Wild Horses Coevolved with Wildfire on The North American Landscape

NOTE: this article was written by Captain William E. Simpson II, Founder of the Wild Horse Brigade. It is published here with permission.

Science and empirical experience suggest the proper management of wild horses benefits public lands, ranchers and mitigates wildfire

A family band of wild horses calmly graze wildfire fuels even as the deadly 2018 Klamathon Fire approached. Wild horses have evolved on the North American landscape over millions of years and over that period have been subjected to times of volcanic eruptions and thousands of wildfires. Unlike domestic horses, which usually panic in the face of wildfire, wild horses on the range will calmly graze, even as a wildfire is approaching, instinctively knowing what to do, and when to do it.  Photo: William E. Simpson II – July 9, 2018.

Paleontological science and DNA studies have proven that all horses in the world originally evolved on the north American continent millions of years ago.  

About 1-million years ago, during the time there was a land bridge between present-day Alaska and Siberia, thousands of horses crossed that land bridge into Asia, which is how Europeans eventually got access to horses. About 6-7 thousand years ago, humans began to utilize the horse for work and transportation. 

Recent evidence has surfaced suggesting that wild horses maintained a presence on the North American continent through splinter populations that survived the Ice Age. Added to those existing populations were the reintroduced horses that were brought back to North America by the Spanish during the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Intentional Demonization of Wild Horses for Economic Purposes

Since the inception of the Bureau of Land Management (‘BLM’) in 1946, economic forces have sided with livestock production value over the value of maintaining natural herds of North American wild horses, which are native keystone herbivores. 

As such, campaigns and narratives that demonized wild horses were promoted by the BLM using taxpayer funding, which has its own roots in livestock grazing (U.S. Grazing Service), as we learn from the BLM’s own website: https://www.blm.gov/about/history

“The BLM was established in 1946, but its roots go back to the years after America’s independence, when the young nation began acquiring additional lands.  At first, these lands were used to encourage homesteading and westward migration. The General Land Office (‘GLO’) was created in 1812 to support this national goal. Over time, values and attitudes regarding public lands shifted, and Congress merged the GLO and another agency, the U.S. Grazing Service, creating the BLM.”

Today however, given this BLM’s over-arching involvement and subservience to the livestock and mining industries (gas, oil and mineral leases and extraction) the agency would more aptly be named the ‘Bureau of Livestock and Mining’.

A Documented History of Overgrazing Public Lands by Cattle and Sheep Ranchers

From the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains – David J. Wishart, Editor

“Public agency management of the federal grazing lands began with the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act on June 28, 1934, as dust from the worst storms in the nation’s history settled on Washington DC. Enacted after decades of rangeland deterioration, conflicts between cattle ranchers and migratory sheepherders, jurisdictional disputes, and states’ rights debates, the act and its amendments ended free access to the range. The purposes of the act were to stop injury to the public lands; provide for their orderly use, improvement, and development; and stabilize the livestock industry dependent on the public range. The new law effectively closed the rangelands to homesteading in the Dakotas and western states.

The act as amended in 1936 established grazing districts on the vacant, unappropriated and unreserved lands of the public domain: fifty-nine districts encompassing 168 million acres of federal land and 97 million acres otherwise owned. The act, as amended in 1939, established grazing advisory boards, primarily composed of livestock owners. Board duties included the allocation of permits and the determination of boundaries, seasons of use, and the carrying capacity of the range. This gave rise to the Federal Range Code and the criticism by some commentators that the advisory boards constituted a private government.

A new permit system granted grazing privileges by preference to ranchers who had actually used a grazing district’s land during a priority period before 1934. Owners of land or water rights who could support livestock on base ranches during seasons when herds were not on the grazing districts were favored; those without property were not. Technically, the grazing permit is a revocable license under the law, not creating any right, title, interest, or estate in or to land, but it is considered by many to be a unique form of ownership, constituting a property right of the utmost importance.

