Wild Horses: Exposing the Myths

(Courtesy of the Animal Protection Institute)

In 1971, Congress recognized that wild horses and burros "are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West" by enacting the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. This law seeks to protect "from capture, branding, harassment, or death" wild horses and burros found on public lands in the United States. Yet the law has never been fully implemented by the Department of the Interior, the agency of the federal government charged with its administration. Below are common misconceptions -- and the real facts -- about wild horses.

MYTH: Wild horses and burros are exotic, non-native species rightfully categorized as "feral" domestic animals.

False. The Wild Horses and Burros Act recognizes the wild horse as an "integral component of the natural system." Paleontological evidence shows that wild horses and burros evolved on the North American continent over the course of some 60,000,000 years. How they disappeared 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, if in fact they actually ever became extinct here, is a mystery. It is suspected that the horses were hunted to near extinction by humans who had crossed the ice bridge into North America. When Cortez landed in Mexico in 1519, he brought horses from Spain. Others followed. From these reintroduced animals came the great numbers of wild horses which eventually changed the culture of the Plains Indians.

The Spanish horses soon adapted to the same ecological niche their native relatives had once inhabited here. Every trait and characteristic that describes a native wildlife species fits the American wild horse and desert burro. Long before the early settlers and homesteaders pioneered the West, they were here as a reintroduced, fully adapted species. When the U.S. government acquired land through the Louisiana Purchase and from Mexico, also acquired were the wild horses. As many as 3 million wild horses existed on public domain lands. Their home territory stretched from the Carizzo Plains and Santa Lucia Mountains of California, east to Missouri, and north to North Dakota and into Canada.