Transcript:

[0:03]

Welcome to the Mattout Horses video podcast. My name is Dr. Chris Mortson. I'm an equine researcher, scientist, advocate.

[0:11]

I've been doing this for over 20 years, and in today's episode we're going to talk about wild horses and the Mustangs — particularly in the Americas. We're going to go on a journey and talk about these horses, a little insight into wild horses around the world, but again, we're going to focus mainly on the ones of the Americas because they are so iconic and they are so important to the American culture. And it's like a political hot potato that's being tossed around in the United States with these horses.

[0:40]

And, you know, there are some concerns — there are some welfare concerns — and this video podcast is going to be a little bit different. I'm going to introduce some clips from two horse enthusiasts that work with Mustangs or work to advocate for Mustangs, and so I'm going to clip in some of their comments on the current status of the wild horses in the Americas, what's going on, and then also the impacts these roundups have on them and, you know, people that do go out and adopt these Mustangs — some of the challenges that they face with them. So it's going to be a fun podcast.

[1:25]

The Story of Picasso: An Iconic Mustang

To start this one off, I really want to tell a story of a band of wild horses in the Sand Wash Basin in northeastern Colorado. And this is a story of a colt that was born in 1987. He is probably one of the most iconic Mustangs of the modern era. He is a painted stallion — chestnut, white, gorgeous — a horse that captured the imagination of anybody that saw him.

[2:01]

He was named Picasso because of his bright colors, and he went on to secure his own band of mares, which is very difficult for a male horse in the wild, and he led his band of mares for many, many years. He did form bonds with other bachelor stallions, which happens — one’s name was Lightning, another paint horse that was his close buddy.

[2:30]

And Picasso foaled many other wild horses, and he became a legend until 2019, when he was last spotted. He had lost his band of mares, but he was seen with one of his friends, Lightning, and then disappeared in the winter. They assume that he passed away. But he was the epitome of the Wild Horse of America, and he represents a lineage that dates back not only 500 years, but thousands and millions of years of horses in America.

[3:13]

So we're going to talk about what happened to his band, what happened to all the wild horses in this part of the country in the United States, and what's going on with all the other ones now.

[3:20]

The Importance of Horses in Human History

Wild horses are an important part of telling the horse's story. To know these animals, you need to know these wild counterparts. You need to understand why they're important and what we can learn from them. They are part of my heritage, many of your heritages — all of our heritages. As I've argued in podcast after podcast about how important horses are to us, our culture, our own evolution as a species, our advancements as a species.

[4:05]

I argue if it wasn't for the horse, we wouldn't have gone to the Moon, we wouldn't have rovers on Mars, we wouldn't have cell phones in our pockets — because they allowed us to do so many things. And, you know, through the ages, the last 5,000 years, to travel and to explore all the continents and every inch of this planet was because of the horse. And that led to the Industrial Revolution, that has led to advancements to this now information age — because of them. It's because of them.

[4:37]

So understanding the wild horses is part of that story, and that's why we should care. That's why we really, really should care.

[4:44]

The Global Presence of Wild Horses

Now, there are estimates of over two million wild horses in the world today, and I'll talk about different populations around the continents, but their story — again, especially in the Americas — begins 55–60 million years ago, when the dinosaurs went extinct. This allowed mammals to emerge, and the earliest horse relative, Eohippus, which we've talked about — which looked, you know, as tall as a medium-sized dog — evolved over the millions of years to the Percheron stallions we have today, or Shire horses, or, you know, the Budweiser Clydesdales. They went from little tiny things to these massive beasts that we see today.

[5:39]

Most of that evolution, before breeding but up to the wild horse that became the domestic horse, happened in the Americas. Horses have been found throughout the plains of the United States and Canada and Mexico and even in South America. They evolved there.

[5:57]

I talk about, in "The Rise of Equus" podcast, where Equus — the Hagerman’s horse, the early version of the horse — did go into Asia, and that eventually became the wild asses, eventually became zebras. But Equus ferus, which became Equus caballus — that’s the scientific name for the domestic horse — the Equus ferus horses that we took and domesticated 5,000–6,000 years ago were in the Americas, and they just, for some reason, went extinct in the Americas about 10,000 years ago.

[6:45]

If we look at Picasso’s origins, we can trace his lineage back to when horses were reintroduced to North America with the Conquistadors. It begs the question — what do we owe them? You know, what do we owe these wild horses? And a lot of what I’m going to talk about today too is this concept of rewilding — are wild horses in the Americas having a positive or negative effect on the environment there?