The [Taylor Act} act created the Grazing Service, but inadequate funding prevented effective observation and evaluation of range use. Permitted animal unit months were set at preexisting 1934 stock levels. Efforts to reduce stock levels inevitably failed. The Grazing Service and General Land Office were consolidated in 1946 to form the Bureau of Land Management, which continues today to administer grazing lands not in the national forests.”

The truth stemming from the foregoing documented history curated and published by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is that the BLM continues to this very day to allow the overgrazing of public lands by livestock, with little consideration for the adverse ecological impacts of grazing by ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats). The favoritism for ruminant livestock (cattle & sheep) grazing results in the depletion of cover crops and loss of seed banks across massive landscapes. This bad public land management is exactly what the Taylor Grazing Act hoped to eliminate.

The BLM’s shocking failure to recognize the science that proves wild horses (non-ruminants) are the only large North American mammal left that benefits public lands by reseeding the landscape with native flora, and thereby benefiting other coevolved fauna. This failure in science-driven landscape management is exacerbating the ongoing over-grazing of public lands by ruminant livestock.

As we read, cattle ranchers (not all of them) were destroying the landscape via overgrazing. 

And when livestock grazing became a disaster, and so bad that the Taylor Grazing Act was passed, cattle ranchers clearly didn’t care, and went ahead and resumed grazing at levels that preexisted passage of the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934.  

Sadly today, we are still seeing examples of this reckless approach to grazing driven by greed continued. But today, instead of trying to run-off all the sheep, livestock producers are targeting wild horses and even game animals such as elk! 

From the Sierra Nevada Ally:

“New revelations in evolution, paleontology, biology and genetics inform those of us who are still willing to learn, that wild horses evolved in north America 55-million years ago, and are native species symbionts on the north American landscape. It’s a plain fact that native species American wild horses are keystone herbivores that co-evolved with the flora and fauna of north America. Mountain lions, bears, wolves, and coyotes are all naturally evolved predators of wild horses.

Shockingly, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been intentionally misinforming the Congress of the United States as well as the public and our elected officials! And those lies are continually repeated as hear-say by other people in and around the livestock industry and by the United State Forest Service.

The BLM has been and is currently engaged in an ongoing campaign of willful ignorance and a campaign of misinformation via their ongoing propagation of manifestly false statements, including but not limited to this whopper:

“Wild horses have no natural predators …” a false statement that has been promoted by the BLM and USFS for many years.

That false statement appears in a so-called management plan that was presented to the Congress of The United States in writing titled; ‘Report To Congress – Management Options For A Sustainable Wild Horse And Burro Program’. 

So, what’s to be done? Can we end what has arguably been a range war for the past 200-years between some ranchers and a multitude of other public lands stakeholders?

Can one person’s problem be another person’s solution?

We’ve all seen it before, an excavation company digging a big hole somewhere and then needing to find a place to dump all the excavated rock and dirt. It’s a big and costly problem that needs a solution.

The solution to excavation company’s problem comes when a landowner has a place that needs a lot of fill-dirt and rock. Buying fill dirt and having it delivered is expensive.

At this point, the excavator company’s problem becomes the cost-effective solution for the person needing fill dirt. This is a win-win for both parties.

The foregoing scenario is one of life’s lessons for solving the current debacle between wild horses and livestock producers, and the people and agencies who are trying to cost-effectively manage wildfire fuels on remote wilderness landscapes where options for grass and brush management methods are very limited and expensive.

By humanely removing and relocating wild horses from lands where they are deemed to be in conflict with livestock production and/or mining, gas and oil operations, and then re-wilding the horses onto appropriate wilderness areas that are manifestly unsuited for livestock grazing, we create a win-win scenario. This would solve the problems facing these financially and politically powerful commercial enterprises, who want wild horses removed from the public lands they are using.  But how?

The Current Costly and Failed Methods

The current highly flawed and expensive solution is to spend $-millions rounding-up wild horses and then spend $100-million more every year in public funds to feed and care for these wild horses in Bureau of Land Management off-range holding facilities. And during the course of this activities, lawsuits are filed by the dozens costing taxpayers even more, since the BLM uses taxpayer funds to defend the lawsuits.

