The Fight to Save Wild Horses

Rocky, a dark bay with an insignificant little head, a tiny, battle-scarred chest, concave flanks and protruding ribs, was caught on Easter Sunday and has been confined ever since on the outskirts of Reno in a small pen with heavy timbered fences eight feet high. At the approach of humans. Rocky races down to the other end of the pen, perks his ears, then lays them back and gallops in mad circles. Only the pen is too small, the turning angle too sharp, and Rocky keeps falling on his side. "Ain't he sorry?" laughs Mustanger Bill Victor. "He ain't hardly a horse at all."

ROCKY'S sorry plight typifies the state of the 16,000 wild horses, or mustangs, left in the United States, most of them barely subsisting in arid brush country in ten Western states or, like Rocky, languishing in pens. Descendants for the most part of proud Andalusian horses brought to the New World by Spanish conquistadors 400 years ago, they are the only remnants of herds that as recently as 1900 numbered in the millions. If nothing is done to protect them, conservationists warn, there may be none left by 1980.

The Great Hunt. The mustang, which helped tame the West, is facing extinction for obvious reasons: it long ago became outmoded by trains, automobiles and farm machinery. Not worth preserving as game for hunters because it is too easy to track and kill, and not worth preserving for domestic use because it is too wild, stupid and inbred (according to some ranchers), the mustang has long been rounded up and "rendered"--a euphemism for slaughtered--by various entrepreneurs. At first the horse carcasses were valued only as a source of glue, clothing and violin bowstrings. But by 1945, industry recognized that wild horses were a cheap source of pet food. That was the signal for the beginning of the great hunt.

Sunday Killers. Between 1900 and 1950, more than a million wild horses were eliminated. Even the Government got into the act. From 1934 to 1963, the Bureau of Land Management and its predecessor agency condoned and even paid for the killing of mustangs. On numerous occasions the U.S. Forest Service held "close-outs" in which it gave ranchers 60 days to round up their own strays on forest service land--and then proceeded to shoot any remaining wild horses. The bureau's rationale: the mustangs chomp up valuable vegetation on Government property.

Far worse is the manner in which wild horses were "captured." They were panicked by planes, then lassoed from speeding vehicles and hobbled by being tied to 100-lb. truck tires (as vividly depicted in John Huston's 1961 film. The Misfits). Some were riddled with shotgun pellets and dragged aboard trucks half dead, others had their nostrils tied with baling wire, their legs broken, their eyes gouged out. Foals were left without mothers, who burst their lungs in futile attempts to escape mechanized pursuers. Some ranchers, resentful that wild horses compete with livestock for scarce food and water in arid regions, dope water holes, or simply ride out into the hills and blow the mustangs' heads off. "Sunday mustangers" use weekends to rope and ride down wild horses, often driving them to the point of exhaustion or death.

TIME Correspondent Timothy Tyler last week talked with Chug Utter, a Nevada mustanger who in 20 years has "gathered" 40,000 wild horses, and in whose pen Rocky awaits his fate. Chug remembers flying over wild herds in a light plane and using a "four-ten sawed-off shotgun just to spook 'em. We also used an electric shocking machine, but we didn't harm 'em. That's all poppycock." Anyway, says Chug philosophically, "there's only one end to being a horse, whether he's a champion race horse or a plug: dog food."

The hatred or, at best, brutal indifference that many ranchers feel toward the wild horse could stem from more than their impatience with anything other than livestock on the range. Hope Ryden, in her book America's Last Wild Horses, suggests another reason: "Perhaps these living reminders of an almost obliterated Indian culture are despised because they not only continue to enjoy a free-roaming existence in the wilderness, but haunt the American conscience as well."

Wild Horse Annie. The cruel treatment of the mustangs has begun to draw protest from some Americans. The most noted of them is Mrs. Velma Johnston (alias "Wild Horse Annie"), a frail Nevadan who once owned a horse ranch and has been battling 21 years to save mustangs. Under her leadership horse enthusiasts have pushed through a number of state laws designed to protect the animals. The thousands of letters Annie has sent to legislators and other government officials also helped to promote the 1959 federal statute known popularly as the "Wild Horse Annie Law," which prohibits the hunting of wild horses from airplanes or other motorized vehicles on the public domain. In addition, Annie's lobbying helped establish wild-horse sanctuaries in the Pryor Mountains of Montana and Wyoming and at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

But there are loopholes. The Wild

Horse Annie Law, for instance, leaves enforcement to local communities, where the leading citizens often are ranchers. As a result, the hunting down of wild horses continues. Some brazen mustangers even let their branded horses mix with wild horses, then capture the entire bunch. If investigators discover wild horses in the herd, the mustanger explains that he was only trying to recover his stock.

New Laws. Largely through the efforts of Wild Horse Annie, new and tougher laws are now before Congress. The Senate passed its version last week; the House version is still in committee. Both bills would give full responsibility for protecting and managing wild horses to the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, and would prohibit the killing of mustangs except by trained Government agents--and then only when the number of horses becomes excessive. Violators would be subject to fines of up to $2,000, one year in jail, or both. The bills would make wild horses a part of the national heritage, and establish new refuges on public lands.

Ecologists and conservationists are joining forces with those who want to preserve wild horses for humane and aesthetic reasons. While ecological studies are incomplete, they seem to confirm that wild horses do not compete with livestock, because they usually roam mountainous regions inaccessible to cattle, and do not compete with other wildlife, because they are grass eaters while most wild herbivores eat brush.

Scientists also say that studies show the birth rate of mustangs is low and that their number is kept low by natural enemies like mountain lions, wolves and disease. Wild Horse Annie is grateful to her new allies but feels that there is a less pragmatic, more important reason for preserving the horses. "To the people of America," she says, "mustangs represent the kind of freedom we were founded on."

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