[7:21]

Now, I spoke to Amanda Calaman. She is the founder of Rewilding America Now, and she is part of an organization that is an advocate for the wild horses in America. I interviewed her last week, and when I asked her, "Why is this an issue? Why should we care about wild horses?" this is what she had to say:

[7:50]

"Should we have a little history of the wild horse situation for your listeners? Not sure why… So, wild horses — horses here in the United States — everybody knows that this country was built on the back of a horse, as is every other country: in New Zealand, in Australia, in Britain, in France — I mean, tell me what location… Africa — what location in this world was not built on the back of a horse? Horses have been a global species and a compatriot to all of us through the growth of our civilization.

[8:26]

But what's happened here is that horses were not considered a native species in this country — hard to imagine that's true. Horses evolved here in the Yukon, and they crossed over the Bering land bridge and they circled the globe, and then the same horse that left here came back with the Conquistador in 1492. But our government says that the wild horses that are here are relatives — derivatives — of the horses that came back with the Conquistadors, and that the original horse, that horse, is gone and extinct, and that the horses that came with the Conquistador are not only non-native but they are being called invasive — meaning destructive to the range — which is not true."

[9:29]

Now, when you listen to that clip, you can hear the passion in her voice, right? A big, strong advocate. And I think this is where the debate sits today in 2024 — is this an invasive species? What does that mean? When we have wild horses that were reintroduced in 1519 by the Spanish on the mainland North America — they did come over with Columbus, and there’s other data that some of the early Vikings had horses but didn’t make the mainland.

[10:01]

You know, when you consider an invasive species from a conservation standpoint, you’re thinking of something that’s never lived there — like rats or snakes on some of these islands in the Pacific that aren’t native, never lived there. All of a sudden they’re introduced, and the native birds and species have never had to deal with these predators, and all of a sudden they’re getting wiped out because they have not evolved to run away or learn defense techniques against some of these invasive animals.

[10:36]

So calling horses invasive strikes a chord with many, and I think that's where the debate sits — are they native, or are they invasive? We know horses evolved in the Americas — we know that for a fact. We know roughly, the best evidence we have is 7,000 years ago, maybe they disappeared — some say 10,000 years ago. And for people that live in North America, it's kind of hard to wrap their minds around this, but we used to have American lions, we used to have American cheetahs, we used to have mastodons and mammoths roaming all over the plains, down into Florida, down into northern Mexico. These species all were there and then inexplicably disappeared at the end of the last Ice Age.

[11:30]

Why they disappeared, what drove them out — that's still being debated today. Some people believe that the humans that came over and crossed the land bridge about, I don't know, 16–18,000 years ago hunted these animals to extinction, with changes in the climate, with some other pressures that drove horses and other species out. Now, there is an idea that Amanda and others are pushing called rewilding, and it's a concept that I'm going to talk a little bit more about here in a bit, and that's reintroducing some of these species.

[12:12]

There are some scientists that say we should reintroduce elephants — which never, you know, the African or Asian elephants never lived on the plains of America — but we did have the mastodon or mammoths. Some are saying even put lions back — I could just imagine that, right? Putting lions back in the wild in Idaho or something. But what they're trying to say is the grasslands, the plants, the birds — all of these native animals evolved with these big species, and if we reintroduce them, like they're doing in other parts around the world, we can revitalize those ecosystems. So it's an interesting concept that's being pushed all around the planet.

[12:51]

But what we do know about horses — they did disappear, and then they came back with the Spanish conquistadors. And Columbus, in 1492, did bring over horses to the islands that he visited. It wasn't until the mainland of Mexico where horses were brought in in 1519.

[13:15]

Now what's interesting about the research — and there was a really good study, "Early Dispersal of Domestic Horses into the Great Plains and Northern Rockies," that was just published last year — it talks about the history of this. And we think, "Oh, the Spanish brought them everywhere, and then Native Americans went in and stole them and ran off with them, and then they became the Plains horses, they became a big part of their culture." You know, you watch movies and all that stuff. And we come to find out now that that's not really true — that what happened is the Native Americans were huge in getting some early horses in the 1500s, and then through their networks going up into the Americas and trading and using these horses, and becoming a big part of their culture for hundreds and hundreds of years. Still today, they're a big part of their culture in the 21st century.