This is far from being anywhere close to an ideal solution. 

More Cost Ineffective Methods

And we also have a small niche of people and organizations who’ve found profitability in working with the BLM and spending $-millions more tax-dollars to sterilize horses (aka: ‘Fertility Control’), only to see them rounded-up at some later date. Of course, this form of management and financial lunacy is driven by short-sightedness and greed. 

Range competition is over grazing and water resources. A sterilized horse eats and drinks just as much as natural horse. Clearly, sterilizing wild horses is just bilking taxpayers out of even more money.

A Massive Wildfire Fuels Problem Needing a Solution

Elsewhere we find there are entities (cities, counties and states) facing a different and very significant problem, wildfire and toxic smoke.

Looking at just two states plagued by catastrophic wildfires, California and Oregon, we find there are tens of millions of acres of remote lands unsuited to livestock grazing, but well suited for wild horses. California has 93-million acres of lands. Oregon has 45-million acres. Of these lands, about 30-million acres are at grave risk of catastrophic wildfire, with millions of acres burning catastrophically hot annually due to a collapsed herbivory (collapse of deer populations by about 3-million animals)

The collapse of the native species herbivory (collapse of western deer populations) has led to an overabundance of annual grass and brush wildfire fuels. In fact, these entities, including taxpayers, private property owners, land managers, insurance companies, foresters and wildlife enthusiasts are all losing hundreds of $-billions annually due to wildfires.

The grass and brush problem is so bad in fact that many BLM Range Management Plans cite the prodigious grass and brush understory fuel levels in forests saying that prescribed burning is not an option due to extreme heat damage that would result if burned with ‘pre-treatment’

Pre-treatment is an exceptionally costly and time-consuming process that involved a lot of ground-work by people and equipment, which is impractical in many remote wilderness areas. And this is why so many remote wilderness areas are not suited for prescribed burning.

Here is an excerpt from the Range Management Plan (‘RMP’) for the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument, Page 33, ‘Prescribed Fire’:

“In many cases, fire cannot safely and effectively be reintroduced to the landscape without prior treatments to thin small trees or remove excessive brush and understory fuels. Without prior treatment, the energy release from prescribed fire as the initial treatment would exceed desired intensity levels and have undesirable effects on vegetation and soil.”

Can the livestock industry’s wild horse problem be the solution for the wildfires?

Extensive scientific study and empirical experience provide the answer, which is unequivocally yes!

Some Important Background

Replenishing a native herbivore that can cost-effectively manage over-abundant wildfire fuels (grass and brush) is what is known as a nature-based solution.

But we must correct the falsified record relating to wild horses and their native species status before we can proceed to the practical, selective application of the solution to the appropriate wilderness landscapes.

It turns out that Brigham Young University scientists and scholars have strongly suggested two important things about horses in their published research:

1. Horses evolved and survived the Ice Age in North America; and,
2. Horses were present on the North American landscape when Columbus arrived in 1492.

Some non-secular scientists agree and also suggest wild horses never went totally extinct, and moreover, horses brought back to North America by the Spanish were merely a reintroduction of a species that evolved on the continent.

According to some of the world’s leading experts on equid paleontology, such as Dr. Ross MacPhee, Curator Emeritus, Department of Mammalogy, Division of Vertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History and Professor Emeritus, Richard Gilder Graduate School, American wild horses are a native species in North America. 

Horse fossils are abundant on the American landscape, and are as recent as 5,000-years old, making them post Ice Age survivors. 

In 2005, archaeologists working against the clock in Carlsbad unearthed another nearly intact skeleton of a horse that may have lived and died 50 years before the Spanish began their conquest of California, as cited in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Elsewhere along the Oregon-California border between the coast and present-day Ashland, Oregon, horse fossils are found, and wild horses were documented as living among the indigenous peoples in 1580, by Sir Francis Drake. This recent cultural archaeological finding is according to an approved and published doctoral thesis by indigenous scientist Dr. Yvette ‘Running Horse’ Collin, PhD, at Alaska University. 

