An R44 Raven II helicopter flies along the mountain’s crest on a cold winter morning. It's time to gather cattle in some of the West’s roughest high-mountain desert ranges.

The peak rises to nearly 10,000 feet, the slope is rocky and steep, the vegetation sparse. Still, a dozen Corriente cross pairs meander down the mountain to the sagebrush flat, the holding pen, and water.

Suddenly, the helicopter pilot veers away from a small black dot on the ridgeline so far away that, to the untrained eye, it could not be seen. Acting on instinct or experience, the pilot banks left, guiding the small aircraft away from the dark speck in the scant remains of cheatgrass left from last year’s spring rains.

The Bureau of Land Management, which administers the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 (WFRHBA), prohibits private helicopter use near wild horses, even though the agency itself uses helicopters during gathers.

Later, the would-be speck on the crest was determined to be an old, half-crippled cow making what would likely be her last trip down the mountain.

No federal wild horse guidelines were violated, no injunction was filed, and no federal court of appeals action was taken. Not this time, anyway.

This is the reality of wild horse policy in the modern West. A single animal on the horizon can carry federal protections and consequences for how an entire landscape is managed.

The word “mustang” comes from the Spanish term mestengo, meaning an animal without an owner. Today, federally managing these unowned horses carries a $144 million federal price tag and enough controversy to fuel one of the most complicated land management debates in the modern West.

In a tangle of policy, permits, and federal oversight, a growing wild horse and burro population is bearing down on ranchers grazing BLM lands.

The Bureau estimates that since 1971, it has seen 290,000 horses adopted into private care. However, despite these efforts, America is facing what the Public Lands Council (PLC) calls a “Wild Horse & Burro Crisis.”

According to the PLC, ranges across America’s ten western states can sustainably support less than a third of the current population. This estimated 275% overpopulation affects grazing, other range species, and herd health.

In some areas, the sea animals are suffering from starvation, disease, and dehydration.

The council is seeking congressional measures that include additional roundups, expanded fertility control, more off-range holding facilities, adoptions, and sales strategies.

Conversely, wild horse advocacy groups, including Friends of Animals (FoA) and Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation, are avidly fighting against more roundups.

FoA reported what it deemed a win when a wild horse gather in the Wyoming Checkerboard area was stalled in 2025.

Another organization, WildHorse Education, responding to news of a large-scale spring 2026 gather in Nevada, approximately 2,500 horses, called for strengthened protections to keep wild horses and burros out of “slaughter pipelines.” These groups argue that some horses adopted into private care may later be resold to “kill buyers” and eventually transported to slaughter facilities in Canada or Mexico.

Like it or not, horse meat is an important undercurrent in the wild horse debate. Attitudes toward eating horses differ dramatically between the United States and many other parts of the world, where horse meat is treated as a normal agricultural product, much like beef, lamb, or pork.

The United States once operated horse slaughterhouses that exported meat overseas, but public attitudes shifted when Wild Horse Annie rounded up impassioned letters from thousands of schoolchildren and flooded the halls of Congress.

Wild horse advocates coined the phrase, “Icons of the American West,” and boycotted dog food brands that included horse meat, and by the early 2000s, domestic slaughterhouses closed.

No roundups, no helicopters, no holding pens, no slaughter. These are longstanding arguments being weighed in courtrooms, and, of course, the highly volatile court of public opinion.

Advocacy groups also frequently argue that livestock grazing has a greater impact on Western rangelands than wild horses, a claim ranchers strongly dispute.

Many ranchers who see grossly unhealthy horses and burros on the range where they graze cattle and sheep feel that horses are livestock and that, in any other context, would be classified as such. They ask, how humane is starvation and disease?

Under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the BLM is required to manage herds at “appropriate management levels” to maintain healthy rangelands. The agency establishes AML levels through land-use planning to determine how many animals a section of rangeland can sustainably support. When overpopulated, forage supplies in an AML drop, as does available feed for horses, livestock, and wildlife.

Additionally, unlike cattle and sheep, which clip vegetation and generally leave root systems intact, horses often uproot grasses rather than simply trimming them, damaging the range's ecosystem and reducing forage levels.

For ranchers who work the land where wild horses live, the debate is far less philosophical and far more practical.

Nevada rancher Jack Payne is feeling the strain of grazing livestock in the state with a wild horse and burro population more than double that of any other. Payne, who runs 1,200–1,500 head of cattle over a million acres of private acreage and grazing allotments, says he is constantly dealing with excess feral horses on the land.