[14:10]

So our understanding of the history of the horse is constantly evolving. What we thought was true 10 years ago isn't necessarily true. So when we introduce ideas that maybe horses have been around a lot longer in the Americas, we have to look at the evidence — and that's what we do in science, right? We look at the evidence and we always look for more. But what we do know of the native horses, the native wild horses that we still have that are lineages dating back hundreds of years — they all go back to the Iberian Peninsula. That's their lineage — we trace that through genetics. So we do know they do have a Spanish origin or Portuguese origin — you know, that part of the world where they came in. And then a lot of our wild horses were from that lineage, the older ones.

[15:06]

Now, since then — and I know this from my own research back when I was an undergraduate — my senior project was to study a band of wild horses. It's funny, it was actually my first scientific publication. It was looking at the Black Mountain horse herd in central California, where for a year I went out and documented the herd, studied their behavior, studied their habitat, studied their management plan. I worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had access to these horses. They got close to me — I just stood still as they kind of surrounded me and were kind of checking me out — because they, you know, every now and then they were rounded up and vaccinated and cared for, but again, released.

[15:55]

Their history dates back to the early 20th century, where they were released when the automobile was around — people released these horses into the hills. So their lineages might be more like Quarter Horse or stock horse type horses. So we know some of those have been released in the last 100–200 years. But the really old lineages of wild horses — they go back to these conquistadors, these horses that traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, made landfall, and they were breeding them in Mexico and then up through the networks into modern-day United States and Canada.

[16:35]

So, you know, it's just really, really interesting to look at their history. Now, like I said, some people argue that horses might have been around almost a thousand years ago in North America, and then they kind of went extinct. And this one is going to need a little bit more study, but there was a brief paper I came across — and I found it interesting, and that's why I wanted to bring it up in the podcast, because it's just something to think about — possibly, you know, let's go look for evidence for it. And it was "The Horse and Burro as Positively Contributing Returned Natives in North America," and the author is arguing that horses were actually around a lot sooner, then they were driven out, then they came back.

[17:23]

He said there's some artwork — you know, he talked about petroglyphs, was this chiseled rock showing horses, or might show a horse. Land art — so these geoglyphs, if you get up really high, you can see it on the ground — that might depict a horse. Those date only back a few thousand years. There are some fossils that show possibly dating back just a few hundred years or a few thousand years. So there's, you know, this alternative hypothesis — it needs more study. But I think it's interesting to look at — you know, when did they leave? We know they left at some point, but when did they leave, and why? Was human — were humans a big part of that?

[18:08]

Because here's the debate in conservation science around the world — you know, wherever you live, man-driven extinctions of species or species driven out of their native habitats are being reintroduced. They're getting — this is the important part, especially with wild horses — they're getting protection from international organizations, and then within those countries, they're getting specific protections.

[18:47]

So this is why it's important to have this debate about wild horses in the Americas — because if they're treated as an invasive species, as some see them, they don't get those protections. But if they're seen as a native species being reintroduced, like Rewilding America wants to do or is arguing, then they get all those protections — then it's a whole different ball game for them.

[19:09]

And Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick has an article — you know, or a paper — titled "Wild Horses as Native North American Wildlife." He talks about this debate — invasive species versus native species — and just to quote him real quick: "Native status for wild horses would place these animals under law within a new category for management consideration as a form of wildlife, embedded with wildness, ancient behavioral patterns, and the morphology and biology of a sensitive pre-species. They may be finally released from the livestock-gone-loose application."

[19:57]

So that's the debate — if we look at them as native to the Americas and say, "No, they're part of the environment, they've always been, they were driven out by humans or humans had a big part in their disappearance from the Americas," then you can say, as biologists and conservation biologists, "No, they're a part of the landscape — they need to be there, they need protections." Right? And he even goes further, talking about the wildness of horses, how easy it is for them to go wild or go feral, to revert back to these natural wild behaviors that domestication hasn't driven all of out them.

[20:34]

We know that — we know horses that aren't handled often, they get a little, you know, a little spicy and a little difficult to handle, and they kind of revert to that, "Oh, I don't know if I want to put on a saddle today," and things like that. So it is easy for horses to do that. And he's saying, "Look, you bring them back — they'll be back. They'll be like their ancestors were thousands of years ago, and they will contribute to the landscape."

[21:06]

Okay, so that's in the Americas. South America — they had different types of equids down there. They do have a feral horse population — exact numbers are tough to say. Argentina's got a big population of about 10,000 in the Patagonia region. There are some wild horses up into the Andes Mountains and that part of the world that were part of this conquistador Spanish release and establishing themselves. Are they native? That's a big question — probably not like the horses in North America. You know, they did have horse-like ancestors down there; we’re finding bones. What's the impact on the landscape down there? That's for those countries to decide.

