“Speaking of Wild Horses” by Michael P. Branch
Photo credit: Kyle Weerheim
The following dialogue was inspired by actual comments posted in response to several online news stories about the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) controversial roundups of wild horses and burros on public rangelands in my home state of Nevada. Some people feel passionately that these BLM horse “gathers” are inhumane, while other wild horse advocates go further, arguing that the roundups are unnecessary because horses are a natural part of the western landscape and should thus be left undisturbed. On the other side of the argument are those who regard wild horses and burros as introduced, invasive species that damage the range, harming populations of native plants and animals, and risking their own destruction through starvation or dehydration. While palatable solutions to this problem are difficult to come by, the following “conversation” gives some sense of the nature and quality of current public discourse on a topic that is especially important to those of us who live in the rural Intermountain West.
sweetpea: “I think what they’re doing is TERRIBLE!!! How can Man be so cruel when these beautiful animals are supposed to run wild and free in Nature?”
ridinandropin: “Wild horses look pretty, but they tear up the range. Overgrazing is a huge problem, and because horses don’t have many natural predators anymore their population doubles every four or five years. Roundups are the only way to protect the range and keep herds from massive starvation.”
sweetpea: “ridinandropin, did it ever occur to you that Nature got along fine without us for thousands of years? Those wonderful horses don’t need our ‘help’ at all. This is just another way of interfering with Nature. How would you feel if somebody chased YOU with a helicopter? We should be ashamed!!!”
whatthehellanyway: “Are you serious, sweetpea? Are you saying that people haven’t been living in North America for the last few millennia? And do you know that horses have not been around for thousands of years? They were introduced in the sixteenth century by the Spaniards. Every one of your adorable My Little Ponies is descended from horses ridden by some guy named Pedro. Try getting your info from a book other than National Velvet.”
buds420: “Dude, that Pedro crack is totally racist. Besides, horses have been around the West for tens of thousands of years. They went extinct here like eleven thousand years ago, so really the Europeans were just reintroducing a native species to their original home. Those horses belong here, man.”
whatthehellanyway: “Hey, buds, why don’t you take sweetpeabrain to the prom? You geniuses deserve each other. Please tell me you aren’t claiming that an animal that’s been absent from an ecosystem for ten thousand years is native when you stick it back in there? Horses are an invasive species and should be exterminated. That’s the only way to restore what’s natural.”
nvroosty: “Whoa, y’all. Hold your horses a minute and take a breath. We all care about wildlife and want to find the best solution we can. For example, fertility control is a workable option. Porcine zona pellucida is a safe and effective fertility-control vaccine that can be given to female horses through an injection shot into them harmlessly with a dart. Even the National Academy of Sciences endorses the use of this approach in federally protected wild horse herds.”
sweetpea: “Well, I think it’s CRAZY to force birth control on wild animals. And of course it is always the female who has to be responsible for it. Besides, that’s still shooting them, even if it is with a dart! I say Nature knows what to do and we humans usually just mess that up. And don’t forget that whatthehellanyway, who has a very rude name, wants these beautiful horse beings murdered. How can it be NATURAL to exterminate nature?”
inmycrosshairs: “Well, animals naturally destroy each other all the time. The question isn’t whether wild horses are natural or unnatural. The thing is, they’re out there now and they’re going to starve to death if we don’t do something. I think it would be better to have a mustang hunting season and sell tags. That way you could make a lot of money for the state and still deal with the problem.”
endtaxesnow: “inmycrosshairs is right. We gotta control these animals. Most of them won’t ever be adopted, and it costs way too much to feed them and keep them around for no reason. Just another example of big government overreach. But instead of hunting them it would be better to privatize this whole deal so we can slaughter them and sell the meat commercially. There are lots of hungry people out there. Maybe we could use horsemeat to finally get them off food stamps.”
buds420: “C’mon, man, you’re all missing the point! Hunting and slaughtering are murder, and the only reason the BLM is capturing all these horses is to make more room for the greedy ranchers who are already being subsidized. These welfare ranchers in their Cadillacs only care about profits and not about protecting animals. Anybody who isn’t a vegetarian ought to think about that!”
ridinandropin: “buds420, it might be time for you to step out of your cubicle and away from your bong and educate yourself about ranching. Ranching outfits are usually small operations run by hardworking people who love the land. Most of them are barely scraping by. Not sure where you’re getting your info, but when you find a rancher who can afford a Caddy let me know.”
buds420: “I don’t work in a cubicle, dude. And maybe if the government would quit funding unjust wars and hassling peaceful people for smoking weed they’d have enough money to really care for these horses.”
nvroosty: “Let’s all take it down a notch, friends. There’s no reason we can’t work together to solve this problem in a humane way that preserves horses and also protects the range. For example, one way to maintain a healthy ecosystem and still limit wild horse herds is natural predation. Between hunting tags and government programs designed to protect livestock, we kill hundreds of mountain lions on public lands every year. If we did more to protect apex predators, we’d also be doing more to control overpopulation and starvation in wild horse herds.”
inmycrosshairs: “Look, you don’t have to wait around for a mountain lion to show up. I’ll kill these horses for you. I mean, they’re basically pests. How come we hunters are treated like criminals when potheads like buds here are free to get high as a kite and get gay married?”
sweetpea: “Listen to yourselves!!! Don’t you have ANY heart at all? Do you want to round up homeless puppies and kittens and kill them too?”