The same area is also known for bison and horse fossils and served as some of the ranch lands for the Wright family from the mid-1800’s to the mid-nineteen hundreds. 

George F. Wright was born in Hornbrook CA in 1897, and rode the local range as a BLM range rider and Jackson County deputy sheriff. His diary and family photo album are punctuated with notations and photos describing the local herd of heritage ‘wild horses’ on the wilderness open range.

There is abundant archaeological data regarding horses via petroglyphs and pictographs in many western states. A study published at University of Oregon by Dr. L.S. Cressman, PhD titled Petroglyphs of Oregon contains much detailed information, drawings and photos of the petroglyphs and pictographs in the State of Oregon (images below).

In eastern Oregon, just south of Bend, at the summit between Silver Lake and Summer Lake, there are petroglyphs that are centuries old, which depict horses with indigenous people. 

About Wild Horse Fire Brigade and it’s Nature-based Plan

In 1971, Congress of the United States of America declared that; “wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West and that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people… “

Unfortunately, today, over fifty-years later, we find that wild horses are suffering mismanagement due to economic pressures leading to their wholesale removal from the lands where they had roamed for millennia to make room for commercial livestock and mining enterprises. Soon herd populations and genetics will be decimated unless a more intelligent, science-supported management approach is implemented.

Wild Horse Fire Brigade, an all-volunteer 501-c-3 nonprofit is founded upon science and empirical experience demonstrating that wild horses are intelligent sentient beings who deserve to live their lives unmolested, wild and free, and are highly beneficial and essential to the natural ecosystems where they live.

Wild Horse Fire Brigade is both the name of an all-volunteer 501-c-3 nonprofit, and the name of a nature-based Plan that naturally and cost-effectively reduces the frequency, size and intensity of wildfires while humanely providing for the sustainable conservation of wild horses by relocating them from areas of conflict and into appropriate wilderness areas at risk for catastrophic wildfire.

Wild Horse Fire Brigade, along with Michelle Gough and William E. Simpson II, own and manage a heritage herd of about 150 free-roaming wild horses on a wilderness landscape called Wild Horse Ranch, on the Oregon-California border.

Wild Horse Ranch is situated in the Cascade-Siskiyou mountains and serves as a research site for scientists and a pilot study for wild horse ecology and ethology. The ancestors of this unique heritage herd of wild horses were observed and documented by Sir Francis Drake in 1580, as cited in the published doctoral thesis of Dr. Yvette ‘Running Horse’ Collin titled: ‘The relationship between the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the horse: deconstructing a Eurocentric myth’:  https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/handle/11122/7592

Through a decade of full-time (24-7, 365) research in the wilderness, living among and studying wild horses using the Goodall Method, William E. Simpson II – founder of Wild Horse Fire Brigade, has observed and documented the lives 8-generations of wild horses and how their presence in a wilderness landscape as ecosystem engineers reduced the risk and impact of wildfire while benefiting a myriad of coevolved flora and fauna, right down to and including pollinators. 

Uniquely, Simpson directly observed the benefits of wild horse grazing and reduced grass and brush fuels on the behavior of wildfire during the deadly 2018 Klamathon Fire as an advisor to CALFIRE on the fire-line, full-time for 9-days.

Based upon experience and law, Wild Horse Fire Brigade is planning on initially launching one or more large-scale rewilding pilots with private commercial forestry partners to save forest resources and thousands of wild horses. Wild horses from holding corrals, or that are deemed by the BLM or USFS to be in conflict and targeted for roundups or trapping would be humanely relocated into appropriate wilderness areas beyond conflict with livestock and mining enterprises. According to science and empirical experience, their presence in appropriate wilderness areas, including forests, provides great value by reducing the frequency, size and intensity of catastrophic wildfires. In such wilderness areas wild horses can once again live their lives wild and free as intended by the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act (Public Law 92-195).