[22:02]

The Plight of Wild Horses in Australia

One of the heartbreaking stories are the wild horses of Australia. Now, I was recently in Queensland and I went to go try to find some bands of wild horses, and — peak summer, very hot, very tough to find them in the brush. But they have about 400,000 wild horses across Australia. They have the world's largest population of wild horses. In fact, Australia's got over a million wild camels. I mean, they're not native. It's all these introduced species to Australia — it's a different discussion because they're not native to that continent.

[22:47]

They were introduced in the late 1700s with the arrival of the British, and they were reintroduced — they became known as the brumbies. So there is a huge debate going on in Australia right now about what to do with these wild horses. They're not native, but they are part of the Australian culture, and people are not happy with how they're being managed.

[23:16]

It's pretty tragic, but they're actually being shot via helicopter. And it's been in the news recently that they are culling these horses and burros by flying helicopters and shooting them — and that has enraged the Australian public. And it's a difficult topic, and the reason I'm discussing this is because you are horse lovers, and we owe so much to these animals. And some of us, you know, as an educator, I just have to put out the data and tell these stories, and then let you make up your minds on how to take that information — because I know there's people on both sides of the fences here.

[24:06]

You know, horses aren't native to Australia. Their native species are in dire straits — a lot of them are heading towards extinction — and to have a large herbivore like that, that isn't native, that has not evolved there for millions of years, it can be very destructive. And I know from my own research, rabbits are actually the most destructive introduced species to Australia — they're devastating to the biome there. But when you throw in horses and camels and all these other species, it's a big problem to manage. And that's what's going on — and, you know, it's just how do we handle these large horses, and how do we handle these invasive species where they haven't been, where they don't belong?

[25:03]

And that's, I guess, a different discussion for a different day for Australia. But in the Americas, you know, that is a very relevant talk. And, I mean, even in the newspapers — "The Slaughter of Wild Horses in Australia Has Become a Battle for the Soul of the Country" — and they're talking about, you know, what do we do with them, and it's an ongoing fight.

[25:21]

Now, if we look at the rest of the world — wild horses in Eastern Europe — the Konik horse, that's a semi-feral, very famous wild horse there that's related to the extinct Tarpan horse, which some people think was one of the original domesticated horse species/breeds. So there are wild horses there in Europe. In the UK, they've got some wild horses — the Dartmoor ponies — very, very popular there in England and Wales. In Asia, obviously lots of wild horses, most famous of which is the Przewalski’s horse, or "shal’s horse," however you want to say it — that's the Polish saying.

[26:03]

They have been reintroduced to their native ranges. They were extinct in the wild — incredible conservation success story — but now there are hundreds, a few thousand roaming again in Mongolia and China. So again, different species — I talk about that in "The Rise of Equus" — Przewalski’s horses and domestic horses have different chromosomes, and they are two separate species, but very, very closely related. And then even in Africa, you have wild horses in the Namib Desert — there are wild horses that were released from the German cavalry over 100 years ago, but they've established bands there, and they're very popular. People go and, you know, they think they're like Thoroughbred lineage, but people go and try to see them.

[26:53]

So that gives you an idea of wild horses around the world and some of the issues that they're facing. Really, the culling is happening in the United States — as far as being put under managed care — and then in Australia now they're actually physically culling these animals. So, two separate issues.

[27:15]

When we come back to the Americas and we talk about the Mustang — now, a Mustang is what we call the wild horses of the Wild West. You know, everybody kind of has an idea of that. That comes from the Spanish word for wild, stray, or having no master — "mestengo" — so Mustang.

[27:39]

Now, when we look at specifically the Mustangs in the United States, I did ask Amanda, "What's their status?" And so I'm going to play that clip now:

[27:45]

"Although our horses here in America are mandated to roam free on the public rangelands, the way that the government is managing them is by helicopter — chasing them down, their families, separating families, mothers and foals running for their life, babies can't keep up with their mothers, and the familiar destruction of these family bands and herds. And because they need the public rangelands to give to cattle ranching people, and to oil factions, and drilling, and mining — as it's a multi-use — our public rangelands, the horses are the ones caught in the crossfire of this argument. And it's a terrible thing, because they're being eradicated. There are over 880,000 wild horses in government holding facilities today. There are less than 85,000 left on the range. It's hard to know the exact numbers — the government tells you one thing and advocates tell you another. It's destruction — the range is destroyed by all the use, the horse bands are being eradicated and destroyed. We've got to find a solution and balance to save the land and to save the horses."

