Why It Is Necessary To Manage Wild Horses

Modern wild horses are a non-native species. They were first reintroduced to the North American continent in the 1600s by Spanish explorers. Over the centuries which followed, countless domestic horses either escaped or were intentionally released, formed into bands and the strongest flourished and multiplied. Thus in the scientific sense, these animals are actually feral horses (domestic horses returned to the wild), although for this discussion we will continue to call them "wild horses".

The biggest problem with the wild horses is that as a reintroduced species, nature had not developed all the necessary checks and balances in the ecosystem to deal with them. A healthy horse's only natural predator is the mountain lion (also called cougar or puma). The mountain lion did not range sufficiently or prosper in enough numbers to sufficiently check the growth of the horse herds. In fact, out of thousands of wild horse herds and bands, the mountain lion has been influential in controlling less than a half dozen!

As a result the herds grew and grew, their populations only checked by the supply of food and water. During drought years, thousands of horses would die of thirst and starvation. Thousands more would starve during particularly hard winters. One could argue that water and food were nature's limiting factors, but there is much more to the story.