TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/010190/01019001.000

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 7.3 KB | 142 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN SCENE, Page 10

Mustang Meadows Ranch

Halfway House For Horses


A rancher creates a haven for living symbols of the Old West

By Melaine L. Stephens


    Their high-pitched whinnies roll across the plains like a
tumbleweed-scattering wind. At dusk one of them rears and paws
the air, casting a silhouette that is the very image of freedom.
These are mustangs, the legendary wild horses of the American
West. Two decades ago, mustangs were headed for extinction. Now,
at Mustang Meadows Ranch, a 32,000-acre spread near St. Francis,
S. Dak., 1,500 of them have found sanctuary and a managed
independence that may help assure their survival.

    Descended from horses that escaped from Spanish herds,
millions of mustangs roamed the prairie at the start of the 19th
century. But as the wildness went out of the West and more and
more rangeland was plowed for crops or fenced off for cattle,
the number of mustangs dwindled. By 1970 only 17,000 were left,
despite the passage of federal laws that banned the use of
airplanes and motor vehicles to round them up for slaughter. In
1971 Congress responded to a massive letter-writing campaign by
enacting the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, which
assigned the federal Bureau of Land Management the
responsibility for protecting these "living symbols of the
historic and pioneer spirit of the West."

    Under BLM, the mustangs have recovered: 42,000 horses now
run free on the range. But their numbers have greatly surpassed
the ability of the land to support them. To ease the
overpopulation, BLM in 1976 inaugurated a national Adopt-a-Horse
program, under which 90,000 wild horses have been sold to
private owners. But the mustangs taken off the range annually
include many that are too old, crippled, ugly or mean to make
good pets. Until two years ago, thousands of unadoptable
mustangs were crowded into dusty feeding pens in Nebraska,
Nevada and Texas at a cost to taxpayers of $13 million a year.

    Enter Dayton Hyde, an Oregon rancher with a reputation for
unorthodox management and a deep interest in conservation. "In
my travels I kept going by feedlots seeing these poor creatures
cooped up," says Hyde, 64. "I thought, That's no way to treat
a wild horse. My dream was to get these horses out of the
feedlots and running free again."

    In 1988 Hyde founded the nonprofit Institute for Range and
the American Mustang in order to create sanctuaries --
retirement homes of sorts -- where unadoptable wild horses could
once again roam freely. He convinced BLM that with foundation
and public funds he could establish a self-sustaining sanctuary
within three years. IRAM's first project was a 12,600-acre
sanctuary in the Black Hills of South Dakota that opened last
year. Tourists pay $15 to view 300 mustangs running on high
plateaus of ponderosa pine. The project makes Hyde smile. "The
horses are finally getting over their depression," he says.
"They got so bored in the feedlots that they didn't know how to
run anymore."

    Hyde's ambition went beyond his successes at the Black
Hills sanctuary. He next sought to establish a larger range that
could accommodate thousands of horses. But since IRAM lacked
both money and land, Hyde needed the help of a private investor.
He turned out to be Alan Day, an owner of cattle ranches in
Arizona and Nebraska. Day, says Hyde, "knew how to manage grass
and was not afraid of the immensity of my dream."

    Day also knew a good business deal when he saw it.
"America's gone fat and sloppy, and for someone who's willing
to go out there and kick ass, there's a lot of opportunity," he
says. In the case of Mustang Meadows, Day and his two partners
anticipated earning a $50,000 annual profit from a huge tract
they assembled by buying 22,000 acres for $1.4 million and
leasing 10,000 adjoining acres from the Sioux Indians. The money
would come from IRAM's contract with BLM and the state of South
Dakota, which pays the sanctuary an 85 cents-per-day subsidy per
horse.

    The first mustangs arrived in August 1988. After being
cooped up in corrals anywhere from one month to several years,
they needed to readjust psychologically to the comparative
freedom of the ranch's open pastures. By gradually approaching
the wary mustangs in corrals, Day and his wranglers taught them
to become comfortable around people. "They have had so much
negative training before they get here, they think they are
going to suffer if they see a man on horseback," says Day. "We
want to show them that we are not the enemy." Out of the
corrals, the mustangs are rotated to one of twelve pastures,
then moved periodically to allow the grass to regrow. "I'm a
grass specialist," Day explains. "Though some people have
romantic notions of the operation, I have to look at it as cash
flow. It has to make financial sense." This year potential
profits evaporated in the worst drought in memory.

    Some critics say that being the brother of U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may have helped Day get the
BLM contract. But, scoffs Day, "Sandra doesn't even drive 56
m.p.h. She didn't even know about this until it was a done
deal." A more serious complaint about Day's techniques has been
lodged by environmentalists who believe that wild horses ought
to be just that -- wild. "They're nothing but a big herd of
domestic horses," says Donna Ewing, president of the
Illinois-based Hooved Animal Humane Society and a former
colleague of Hyde's. Mustang Meadows, Ewing charges, is "another
ploy by BLM to eliminate the wild horse. Hyde and Day are
cattlemen, and who has been the biggest enemy of horses?"
According to Ewing, "The horses are harassed. There is a lack
of rock to keep their hooves trimmed naturally, so they have to
round them up and trim their hooves twice a year. The climate is
severe, and there is no natural shelter."

    Day scoffs at such criticism. Mustang-management techniques
like "herd-behavior modification," he claims, are essential.
"Nobody in the world," he boasts, "has ever managed wild horses
on this scale."

    Day has made a believer out of John Boyles, chief of the
Wild Horses and Burros division of BLM. "The situation ((at
Mustang Meadows)) is about as close to natural as you can get,"
says Boyles. "As long as Congress says we can't destroy healthy
excess animals, the sanctuary gives us the least-cost
alternative to keeping the horses we can't place in private
homes." BLM has awarded a contract for a second sanctuary in
Oklahoma.

    Such sanctuaries could eventually save taxpayers $2.5
million a year. But they will never satisfy everyone with an
opinion about wild horses. Animal-rights activists and Old West
buffs decry any fettering of the mustangs' ability to roam the
plains. Ranchers object that free-running herds pose threats to
pastures and water that cattle need. "Most people feel there
should be some place in the U.S. for wild horses because they're
so important in our past," says Boyles. "But we recognize the
range is only going to support so many. The two basic questions
are, How many should we have? and What should we do with the
excess animals?" Until these questions are answered, sanctuaries
can provide mustangs a haven somewhere between unbridled liberty
and galloping into extinction.