[28:58]

Again, you can hear the passion in her voice talking about where we are with the Mustangs and the helicopter roundup. I'm going to talk about that here in a second, because that is happening — you know, they're swooping in with the helicopters, driving them into these pens, and then taking them from the wild and keeping them in these large paddocks with hay — not much grass from what I've seen. Depends, you know, because a lot of these horses are in the West, in the desert regions — so they are being fed and watered, but they are confined. Again, these are animals that are feral or wild, and they're in human confinement.

[29:43]

It’s such a complex issue in the United States because, in 1971, the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act was passed. It was bipartisan — didn’t matter where you were in the political spectrum. And just to quote this, because this was passed by Congress and this is how the wild horses and burros are still managed in the United States today:

[30:10]

Quote: "Congress finds and declares that wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West, that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people, and that these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene. It is the policy of Congress that wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death, and to accomplish this they are considered in the area where they are presently found as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands." Unquote.

[30:59]

So there you go — that is the law of the land in the United States. Now, there have been some updates to it, different administrations — whoever the president is or whoever is leading the Department of the Interior — they guide some of these policies. But right there in law, in the United States, it says wild horses and burros are an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.

[31:24]

So we recognize they are part of the American blood. It’s just in our blood. It’s growing up in the United States — wild horses and burros, the cowboys of the Old West, the Native Americans, the great horse peoples of the Plains — it is all part of our history, and we want to honor that, which is such a great thing. The issue is — the problem is — where do they live, and what do we do with the excess animals? Because there’s only so much land they can live on, and it’s becoming overpopulated.

[32:11]

So what could we do? And then there’s other political pressures, which Amanda talks about. One thing you can do is to adopt a horse — a wild horse or burro. In these programs, excess animals that are held can be adopted. Doesn’t mean that they’re really easy to work with or easy to train or easy to ride, and I have some friends that work with Mustangs.

[32:36]

I did have another discussion a few weeks ago with Shelby Dennis, incredible horsewoman from Canada — she’s the author of The Other Side of Horsemanship. I spoke to her about training wild horses, and we had a really good discussion on it because she has a lot of experience with these animals. And this is what she said when she talked about working with Mustangs:

[33:04]

"I think a lot of the danger is created from how we handle them, and Mustangs are a great example because you see all these videos of Mustangs exploding under saddle or lunging at people and trying to attack them. But if you look at all those clips, it’s a Mustang that’s trapped in a little area that they can’t escape. And it’s like, yeah, if they’re wild and they’re afraid of you, and they think you’re a predator — they think their life might be at risk — the smart thing to do is to try to attack you and get you to leave them alone, because they think that you’re a risk to their life. And same with the saddle being on them — if you don’t actually properly prepare them, they’re going to explode and treat the saddle like it’s a predator clinging to their back, and they’re going to go crazy trying to get it off until they finally give in and go into learned helplessness. Or, if they’re successful in getting the saddle off, then they learn, like, ‘Hey, this is a behavior that works to get away from the thing that I’m afraid of.’

[33:51]

Like, my Mustangs — at no point have I ever had them display any aggression. They’ve never so much as pinned their ears at me, they’ve never threatened to kick, they’ve never tried to bite me, they’ve never struck out at me. And I attribute that to the fact that at all times in my handling of them, they’ve always been able to escape, they’ve always been able to leave, they’ve never felt cornered or trapped. And I’ve never put them in situations where they have to worry about me being such a threat that they have no other choice than to come after me."

[34:27]

So, very interesting experience on her part about how to approach a wild horse or a Mustang and how to train them. The other interesting aspect that we talked about — we got in this long discussion — was some of the trauma that wild horses have, and that’s another discussion maybe for another day. But talking about experiences that these young horses have — or older horses have — being rounded up by helicopters, being confined, seeing terror, feeling fear.

[35:05]

We talked about this in a previous podcast — yes, horses have feelings, yes, they feel terror, yes, they feel fear, yes, they feel love. They do have these complex emotions. I mean, you can’t tell me a mare doesn’t care for her foal — the nickering, the nuzzling — I mean, that’s showing love-type behavior, right? So they do have complex behaviors. Again, not human cognition — I’m not trying to anthropomorphize — I’m just saying I recognize that animals have complex emotions and feelings. And that’s where we are today in science — we know this.

