Wild horses and burros have become fixtures in the American West ever since Europeans brought the animals over. They remain an important part of our culture today, which is why federal law protects them from harm and harassment on certain federal lands. That same law also requires the government to maintain a balance on Western rangelands by managing public-land horse and burro populations at sustainable levels. Without management, free-ranging horses compete with native game like deer and elk, contribute to erosion, and hog valuable water.
But what if some people don’t want to see these animals managed? And what happens when those populations balloon beyond our control? We may soon find out: according to the government’s own figures, we might already be there.
The work itself, the gathering and removing of horses and burros, falls mostly to government contractors. These are often working cowboys and cowgirls — people like Jackie Hughes, who has a contract with the U.S. Forest Service to remove unauthorized, free-ranging horses from the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests in Arizona.
“Gathering these horses, it’s not a John Wayne movie,” Hughes tells OL in this week’s episode of the Outdoor Life Podcast.
Read Next: Beasts of Burden: Wild Horses and Burros Are Dying Hard Deaths in the West
In reality, Hughes says, it’s more of a grind — an extremely controversial one, at that. In the last four years that Hughes and her cowboys have worked the national forest lands, they’ve been sabotaged, sued, threatened, and villainized by a passionate and powerful group of horse advocates. These are some of the same individuals and organizations that have filed lawsuits against the federal government to thwart its attempts at managing horses and burros on public land.
So, why does Hughes keep at it? This is one of the things we discuss in this week’s episode of the Outdoor Life Podcast. We talk about how Hughes and her cowboys gather horses on national forest land, and we touch on the effects these herds are having on Arizona’s wildlife and natural resources. We also get into the larger debates around horse management that are playing out across the West today.
Listen to this week’s episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Read the full article here
