HISTORY OF THE WILD HORSE #horsesarenative
NATIVE HORSES DOCUMENTATION & DESCRIPTIONS – Horse colors and patterns
DESCRIPTION of Horse colors and patterns
Dec 15 21 50 years on, here’s how America’s wild horses can be saved – Downer
dec 8 21 News From the Permafrost: the “Native” Horse – WHE
nov 8 20 How do horses perceive death? Video’s of study Pubmed.gov link
nov 22 21 Killing the ‘Wild’ in Wild Horses – The Travesty of American Wild Horse Advocacy and Management – Simpson
2021 Wild Horses: Selective Breeding and Roundups Are Driving Herds To Extinction -Simpson
2021 Are Horses Native to North America? The Fossils Tell a Story
2007 Beating fossil horses: Creationists take on an “Icon of Evolution”
2021 The outrageous treatment of America’s wild horses and their legal habitat
2015 A Geographic Assessment of the Global Scope for Rewilding with Wild-Living Horses (Equus ferus)
2014 Can we please stop calling horses invasive?
2008 The Surprising History of America’s Wild Horses
2017 Evolution of wild horses and cattle and the effect on range damage
2021 Smithsonian show 52 million old Wyoming horse fossils of Protorohippus
https://www.idausa.org/campaign/wild-animals-and-habitats/horse-protection/wild-horses-are-native-to-north-america/ Evidence that Wild Horses are Native to North America Dr. Ross MacPhee is the curator of the Division of Vertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History who has scientifically studied horse evolution for many years. He debunked the BLM’s false claim saying, “The family Equidae evolved on this continent; it is as American as anything you could possibly imagine
Managed to Extinction – Ross MacPhee MANAGED TO EXTINCTION? A 40th Anniversary Legal Forum assessing the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses & Burros Act TRANSCRIPT: ROSS MACPHEE, Curator, Division of Vertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-zNiS1uqCWZ9PimwJpaVdY7NC57hxdGKDCLXbCEYb8c/edit?pli=1
NOTE: Horses in the Americas Before Columbus? – Exploring some hard evidence As many of us may be aware, currently…
Posted by Mustang Meg on Wednesday, March 3, 2021
This fossil gives a whole new meaning to “sleeping with the fishes.” Protorohippus was an early species of horse that…
Posted by Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History on Friday, April 16, 2021
BLM – WILD HORSE & BURRO AREAS – HMA’s, HA’s, WHBT’s, & JMA’s (#whb-areas)
Areas protected under the 1971 WFRHBA
PUBLIC LAW 92-195 1971 WFRHBA (Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act)
(b) “wild free-roaming horses and burros” means all unbranded and unclaimed horses and burros on public lands of the United States;
(e) “public lands” means any lands administered by the Secretary of the Interior through the Bureau of Land Management or by the Secretary of Agriculture through the Forest Service.
HMA- Herd Management Area (BLM)
HA- Herd area (Forest Service)
WHBT – Wild Horse and Burro Territory (Forest Service)
JMA – Joint Management Area – Complexes (Forest Service and BLM)
LIST OF 2014 FS Wild horse Territories
Areas not protected under the 1971 WFRHBA
Any, and all Wild horses and burros located on National Park System (NPS) and National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) lands.
Assateague, Apache Sitgreaves, Corrala, Salt River (Heber), Shackleford Banks, Sheldon, Virginia Range
List of government agencies that have connections to WHB:
Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Department of Defense (DOD)
National Park Service (NPS)
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS)
U.S. Forest Service (USFS)
Map created by Western Watesheds
WISH LIST: All images below come from the Onaqui herd (as they are the only herd I personally have images of). I would like to have a ‘state rep image’ of a well known horse of past or current on the states below. If you would like to ‘donate’ a horse picture to be used to represent their state data page (not used for any other purpose) I will credit you for your image directly with a link to where people can find your picture.

A couple of these mentioned above are still listed as the HMA’s (blm) in 2021. Many have been moved to HA status (Forest Service) so they can round them up without questions, or any public visibility of their program (and they have on a massive scale, see 30 years of contracts here), and many have been combined into complexes that confuses how many animals are being removed from each one. Then they can wipe out an entire herd from one of the HMA’s in the group complex, and remove the entire HMA record from the complex entirely later on without anyone one even noticing it is gone. Along with all the horses that used to be there, and some HMA and HA are missing entirely from the system! We are working at documenting each one (past, present, future) from 1971!
Our compiled records will show not the protection of this ‘federally protected species,’ but the attempt at eradication by those that are supposed to protect the species, and oversee the program. There has been reported laws broken, evidence gathered, investigations shut down, and corruption within our own government. They have lied, mispresented facts, falsified documents, and used that to present before congress to circumvent and create new laws that go specifically against the original 1971 Wild Horse and Burro Act (WFRHBA).
The majority of info, statistics, and records listed here come directly from BLM and the government. They are a self-regulating industry with absolutely NO oversight or accountability. There is no independent accounting of this program at all. Due to this one-sided version it is believed the numbers listed here of wild horse and burro estimates, and removals are inflated, suspect, and inaccurate. We will attempt to prove this with reviewing their claims with attached evidence and links to outside sources that have witnessed discrepancies and inaccuracies over the last 50 years since the passing of the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971
All wild horse areas (past and future) will one day be included in this project. At the start of it, I was not aware of their rapidly disappearing land, ranges, and federal protections. As I gathered evidence for the original HMA’s, it became clear that more areas were once part of the federal protection areas created in the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. Over the years there have been many changes to this law.