[35:36]

So when these wild horses are rounded up or go through some trauma — say, like we would in our own lives — they remember that. And Shelby kind of talks about how to work through some of that trauma, and she’s dealt with horses that have had trauma. It’s a fascinating discussion. Again, her book The Other Side of Horsemanship is really good. But here’s what she had to say about that:

[36:06]

"And that kind of goes into my other point with the training, but this also plays into management as well — the autonomy. Like, an animal that has no autonomy — no ability to make decisions for itself — is going to have a really hard time processing and healing trauma, because they’re like a puppet. Their entire life is controlled and monitored, and they have no ability to make their own decisions and do things that they find fulfilling. And if it’s been like that for a while, they might not even try to do that. Like, I’ve had horses that I’ve gotten that have been in situations like that, and when you first turn them out in a field, they literally don’t know what to do — they just stand there. And people might look at a horse like that and go, ‘Oh well, he just stands there, he doesn’t need to go out.’ But it’s like — just wait. Give him some time to try to learn how to interact with the environment and realize that he’s free. Because they’ve been put in cages for so long that they don’t know what it’s like to be free — they can’t even fathom what it’s like to be able to make decisions.

[36:54]

And with training, I find for addressing trauma that’s why positive reinforcement is so powerful — because it gives them agency and autonomy. You’re teaching them, ‘Okay, if you do this, you’re getting this result,’ and it’s very consistent. There’s no penalty if they don’t do the thing that you’re asking, but if they do the thing, there’s a consistent result that they want to see. So it shows them that they can interact and enact change in their environment, which then helps free them from the fear of punishment or having unexpected, scary things happen. And you’re providing them with a very cut-and-dry way of being like, ‘If X happens, then Y will follow,’ and then it takes away the fear of, ‘Okay, what might come next?’ Because that’s what I find with a lot of traumatized horses — they’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop, so they can’t relax."

[37:46]

Okay, so again you can hear the passion — she’s really passionate about horses, she’s really passionate about wild horses, and her training techniques, and how we can get these horses to form strong bonds with us. We love that companionship that we have with them. But again, it’s a complex issue. It’s not something where we say, "Oh, just let them loose and let them do their thing."

[38:05]

But Picasso — back to him — he was one of the most famous horses in the West, and some of you may know of him. There was a big article just a few years ago: "What Happened to All the Horses in the Sand Wash Basin?" Where did Picasso’s horses — his offspring — go? And come to find out, they were all rounded up and put in a Colorado state prison training program. Briefly, I looked at doing this back in the day in Florida — it’s a great program where you get inmates working with horses, they learn skills, they form those bonds. Again, it’s like going back to riding and the benefits of it — mental health and physical health — therapeutic riding, you know, could almost be seen like that, as therapy.

[39:08]

But thousands of these wild horses — it was over 10,000 — they rounded up over 10,000 horses just a couple years ago, and the Sand Wash Basin was part of that. And now they live in paddocks near the prison, and some are being pulled out, but the others are just being held. They were driven away from the lands that Picasso was living on for his whole life, and in generations before that, that land was taken from them, and they were driven out by helicopters into holding pens and transported.

[39:49]

Now, on the issue of helicopter roundups, the good news is there is a bipartisan bill going through the United States Congress to ban the use of helicopter ops in these roundups. It’s sponsored by Democrats and Republicans — they recognize that it’s a very expensive operation that provides very little benefit, it’s very stressful for the animals, and they’re trying to get it to stop because it’s not a benefit to the animals and it’s not a benefit to what the BLM — the Bureau of Land Management in the United States — is doing to manage these wild animals.

[40:26]

So there is action — it was presented last year, we’ll see if it gets passed. But that, again, is another debate going on about how these horses are managed, and it’s a little bit beyond this podcast because we have so much to cover. But they are fed, they are watered, yet they’re held in tight conditions. I’ve seen lots of images and I’ve talked to advocates — it’s probably not the most optimal conditions for them, where they’re used to running wild. Right? If you go back to the movie Spirit, it evokes things like that.

[41:08]

To me, that led to the issue of rewilding. You remove 10,000 wild horses or Mustangs from the land — what’s that going to do to the land? I’ve done a lot of conservation work where we need large herbivores. In the United States or in Canada, North America, it was just 160 years ago there were millions of bison, there were lots of horses, lots of deer and elk or pronghorn antelope all roaming the plains. And they were part of that ecosystem — you know, what we call food webs. Their manure, their grazing patterns, their trampling — they provided many benefits to the prairie grasses, to all the sage grass, to all these other animals that live there — prairie dogs, foxes — all these animals lived in symbiotic relationships.