“This overpopulation leads to depleted water supplies, as the horses drink all the water in the tanks meant for cattle, and the damage they do to vegetation makes it harder for grass to regenerate,” said Payne

Payne explained that the AML for one Horse Management Area (HMA) where he grazes cattle is 900 head, but the horse population is closer to 4,000.

“For the last 20 years, there hasn’t been a single horse gather in this area. In addition,” he says, “the Nevada Department of Wildlife has been paying a handsome bounty for mountain lions to protect both mule deer and bighorn sheep. Mountain lions were the only thing keeping horse populations in check.”

There are clear, defined limits on how many cattle can graze and when they can graze, but horses are not managed the same way.

Another rancher facing a similar situation, Justin Snow, grazes his livestock in an HMA with 600 horses, even though the AML is only 12.

“And they wonder why there’s overgrazing,” Payne said.

Adding to the equation is the fact that a mustang stud can breed multiple mares across several bands, or small family groups, in a year. Reproductive rates are one reason wild mustang populations can grow quickly on BLM herd areas. When multiple stallions operate across a herd area, overall herd growth can exceed 15 to 20 percent annually under favorable conditions. This means wild horse populations can double every four to five years without management.

“Allowing horse populations to grow unchecked is not compassionate management. It leads to starving animals and degraded landscapes,” said Ethan Lane, vice president of government affairs for the Public Lands Council and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, in testimony to Congress.

What began as a well-intentioned protection effort has evolved into a tangled policy landscape with no easy answers. Adding to the already numerous competing interests is the fact that adoption numbers are dropping. Unfortunately, the number being removed from the range far exceeds the long-term demand for wild horses.

This leaves the BLM responsible for caring for over 68,000 horses and burros in off-range holding facilities, almost as many as on BLM rangeland.

Adopting a wild horse is very different from purchasing a typical saddle horse. Many of the animals are completely untrained, requiring experienced handlers, proper facilities, and months or even years of training. Programs that gentle and train mustangs before adoption, including prison training programs and trainer partnerships, tend to have significantly higher placement success.

The long-running wild horse inmate training program at the Cañon City, Colorado, prison complex ended in 2025 after more than three decades in operation. Similarly, the Hutchinson Correctional Facility program is under fire. A recent BLM agreement extended the 25-year Kansas program, but only through May 31, with the fate of the program now in the hands of the BLM.

Other prison training operations are facing uncertainty about whether the often successful and self-sustaining programs will have a future.

Ironically, the same policies created to humanely remove excess horses from the range are now running into their own limits.

As of March 1, 2025, the BLM reported the wild horse and burro population at just over 73,000 on ranges that can support 25,556 animals, with Nevada alone supporting more than 35,000. The Navajo Nation reports approximately 40,000–70,000 feral horses on the range, with other reservations home to an estimated 5,000–15,000 at any given time.

Feral horses also roam on non-BLM lands, including the Virginia Range herd in northwestern Nevada, private ranches, state trust lands, and military lands. They also occupy areas such as the Nevada Test and Training Range, Utah desert herds outside BLM HMAs, and Colorado Plateau feral horse bands, which likely number several thousand for an estimated 130,000–160,000 head.

Despite incentives and training programs, adoptions are declining, leaving more horses in off-range holding facilities. As a result, further scrutiny and litigation are being brought by wild horse and burro advocacy groups.

In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against Friends of Animals v. Burgum in a case involving a BLM contract in Winnemucca, Nev., for a new off-range corral that would hold up to 4,000 animals. FoA said BLM abused its discretion under the WFRHBA and the National Environmental Policy Act when it determined the environmental assessment was adequate and that the contract included sufficient animal welfare safeguards.

With these groups frequently challenging roundups and conservationists protesting grazing permits, some ranchers and grazing associations feel forced into legal action, arguing that federal agencies are failing to keep horse populations within legally required limits and allowing rangelands to deteriorate.

As a result, the policy conflicts surrounding wild horse management increasingly play out not just on the range, but in federal courtrooms.

“This isn’t about whether people like horses. Everybody likes horses. The question is whether the land can support the numbers we’re seeing today,” said Dave Duquette, a rancher and public lands advocate who co-founded United Property Owners of Montana.

The mustang may remain a powerful symbol of the West, but on the range, it is still a grazing animal competing for grass, water, and taxpayer dollars