whatthehellanyway: “That’s exactly what we do with our overpopulation of feral pets, sweetpeabrain. When you’re done reading Black Beauty and drinking your pink Kool-Aid, try a quick visit to the real world.”
endtaxesnow: “Why are you all so closed-minded about horsemeat? Lots of cultures eat horse. I hear it’s delicious. This could be a way of finally getting the government to do something that would actually help people. They should be doing the job we sent them to Washington to do and get a good commercial horsemeat industry going. We need to get rid of horses and create jobs. The solution seems pretty simple to me.”
whatthehellanyway: “That’s because you are simple, endtaxesnow. Maybe you could get wild horses of the same sex to get stoned and marry each other, so you could limit population growth and avoid having to eat them. But if the stoned gay wild horse solution doesn’t work, you’ll have to do something, because these horses are just like starlings or carp.”
sweetpea: “I have a horse, and she isn’t at ALL like a carp. She’s very, very intelligent.”
whatthehellanyway: “Intelligent? You mean compared to you?”
nvroosty: “Can we all just slow it down a little? There’s no need to make this personal. Can’t we work together to focus on possible solutions to this problem? For example, vast stretches of public lands in the West have no wild horses at present but aren’t suitable for commercial grazing. In many of these areas, deer and elk populations have declined, leaving an overabundance of ground fuels that intensify wildfires. We could safely relocate bands of horses from areas of extreme population density to these areas. This solution would also have added benefits. The horses would reduce the fuels that the deer and elk once grazed. And because horses, unlike cattle and sheep, have a digestive system that doesn’t fully digest seeds, their grazing would also help to disperse native plants, which is an ecosystem function that’s especially important as the negative effects of climate change intensify.”
buds420: “Blah, blah, blah. Whatever, nerd. Hey, endtaxesnow, when you’re done slurping up propaganda from Fox ‘News’ why don’t you propose gay marriage to inmycrosshairs. You two knuckle-dragging goons can spend your honeymoon killing and eating innocent creatures for fun.”
inmycrosshairs: “I’m pretty sure endtaxesnow is a man. I’m a woman. And I’m already married. To a man.”
buds420: “Seriously? I totally thought you were a dude. Sorry about that, inmycrosshairs.”
whatthehellanyway: “I still think sweetpeabrain and budtoker should hook up.”
ridinandropin: “Is there some reason you damned people can’t stay focused on the serious problem of out-of-control wild horses destroying rangelands in Nevada?”
buds420: “There you go again defending ranchers, ridinandropin. The only ‘problem’ with wild horses in Nevada is how they’re being mistreated by a government that is in cahoots with your corrupt buddies in the cattle industry.”
endtaxesnow: “No doubt. Can’t trust the government at all. buds420 may be a baked lefty, but at least he got this part right. Big government is taxing patriotic hardworking Americans in order to pamper freeloading horses that they have a God-given right to eat.”
nvroosty: “You’re right that it’s expensive to gather wild horses off the range and care for them—about $100 million a year. But we can find workable and compassionate solutions. For example, we could flip the script on our current wild horse adoption system, in which adopters pay a minimum of $125 to adopt a wild horse, and instead pay adopters $1,000. Estimates indicate that this financial incentive would substantially increase adoption, and even at $1,000 per horse it would still be much less expensive than the current system, in which horses are kept in off-range facilities at a lifetime cost of almost $50,000 per horse.”
sweetpea: “I think it’s terrible that all you can think about is money. And I would NEVER eat my horse!!!”
whatthehellanyway: “Hey, did you hear the one about the girl who ate her horse? She was taken to the hospital, but her condition is stable. The doctors prescribed a toothpick, because she still has a bit between her teeth.”
inmycrosshairs: “Yeah, that’s a good one. My husband used to work for a butcher shop, but he got fired. He received an email about a shipment of horsemeat but accidentally marked it as spam.”
endtaxesnow: “Nice one, inmycrosshairs. Did you know you can tell where your horsemeat comes from by examining its DN-neigh?
buds420: “You people are sick.”
whatthehellanyway: “Yeah, and I got sick from eating a horse burger. It could have been the mayo-neighs, but it was probably the mane ingredient. It gave me the trots.”
sweetpea: “I can’t believe the awful things you all are saying!!! Maybe YOU should be rounded up by those torturous BLM helicopters and herded into stinky, poop-filled corrals.”
nvroosty: “Look, people, we all love Nevada and we all care about protecting wild animals and preserving wild places. But we’ve got around ninety thousand wild horses and burros on public rangelands that can’t support them, and we have to do something about it. Can we please try to come together to make a real effort to solve the problem in a sustainable and humane way?”
inmycrosshairs: “Well, I’ve never been to Nevada or seen a wild mustang or studied rangelands issues at all, but I think it’s pretty damned clear that wild horses are genuine icons of the American West, and that it would be best if we hunted them down and ate them.”
An award-winning humorist and high desert writer, Michael P. Branch is Foundation Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Mike is the author of more than three hundred essays and reviews, which have appeared in venues including CNN, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, Outside, Pacific Standard, Huffington Post, Bustle, Utne Reader, Orion, Ecotone, National Parks, The Scientist, High Country News, Terrain.org, and Places Journal. Mike has published ten books, including Raising Wild, Rants from the Hill, and How to Cuss in Western. His creative nonfiction includes pieces recognized as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays, The Best Creative Nonfiction, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best American Non-required Reading. Mike’s 2022 book, On the Trail of the Jackalope, has been called “an entertaining and enlightening road trip to the heart of an American legend.” See more at https://michaelbranchwriter.com/.
