The fate of stray horses in Heber could depend on just how feral we think they really are.
Everybody’s a wise guy on Twitter. Even the Arizona Department of Transportation. “Reports of burros on SR 74 near I-17,” it posted January 8. “Please slow down in area. However, no sign of this guy”– a picture of cartoon character Shrek.
It was a reference to an incident that made the rounds on the Internet: Days before, an ADOT highway cam caught the burros from an odd angle, making them look vaguely black and beastly in the snow, sparking speculation of a Bigfoot family reunion.
But while the alleged “Mogollon Monster” (Arizona’s Bigfoot legend) has yet to meander out of the tree stand, the existence of thousands of wild burros and horses in Arizona is a fact – and a growing problem.
The Arizona Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rounded up about 200 burros in 2013 and 2014 after about 30 traffic “incidents,” sending most to BLM’s national adoption clearinghouse in Utah. But the state’s 1,600 wild burros are a small beef compared to the issue of wild horses.
Arizona is home to about 200 of the 50,000 wild horses nationwide protected by the BLM. Because horses have no natural predators, and herd sizes double every four years, public land can support only half the 50,000, according to the agency. So each year BLM rounds up hundreds of wild horses for relocation to pastures and corrals.
Having the horses adopted is one solution, but demand is low. Proposed solutions range from dart-delivered contraception (already being used in some states) to selling excess herd for meat, which Arizona BLM spokesperson Amber Cargile says is not allowed. Though the federal BLM strengthened rules to prevent wild horses from being sold or slaughtered in 2013, it remains a perennial fear for wild-horse advocates.
Complicating things, not all free-roaming horses fit BLM’s definition of “wild,” and so aren’t protected by the agency. About 200 horses near Heber-Overgaard, 55 miles east of Payson, roam the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service. Forest officials say the horses wandered off the reservation when the 2002 Rodeo-Chedeski fire burned fences on tribal land, and classify the animals as strays.
The Heber horses’ fate has been uncertain since a group of activists got an injunction in 2005 to keep the horses from being removed or sold. It’s been a protracted process, with the service agreeing in 2007 to create a management plan, which it promises to deliver next year. Apache-Sitgreaves officials are tight-lipped about what the plan will contain. Public-affairs officer Pam Baltimore notes Arizona law allows the Arizona Department of Agriculture to auction off unclaimed stray animals, but adds the Forest Service has no plans to all0w the horses to be sold. She also says the service will try to determine if any of the Heber horses are truly “wild,” though there’s no genetic test to answer the question.
Activists like Mary Hauser of Queen Creek still worry. Hauser’s been photographing the Heber horses for years since she caught sight of them around 2002 as a volunteer for the Maricopa County search and rescue posse. She says the herd is truly wild; otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to survive in the wilderness. “It would be like sending a 15-year-old boy out who hasn’t even been in the Boy Scouts.” Used to being fed and watered on schedule, they’d be unable to find sustenance.
“I’m a horsewoman,” she says, citing more than 20 years of horse-boarding and showing in her native Wisconsin. “I can look at a horse and tell you what the lineage is.” Her horse sense tells her the Heber herd shares DNA with the steeds Cortez rode in on, even if their blood is now mixed with more recent equine families: “Naturally they were watered down, like all Americans.” Hauser hopes for a management plan to keep the Heber horses free-range, though she’s willing to accept some might need to be relocated.
The cattle industry is keeping a wary eye on Heber’s small herd. Patrick Bray, executive vice president for the Arizona Cattleman’s Association, says wild horses eat and trample grass set aside for cattle. He thinks it’s time society considered allowing wild horses to be used as food, but admits it’s a tough sell: “It’s hard to take the emotion out of it.”
A Billings, Montana nonprofit, the Science and Conservation Center, developed a contraceptive to control horse populations. The real question, says Dr. Jay F. Kirkpatrick, director of the center, is: “Who gets to use public land?” The answer should include horses, he says: “[Humans] put these horses in this precarious position.”
HorsePlay in Florence
It takes patience to ready a wild horse for adoption – and to turn an inmate’s life around. Ask Randy Helm, Wild Horse Inmate Program Supervisor with the Arizona Department of Corrections in Florence, who oversees about 25 prison trustees working with about 900 horses.
Helm says the program, launched in 2012, takes in horses from federal land in Wyoming, Oregon, Nevada and elsewhere, though none from Arizona’s small band of wilds. About 70 horses, and about 20 burros, have been adopted by the public or the Border Patrol, he says.
The inmates feed and groom the horses every day, Helm says. Some inmates have learned the patience to deal with the setbacks that inevitably come with horse training, like animals who trot calmly one day but bristle the next. Delayed gratification is a new experience for many of the trustees, Helm says. “We want to see inmates that have their lives impacted, and we want to see these horses and burros find good homes.”
