ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—Debby Perkins had always dreamed of owning a mustang—a living, breathing symbol of the American West.
After finding her way by chance to a wild horse and burro adoption in southern New Mexico last year, she left with a black filly she now calls Cherokee.
“I was just overwhelmed because it was something that I had dreamed of as a child,” said Perkins, who lives in Carlsbad. “I had always wanted one. I had seen them. I would watch the roundups. I always thought I would love to have one of those just to take care of it.”
Cherokee is a couple weeks away from turning 2, and Perkins is just as enamored with the wild horse as the day she first saw her. The problem is there are tens of thousands of horses just like Cherokee and not enough people like Perkins.
Wild horse populations have boomed across the West, putting pressure on the range. The Bureau of Land Management rounds up thousands of the animals each year in hopes of finding good homes for them and keeping the wild population in check, but the agency is having a hard time finding buyers.
BLM officials are hoping for better luck this weekend in Albuquerque, where the agency is offering for adoption about 70 horses. It will be the only adoption in New Mexico this year.
Adoptions also are scheduled this weekend in California, Colorado, Florida and Utah.
“If you compare our adoption numbers over the last two or three years, it has trended downward rather dramatically, and that’s why getting the word out is very helpful,” said Paul McGuire, a BLM spokesman. “If nothing else, we can certainly make people aware of the opportunity (to own a mustang).”
The horses up for adoption come from a variety of states, including Utah, Wyoming and Nevada—which is home to about half of the wild horses managed by BLM.
The agency has placed more than 235,000 wild horses in approved homes over the past 36 years. But McGuire acknowledged the adoption program has been walloped in recent years—first by severe drought that impacted much of the rangeland in the West, then by skyrocketing fuel prices last year and now by a global economic collapse.
The agency, which is out of room at its long-term holding facilities, has been struggling to find ways to manage wild horses without euthanizing any of the animals or selling them for slaughter.
“That’s been a major issue for BLM for quite some time,” McGuire said. “The cost of holding is consuming in the neighborhood of three-quarters of the program’s budget and that’s obviously not sustainable. That impacts our ability to effectively manage the resource on the range and that’s ultimately what this is all about.”
Last year, it cost the agency more than $28 million to hold 33,000 horses and burros. Unchecked, federal officials have said that could reach $77 million by 2012.
BLM is open to an idea proposed by Madeleine Pickens, the wife of Dallas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens. She wants to establish a wild horse sanctuary in Nevada and has started an online crusade aimed at pressuring Interior Secretary Ken Salazar into supporting the plan.
“Certainly we remain open to Mrs. Pickens or any benefactor who’s willing to work with us in the scope of the law to find innovative solutions to the problems we are facing,” McGuire said.
In the meantime, BLM is drafting a national strategy to address the problems in the wild horse and burro program. Some of the proposals floated during a meeting in mid-March could be implemented before the end of the year, McGuire said.
One option is expanded use of fertility control in wild herds and another is an incentive program aimed at getting older horses adopted. Under that program, people who adopt a horse over age 6 would get a care and feed allowance from BLM at the end of their first year with the horse.
“Providing that stipend to an adopter as an incentive then has long-term fiscal benefits for the program, very substantial benefits in fact,” McGuire said. “It would save the program anywhere from $7,500 to $12,500 over the lifetime of a single horse.”
But until the strategy is finalized, the BLM has to rely on adoptions and sales to keep the population in check. The agency holds around 100 events around the country each year.
Out of the 5,275 horses and burros removed from the range last year, 70 percent were adopted, McGuire said.
Cherokee was one of them. After being rounded up in Nevada and trucked to an adoption in Artesia, she found a home with Perkins.
Perkins said the filly is somewhat of a novelty for her two daughters, who are quick to tell their friends they have a “part of the Old West.”
For Perkins, Cherokee is more than that. She’s a dream come true.
“She’s extremely intelligent,” Perkins said. “She’s very playful. It turns out she loves water. She wants to play in the water trough and she wants me to squirt her. If I don’t, she tries to grab the hose and squirt herself.”
Perkins said the work that goes into getting a wild horse to trust a person is worth it.
“I would tell a person that truly loves the animals for what they represent—they are a part of our history—that just to have one, just to give one a good home, don’t shy away from it.”
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Madeleine Pickens:
