Volunteers, like Floyd Schweiger, are helping the biologists identify the herd. He comes up to the Pryors every chance he gets. When he first saw the mustangs 30 years ago he thought they were like any wild horse. "But," Schweiger says, "finally one day I climbed up on a pile of rocks or a little mound and looked down. I saw a dark stripe down the back of one of the horses. The horses we had back in Minnesota, my home state, were not like that. And then sometime later I went out again and saw a horse similar to it turned sideways. I saw the tiger stripes on its legs. That's really what got me started on this whole thing. Until finally after one of the round-ups, the park service provided $5,000 to do some blood typing on these horses. There are only about three or four such bands left in the wild today." These horses are the only remaining legacy of the free roaming herds who thundered over the plains centuries ago.

Tourists and Public Lands

But the isolation that has preserved the range is threatened by its own success. Floyd Schweiger is not the only one fascinated by the mustangs on the Pryor.