More about Wild Horse Fire Brigade:  https://www.WildHorseFireBrigade.org

References:

* MacPhee, Ross, Letter To The Editor: Rod Miller Is Wrong, Horses Are Not An Invasive Species:  https://cowboystatedaily.com/2022/09/13/letter-to-the-editor-rod-miller-is-wrong-horses-are-not-an-invasive-species/?fbclid=IwAR0Ey48H5SW9GdtJga3aLawlkDMo_KuxdBciYZB0RWBp00faECsd1FyZY3Y

* Arroyo-Cabrales and Alvarez, “Preliminary Report of the Late Quaternary Mammal Fauna,” 263–64.

* Haile, “Ancient DNA Reveals Late Survival of Mammoth and Horse in Interior Alaska,” 22356.

* Ray, “Pre-columbian Horses from Yucatan,” 278.

* R. Velázquez-Valadez, “Recent Discoveries in Caves of Loltún, Yucatán, Mexico,” Mexicon (1980): 54.

* Arroyo-Cabralles and Polaco, “Caves and the Pleistocene Vertebrate Paleontology,” 283.

* Philip Ireland, “Centuries-old Bones of Horses Unearthed in Carlsbad [CA],” San Diego Union-Tribune, July 17, 2005, http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-centuries-old-bones-of-horses-unearthed-in-2005jul17-story.html.

* Simpson II, William E., GrazeLIFE – Wild horse fire brigade: lessons in rebalancing North American ecosystems by rewilding equids: https://grazelife.com/blog/wild-horse-fire-brigade-lessons-in-rebalancing-north-american-ecosystems-by-rewilding-equids/

​Simpson II, William E., Understanding ‘Wild Horse Fire Brigade’ And the Supporting Science of Wildfire Herbivory’: 

​* 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) View here.

* Wild Horses as Native North American Wildlife. View here.

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* Ancient DNA Discovery Reveals Woolly Mammoths, Wild Horses Survived Thousands of Years Longer Than Believed. View here.

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* The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California recognized wild horses as native species, explaining that BLM “establishes Appropriate Management Levels (“AMLs”) for populations of native species – including wild horses, burros, and other wildlife – and introduced animals, such as livestock.” In Defense of Animals, et al. v. U.S. Dept. Interior, et al., No. 12-17804, *6 (9th Cir. May 12, 2014). On Sep 28, 2011 (See Craters AR at 16698. Memorandum Decision & Order) The court addresses “sensitive” species pursuant to BLM’s 2001 Special Status Species Policy. This Policy requires that “sensitive” species be afforded, at a minimum, the same protections as candidate species for listing under the ESA. It called on BLM managers to “obtain and use the best available information deemed necessary to evaluate the status of special status species in areas affected by land use plans . . . .” See Policy at § 6840.22A. Under the Policy, those land use plans “shall be sufficiently detailed to identify and resolve significant land use conflicts with special status species without deferring conflict resolution to implementation-level planning.”

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* Land Held Hostage: A History of Livestock and Politics; Thomas L. Fleischner, Ph.D.

Citation by: Professor Thomas L. Fleischner, Ph.D: “The most severe vegetation changes of the last 5400 years occurred during the past 200 years. The nature and timing of these changes suggest that they were primarily caused by 19th-century open-land sheep and cattle ranching.” View here.

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* Foods of wild horses, deer, and cattle in the Douglas Mountain area, Colorado. Hansen, R. M., Clark, R. C., & Lawhorn, W. (1977). Journal of Range Management, 30(2), 116-118. View here.

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* Evolution of wild horses and cattle and the effect on range damage. View here.

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* Federal Forestlands In Oregon. View here.

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* Collapse of the world’s largest herbivores: “By altering the quantity and distribution of fuel supplies, large herbivores can shape the frequency, intensity, and spatial distribution of fires across a landscape”.  William J. Ripple, et. al.