As of September 2021, BLM claims 177 HMA’s on 26.9 million acres of public lands across 10 Western states. Down from 266 herds in 1996, and (303, or 329) herds in 1971 (Still looking for documentation on 1971).
And their land area has also shrunk enormously (working on #’s)!
As of March 1, 2022, the BLM ‘guess’timated approximately 64,604 wild horses and 17,780 wild burros were on BLM-managed lands, for a total of 82,384 animals. This is a reduction of 3,805 from 86,189 reported in March 2021. Find: wild horse and burro management data
The genetic scientist, Gus Cothran Ph.D, hired by BLM states repeatedly “A minimum population size of 50 effective breeding animals – a total population size of about 150-200 animals is currently recommended to maintain an acceptable level of genetic diversity within reproducing WH&B populations (Cothran, 2009). This number is required to keep the rate of loss of genetic variation at 1 percent per generation” and he shows in TABLE 5-2 2013 A WAY FORWARD (pg 192), that this is not occurring for many herds. “Once genetic viability is low, it takes generations to correct and that adding a few horses (from other herds) does not prevent inbreeding in small herds.”
Records: in 2013 HMA Genetic Viability Statistics it shows only 28 out of 177 HMA’s meet this acceptable level of ‘genetic diversity’ criteria. For a more thorough document (with direct links) covering the majority of issues related to this program, read the 2022 North Lander comment PDF.
BLM’s goal is to reach 27,000 animals, that is only 10,000 more than we had when the act was passed in 1971 to save them from certain extinction.
While BLM has a well laid out website with details and maps listing individual herds by state, they only tell you what they want you to know right now. What they don’t have is all the past info that is important and documented from the last 50+ years of the rapidly disappearing herds, their lands, or the truth of why they are really being removed… for destructive cattle grazing, and mineral/energy conflicts on the land!
The real reason is not nuisance, starvation, and drought as they claim. If by chance they are starving and have no water, it’s because they can’t get past the fences of their confinement due to BLM’s effort to make it cattle land. So it would be the fault of BLM for the starvation. Horses eat and move… they are roamers like deer, antelope and elk. They wouldn’t stay in an area where they could cause land issues by choice. Millions of cattle and sheep have destroyed the land during their seasonal forage where they eat everything in sight. Then they remove the livestock for slaughter, and blame the horse for all the problems they created. With the livestock temporarily gone for season, it’s easy to do so. When the BLM claims they need to do these emergency roundups for the safety of the horse and burros, but doesn’t remove (or request lease holders to remove) one livestock animal, their claims show the hypocrisy. In most cases, it has nothing to do with ‘well being’, but everything to do with intentional eradication of the protected horses from their promised lands.
Right after I wrote this, I found this video showing how horses move. Although this is a Canada herd, the dynamics are the same.
Horses aren’t a food source in America, they are protected under federal law (except for by those who wrote the laws and are exempt from following the law). They have few natural enemies in most areas (this is due to intentional predator hunting allowed by the states: wolves, bear, coyote, cougar, bear) and the cattle ranchers are pro-advocates as this effort protects their cattle. Wiping out predators unbalances the natural ecosystem the creator intended.
Horses are not a usable ‘for profit’ resource. In fact, they cost taxpayers money once we interfere with their natural existence on the range (just like deer, bison, elk live freely). The roundups, the holding facilities, long term pastures, feeding, veterinarians, freeze branding, documentation of their herds genetics, fertility, testing, disposal, adoptions, farriers, transport…. to the tune of MILLION and MILLIONS of dollars every year. On the range… these horses lived freely – without cost at all! But the livestock industry doesn’t want the competition for their access to cheap grazing. So we round up the horses, and put them on land the livestock industry could easily rent themselves.
BLM CLAIM: According to the BLM website public messages on each states estimated gather and removal between 1971 and the writing of this on July 31, 2021, was an estimate of 253,150 animals placed into private care. The reality of this claim – coming soon.
(Currently many states are doing massive helicopter roundups at this time and these numbers have not been added)
BLM CLAIM: Animals removed from public rangelands are offered to the public for adoption; un-adopted animals are cared for on open pastures for the rest of their lives. Many of these mustangs are ending up in the slaughter lines in Mexico and Canada!
Let’s get all these animals accounted for!
This National HMA project will include all gatherable information from a multitude of sources and combine it all together for a complete access point. Each state will (at some point with help of the community and other advocates) show you FACTS and links to BLM, ROUNDUPS, HOLDING FACILITIES, MEDIA, ADVOCATES, SANCTUARIES, NON PROFITS, RECORDS OF ABUSE, STATISTICS, RESEARCH, POLITICS, CATTLE INDUSTRY, SLAUGHTER INDUSTRY, LAWS, LAWSUITS, and any other important data for a complete oversight, state by state in relation to the BLM’s activity related to the HMA’s of this nation.
This is absolutely essential documentation to save America’s Wild Horses.
Jennifer, the BLM wants the public to believe that the leftover horses are turned out on range land to live their lives when in fact most, 50k plus are in federal holding pens for life. Fallon NV is one location.
Yes, I saw a few of those pastures mentioned in their facilities. They don’t have that many according to their holding abilities. A few places are even closed.
That’s why a database like this will be crucial for long term documentation!