[42:15]

And we’ve removed the bison — they were down to 600 left in the whole world in the 1890s. They’re making a comeback, and there are rewilding efforts going on in the United States with bison and other species. So, you know, wild horses in Australia — not native, don’t really belong there — totally separate issue on how to manage that, how to ethically manage that. And then you have these wild horses in America, where they evolved — this was their home for 55 million years. And when humans were there in North America, these horses disappeared. Did they have an impact on them? Yes or no — that we don’t know yet in science, but it is being investigated.

[43:04]

So I did ask Amanda, “What is rewilding, and why horses?” Here’s what she had to say:

[43:12]

"The concept is very simple. Since you have listeners all over the world, so many of your listeners will know what rewilding is because rewilding — here in the Americas we’re behind, we’re always the last to catch up. Rewilding Europe, rewilding Britain — all of these varying rewilding organizations all over the world. You have rewilding there in New Zealand, there’s rewilding in India, there’s rewilding even in Africa. In Dubai, I read about all these places and people — Scotland, Ireland — everybody’s putting money into rewilding projects except for us here in the States.

[44:00]

So, understanding what is rewilding — rewilding is bringing something back environmentally to an original state of being, recreating, allowing nature to recreate itself: the dirt, the grass, the forbs in the land, the insects, the small animals, the raptors, the big birds, the herbivores, the predators. So that’s really all it is — it’s sort of like saying, ‘Hey, let’s take a step back and stop telling everybody where to go and what to do. What if we just let nature do it itself? What will happen?’ And that’s what rewilding is.

[44:42]

And all we’re saying here at Rewilding America Now is: don’t destroy our horse herds. They’re one of the most valuable animals we have here — let’s let them rebuild our grasslands. Put them out, let them do just what they physiologically know how to do — they eat grass. It’s the way they eat the grass — not how much or how little — it’s how they move, as you talked about earlier. It’s their manure passing seeds — they’re hindgut grazers, so all the seeds from the plants come out whole. As they eat and pass, they’re like a little machine — it goes in, it comes out, and they keep moving around. And as they do that, they keep replanting things. As that’s happening, they keep spurring grass growth by chewing off the grass, and then you get all this growth, and then little animals come. All these little animals come and make homes. The way they eat, they open up locations for little animals to get to. Now we have these little animals in the ground — then that brings the hawks and the eagles and the scavengers because they hunt those. And then the predators come, because now we have herbivores — and that’s how the large packs of animals are managed — pronghorn, deer, elk, and buffalo.

[46:16]

And then we get the bees and the insects, and it’s so cool because horses pass manure and there’s a little beetle — it’s called a dung beetle. And it’s… yeah — so this is rewilding, and it’s just a natural, easy, beautiful thing to be a part of."

[46:41]

Okay, so I obviously want to keep this horse-focused, but rewilding efforts are going on around the world — they’re reintroducing beavers in the UK, bison in Poland, the European bison. Some of these other species that are still here — they’re just reintroducing them to these ecosystems to rehabilitate them, because from the microbes in the soil to everything in the air, all these animals depend on each other. So horses are part of that ecosystem, and they are large herbivores that benefit an ecosystem.

[47:19]

And this study just came out a few days before I spoke to Amanda — the timing was uncanny — published in Science, which is one of the top journals in the world. It talked about how large herbivores like horses, like bison, even cattle, can benefit an ecosystem. And they’re trying to argue that these eradication programs are actually doing a disservice to the ecosystem — non-native eradication programs.

[48:02]

So, for horses, this is perfectly timely for the horses in the Wild West — eradicating them from the ecosystem is actually going to do more harm to it than what some people argue — that they’re detrimental. In Australia, there have to be studies — maybe these horses are beneficial to the grasslands of Australia, maybe they are beneficial to the ecosystem — we don’t know, there needs to be more research. But these authors are saying when you have non-native large herbivores — I’m not talking deer or elk, they graze differently, they browse, they eat different things — I’m talking about like horses and cattle and bison and buffalo — I’m thinking like African buffalo or Asian buffalo — that go and eat all these grasses and leave behind all this manure to help fertilize soil — all of that…

[49:03]

And, you know, just to quote this study and what the researchers said: "The traits of megafauna" — which is like a horse — "influenced how they affect plants regardless of nativeness." Again, this means horses that are introduced, or a large herbivore in particular. Small-bodied, picky eaters such as deer tended to suppress plant diversity, while large, generalist bulk feeders such as buffalo tended to increase plant diversity. This is because large bulk feeders are physically unable to selectively feed on their favorite plants, and therefore more likely to suppress dominant species, making space for smaller, subdominant plant species.

