Wild Horses and Burros

Have seen many movies about wild horses but never thought they still existed in the U.S.A.
What a surprise when I read the following Article in the newspaper,Tuesday, May 29th,2007



Wild horses trained by Colorado inmates join border patrol
LOS ANGELES liMES
COLVILLE, Wssh.• The latest recruits in the effort to tighten security along the rugged U.S-Canadian border are well- qualified for their new jobs.
Before training, Roscoe and Felix roamed remote stretches of Northern California and Wyoming, as their predecessors have for centuries. They have plenty of experience making their way through rivers and streams, up mountain trails and over densely forested land,
Roscoe, a muscular bay gelding with alert black eyes and Felix, who is just a little smaller and darker in color, are part of Operation Nobte Mustang a pilot project of the US. Border Patrol’s Spokane sector that uses formerly wild horses captured from the estimated 31,000 still roaming the West.
Known for their sure-footedness, strength and enduralice , mustangs also represent potential savings for the federal government. They are adopted from the Federal Bureau of Land Management,http://www.wildhorseandburro.blm.gov/index.php,and trained by inmates of Cobradfl Cañon City Correctional Institute. And the only cornpens ation they require is wild grass, some hay, and maybe the occasional carrot.
Here in the remote northeast corner of Washington state, nearly 100 miles north of Spokane, the border is in many places simply a barbed- wire fence in a 3-foot-wide clearin& The terrain is rugged, with shale on the moun
tainsides and thick forests of Ponderosa pine on the flats.
“We’ve been riding them through all of the conditions we face,” says senior border patrol agent Joe McGraw while stroking Felix’s neck, ‘through rivers, on mountain trails, through woodland debris up to their shoulders.”
The wild horses of the West are descendants of the horses of Spanish explorers, Southwestern ranchers, the US, cavalry, and American Indians,
“It really is a situation of survival of the fittest with these horses.” says RIck McComas, the ELM Wild Horse and Burro Specialist for Washington state. ‘The weaker ones, the slower ones, won’t make it in the wild, and certainly won’t pass on their genes.”
Protected by Congress since1971 under the Wild 1ree- Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the wild population is managed by the BLM. Estimates put the wfld horse population at about 31,000 horses ranging over 10 Western states. The ELM calculates that the food and water available to the animals in the wild can sustain about 27,000 musngs.
The horses have no natural predators and breed efficiently. As a result, the herd doubles about every four years. ELM periodically captures the horses in various locations around the West, and puts the animals out for adoption to the public. Since the program began in 1973, more than 200,000 horses and burros have been adopted.



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