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* Rewilding: Jozef Keulartz. “The removal of large herbivores has adverse effects on landscape structure and ecosystem functioning. In wetter ecosystems, the loss of large herbivores is associated with an increased abundance of woody plants and the development of a closed-canopy vegetation. In drier ecosystems, reductions of large grazers can lead to a high grass biomass, and thus, to an increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires. Together, with the loss of a prey base for large carnivores, these changes in vegetation structures and fire regimes may trigger cascades of extinctions (Bakker et al., 2016; Estes et al., 2011; Hopcraft, Olff, & Sinclair, 2009; Malhi et al., 2016).” View here.

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* Cattle Grazing Effects on Macroinvertebrates in an Oregon Mountain Stream; Rangeland Ecology and Management 60(3), 293-303, (1 May 2007) James D. McIver and Michael L. McInnis. View here.

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* Lingering effects of contraception management on feral mare (Equus caballus) fertility and social behavior. View here.

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* Influence of ruminant digestive processes on germination of ingested seeds. View here.

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* Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions and the functional loss of long-distance seed-dispersal services. View here.

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* 9 Facts About Horse Manure by Katherine Blocksdorf. View here.

* Ruminant Digestion. View here.

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* Horse dung germinable seed content in relation to plant species abundance, diet composition and seed characteristics. View here.

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* Horses and Manure by Michael Westendorf, Extension Specialist in Animal Sciences & Uta Krogmann, Extension Specialist in Solid Waste Management. View here.

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* Fire grazing: Why wild horses can do better than cattle in wildfire battle. View here.

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* Wild horses, wildfire and wildlife: An overlooked ecological imbalance. View here.

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* Public lands bear the ecological brunt of livestock grazing. View here.

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* Wild Horse Fire Brigade – Rebalancing North American Ecosystems. View here.

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* Yes world, there were horses in Native culture before the settlers came. View here.

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* Project to Reform Public Land Grazing in Northern California. View here.

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* Large herbivore can reduce fire risks. Large herbivore can reduce fire risks
Around the world, wildfires are posing major risks to people and nature; domestic and wild animals can help prevent them. View here.

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* On Natural Selection of Wild Equids via Predation:
Knopff KH, Knopff AA, Kortello A, Boyce MS. (2010). Cougar Kill Rate and Prey Composition in a Multiprey System. Journal of Wildlife Management 74(7):000–000; 2010; DOI: 10.2193/2009-314. View here.

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* French, Brett. (2010, December 9). Ferocious appetites: Study finds mountain lions may be eating more than previously believed. Billings Gazette. View here.

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* Turner JW Jr and Morrison ML. (2001). Influence of Predation by Mountain Lions on Numbers and Survivorship of a Feral Horse Population. The Southwestern Naturalist. Vol. 46, No. 2 (Jun., 2001), pp. 183-190. View here.

* Greger, Paul D. and Romney, Evan M. (1999). High foal mortality limits growth of a desert feral horse population in Nevada. Great Basin Naturalist: Vol. 59: No. 4, Article 10. View here.

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* French, Brett. (2004, August 12). Lions blamed for deaths of Pryor foals. Billings Gazette. View here.

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* Mini Ted Talk by Ethologist William E. Simpson II: Simpson explains the importance of native species American wild horses as keystone herbivores and how they protect wilderness ecosystems where they live. View here.
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* A Geographic Assessment of the Global Scope for Rewilding with Wild-Living Horses (Equus ferus). View here.

* PLEISTOCENE PARK: RESTORE HIGH PRODUCTIVE GRAZING ECOSYSTEMS IN THE ARCTIC AND MITIGATE CLIMATE CHANGE. View here.

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* Wild Horses as Native North American Wildlife. View here.

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* The Surprising History of America’s Wild Horses By Jay F. Kirkpatrick , Patricia M. Fazio. View here.

* Simpson II, William E., Prescribed Burning, a Failed Policy for Wildfire Prevention: https://pagosadailypost.com/2023/11/13/opinion-prescribed-burning-a-failed-policy-for-wildfire-prevention/

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