[49:48]

So, when you talk about how horses graze and how these bulky herbivores go through, they benefit the ecosystem. The horses in the Americas — in what wild's left — they are providing benefits that other species can't.

[50:08]

Conclusion: The Need for Ethical Management of Wild Horses

So that is framing the issue with Rewilding America arguing that horses are an important part of our ecosystems. We need to provide more horses in the wild, we need to protect the horses in the wild. And there’s competing interests — obviously there is — you know, business and land exploitation, which is part of what humans do, has led to a reduction in the wild spaces. And just to give you an idea — you know, Alaska, we still think Alaska’s pretty wild, and it’s a very large state. So looking at just the lower 48 states — so that’s south of Canada, north of Mexico — spans over 3.1 million square miles from coast to coast, from California to New York and the Northeast. Only 5% of that is considered wild or wilderness. Ninety-five percent of the lower 48 has human exploitation — roads, people living on it — used for our use. So there isn’t much wild left in the U.S. that’s protected by the National Park Service and wilderness areas. And these are some of the areas where the horses live.

[51:38]

So the wild horses in America — in the Sand Wash Basin — I don’t have the specifics on why they were rounded up there. I don’t know if the land was sold or gas and oil exploration or something like that. I don’t know, but they were rounded up and taken out of the wild.

[51:57]

So when you look at all of this, and the pressures, and everything that’s going on, I asked Amanda, “What’s the future of wild horses?” And this is what she had to say:

[52:07]

"The future of wild horses here in the United States is bad. Yeah. And quite honestly, I plan that Rewilding America Now is going to be the entity that gives large groups, bands, herds of horses a place to live, a way to be, and to change the perception of the value of horses here in this country — that they are a native species, they are an integral component to the natural system, and they are our most valued asset at this climate time. So that is my goal, and that is our hope, our mandate, and that is what we will be doing — and are going to be doing — to help wild horses. Because otherwise there are no solutions. The government doesn’t have any solutions — we are the solution. Nobody else has a solution.

[53:01]

The government is spending millions of dollars on birth control — darting horses for birth control — which, A, is a terrible use of money. The methodology doesn’t always work. They can’t keep proper count or track of how they’re doing and who they’re doing it to. Birth control doesn’t always… you know, it’s not always healthy for the animals. And I’m not saying that in a proper management plan birth control isn’t necessary, because it is, but it’s being seen as the only solution — and as the only solution, it doesn’t work. So we need help. The horses need help. You know, we are saving the world one horse at a time. So every horse we can help is another horse to help."

[53:52]

And that’s hard to hear — you know, she says that, it’s hard to hear. It doesn’t look bright. There’s a lot of difficult decisions being made, and the horses are suffering due to this. It’s a difficult topic. This wasn’t… you know, you look at their history, you look through it, and then you look at where they are today, and you really — oh — drives me. It drives me that we need to seek a solution. We need to find a way to ethically manage these animals. We need to, as horse enthusiasts and experts and horse people — right? That’s us — our voices need to be heard because these horses can’t speak for themselves, so we need to speak for them. That’s why I have a passion for this, why I do what I do.

[54:55]

We need to share this information via social media, because the general public in America — like I said, the 1971 Wild Horse and Burro Act — it’s part of the culture there, and the 30 million-plus Americans, the vast majority of them want wild horses to be treated well and protected. And so we need to make our voices heard. You can share this podcast on social media — that will help spread this information, let them know what’s going on today. I know we have so many things going on in the world, but we can’t lose sight of these wild animals that need our protection, understanding. They’ve earned that right, and we need to keep fighting for them.

[55:42]

So again, as I close off this video podcast, it is something I feel passionate about. Please share this information. Check out the audio podcast too, if you haven’t already. Please, on the YouTube channel, follow us — we’re going to keep these coming every week. We’ve got a lot of great content coming your way. We have YouTube Shorts all week and more videos on horse management and horse care. Check out madbarn.com, go into the Learn tab — or if you’re on mobile, the Articles tab — check out all those resources for you on just wild horses, but everything horse-related. You know, we want to make the world a better place for horses, and that’s why we’re doing it — and you’re helping us do that when you like, subscribe, comment, share. That helps us spread this message and just encourages us to keep producing more and more content for you. So thank you so much.