When Mustang Advocacy Hurts the Horse
Mustang advocacy matters. Without it, many of America’s wild horses would have little meaningful protection from poor management, competing interests, inadequate planning, and a holding system already responsible for tens of thousands of horses. Advocates have exposed problems, challenged questionable decisions, demanded public accountability, and kept horses from quietly disappearing while few people were watching.
But calling something advocacy doesn’t automatically make it good for the horse. Sometimes we become so focused on stopping a gather that stopping it begins to feel like the victory. A lawsuit is filed, a judge issues a restraining order, the helicopters remain grounded, and social media fills with words such as saved, protected, and free.
Before we celebrate, though, shouldn’t we ask what the victory has actually won for the horses?
That question is especially urgent at Oregon’s Riddle Mountain Herd Management Area. Riddle Mountain is one of Oregon’s distinctive wild-horse areas, with a history closely connected to the better-known Kiger herd. I’ve written more about both herds in my guide to Oregon’s wild horses.
In August, the Bald Mountain Fire swept through an area already suffering from drought. According to the Bureau of Land Management, the fire burned approximately 70 percent of the Herd Management Area and destroyed about two-thirds of the horses’ available forage. According to the BLM’s emergency gather plan for Riddle Mountain, the operation was intended to remove the horses from severe food and water shortages and take them to off-range facilities for feed, water, care, and veterinary evaluation.
The proposal carried serious consequences. American Wild Horse Conservation’s account of the proposed roundup emphasizes that the complete removal would separate family bands and place hundreds of horses into federal holding, while calling for a genetically viable population to be returned to the range. An entire herd would be removed. Family bands would be broken apart. Horses that had spent their lives on the range would be driven by helicopter, confined in pens, and introduced into the federal holding and adoption system. The BLM said that some of the horses might eventually be offered for adoption, raising legitimate questions about how many horses, if any, would ultimately be returned to Riddle Mountain.
Those aren’t imaginary concerns. They shouldn’t be dismissed simply because the BLM used the word rescue. But neither should the condition of the land be dismissed simply because opponents of the gather used the word victory.
A temporary restraining order stopped the operation before it began. That order may mean important legal questions deserve closer examination. It may reveal problems with the BLM’s process, its emergency justification, or its plans for the herd’s future. Stopping an agency long enough for a court to examine those questions can be a legitimate and necessary function of advocacy.
A temporary restraining order, however, doesn’t restore burned forage. It doesn’t refill a shrinking water source. It doesn’t feed a nursing mare, rebuild winter reserves on an aging stallion, or help a foal survive if autumn turns harsh before the range recovers.
The BLM has warned that delaying the gather may push it into late fall, when storms could make roads in the area impassable. The agency has also said cattle will not graze the affected land while it recovers. Those claims deserve the same careful examination as the claims made by the organizations opposing the gather. The BLM isn’t infallible, but neither is it reasonable to assume that everything the agency reports about the horses or the range must be false simply because it supports a gather.
This is where advocacy becomes harder than sharing a photograph and choosing a side. There are important questions to ask about the proposed operation. Why must every horse be removed? What independent evidence confirms the present condition of the horses, water sources, and remaining forage? Could the most vulnerable horses be removed while others remain?
If the land truly cannot support any horses during its recovery, how many will eventually be returned, when will they be returned, and what binding commitment will ensure that it happens? How will the herd’s genetic viability be protected? Why was the situation allowed to reach the point where the apparent choices became complete removal or leaving hundreds of horses on badly burned ground? Those questions should be asked loudly and persistently.
But advocates must also be willing to answer difficult questions about the course of action they support. If the gather remains blocked, who will inspect the horses in person and document their condition? Who will monitor the surviving forage and water sources? What specific emergency plan will replace the one that was stopped? At what point would intervention become acceptable? How thin must the horses become? How many must weaken or die before removing them is considered less harmful than leaving them free?
“Leave them wild” is a principle. By itself, it isn’t an emergency management plan. Freedom matters enormously to a wild horse. So do family, familiar territory, and the ability to live according to instincts shaped by generations on the range. Removing wild horses from all of that causes real harm, even when no bones are broken and no deaths appear in the gather report. But freedom without enough food or water isn’t humane merely because it occurs on open land.
This is the part of advocacy we don’t discuss often enough: every available choice may cost the horse something. A helicopter gather can cost fear, injury, family, freedom, and sometimes life. Delaying a gather on drought-stricken, fire-damaged land may cost hunger, dehydration, suffering, and life. Pretending that only the other side’s choice carries a cost doesn’t make our own choice harmless.
Managing wild horses sometimes requires human intervention. I may not like every decision made by the agencies responsible for them, but I don’t believe those agencies are automatically the enemy. The general principle of maintaining sustainable herds is also part of the reason horses such as my own Tiger and Raven, who came through the United States Forest Service rather than the BLM, have been given opportunities beyond the range. Their home territory and the management decisions that shaped their lives are part of the larger history of the Devil’s Garden mustangs.
The system doesn’t always work as it should. That doesn’t mean every person working within it is acting against the horses, or that every gather is driven by cruelty or greed. Sometimes people are faced with a damaged range, too many animals for the resources that remain, worsening weather, and no available choice that causes no harm.
Good advocacy requires more than deciding in advance which side must be right. It requires looking carefully at the horses, the land, the proposed action, and the likely consequences of both acting and refusing to act.
We can question the complete removal of the Riddle Mountain herd while acknowledging that the horses may need immediate help. We can be concerned about the risks of a helicopter gather while also recognizing the practical difficulty of reaching hundreds of wild horses across thousands of acres before weather closes the roads. We can demand a clear plan for returning a genetically viable herd without insisting that every horse remain on land that may no longer be able to sustain every horse currently there. We can also refuse to call a court order a victory until we know what it means for the animals whose lives are being argued over.
Advocacy should never be measured only by whether we stopped an agency, won a lawsuit, attracted attention, or remained loyal to a particular side. It should be measured by what happens to the horse. That means knowing the issues, including the parts that complicate our preferred position. It means questioning government agencies without automatically assuming bad intentions. It means questioning advocacy organizations without accusing them of not caring. It means examining not only the harm caused by action, but also the harm that may be caused by delay.
Advocacy stops serving the horse when allegiance to a position becomes more important than honestly assessing what the horse needs.
The agency officials will issue their statements. The attorneys will file their motions. Advocates on both sides will post their celebrations and condemnations online. But when any of them get it wrong, they aren’t the ones who will go hungry, lose their freedom, or pay with their lives.
The horse will.
