adopt them.
“I’ve been in this program now for 17 years, and this is unusual,” says Tom Pogacnik, a senior specialist in the BLM’s national wild horse and burro program. “Springs that have never dried up before are drying up.”
While the herds are unlikely to actually get burned alive, he said, they are having to travel long distances out of fire areas to find food and water. Some, especially mares with foals, are suffering.
Pogacnik said his agency, which typically rounds up about 1200 horses per year for adoption, has already picked up more than 1,300 this year, and could add about 5,000 more if their water sources keep drying out. He was in Nebraska this week, making sure facilities would be ready for these “emergency gathers.”
The herds descend from horses brought by Spanish Conquistadors (the real mustangs) or set loose by ranchers, miners, or the U.S. Cavalry. In the 1950s and ’60s a secretary named Velma Johnston but known as Wild Horse Annie mounted a letter-writing campaign to have them protected from slaughter; it is said only the Vietnam War drew more letters to Congress.
“The public is not very receptive to the idea that these animals are out there dying a slow and terrible death,” Pogacnik says. “The public wants us to step in and help these horses.”
Population Running Wild
Even before this season’s fires and droughts, BLM horse and burro officials had their hands full.
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