Idaho Falls

38 IDAHO FALLS MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2019 Freedom of The Mustangs The past, present, and future of the eastern Idaho wild horse STORY AND PHOTOS BY CODY ROBERTS The mustang brings to my mind a sentimental image of a nomadic beast wandering the plains. Cautious yet capable, it is willing to endure and doesn't know when to quit. That is perhaps why the wild horse has been a symbol for everything from rock songs to car models. The mustang is not just an icon in the US; its history is inter- twined with that of ours. The Spanish conquistadors used horses when entering the New World. When the horses escaped, the Native Americans used them for hunting. Even later on, cowboys continued to capture and release horses on ranges to keep a strong line of work and riding horses. The work that the horses performed built the West. But now that the Wild West days are over and cowboys are few and far between, what happened to the wild horses? The answer took me to Challis, and after only a few days, I was smitten with these fantastic creatures and the story of how they came to be where they are. While there, I was guided through the massive country by Kevin Lloyd, one of the BLM's few horse specialists. Kevin has worked in other mustang areas, but has a special love for Challis -- the land, the people and the horses. Everything from his Western belt buckle to his sideburns makes me think no other job would suit him so well. Before we learn about the Challis horses, this tale starts with hippophagy: eating horse meat. Hippophagy has been around for much longer than the United States. It's often regarded as unko- sher, pagan or outright disgusting. However, often due to war, food shortage, or economic gain, horses are eaten. The majority of Americans have never been keen on horse steaks, but some time after the Civil War, it became a part of the meat industry. It would either be disguised as beef or outright sold as an alterna- tive. Then after WWI, the cavalry no longer needed free-ranged horses, so pet food companies also found a use for the mustangs. Now the horses captured could be sold dead or alive, and cap- turing these horses was brutal and had no limits. Catching the horse could involve airplanes, guns, and poisoning waterholes. This was put to a stop by Velma Bronn Johnston, or better known as Wild Horse Annie. Annie started as a Reno secretary but was transformed in 1950 when she followed a truck crammed with horses spilling blood on the road. She became obsessed with put- ting the careless capture to a stop. Her activism led first to the Wild Horse Annie Act, and then to the unanimously passed 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. As the name sug- gests, the 1971 bill made it so unbranded and unclaimed horses could roam free on designated land. These protected grounds are called Horse Management Areas, or HMAs. In the US there are 177 HMAs which fall under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). One HMA is in Challis. In the Challis HMA, enclosed by Highway 93 and the East Fork of the Salmon River, most of the horses are colored bay, brown, black, grey or white. They are believed to have been introduced here in the 1870s by miners and ranchers. Ranchers in the area would release good breeds of stallions into the wild population to improve genetics, which in turn they would capture and use for work. The horses travel in bands of either one stallion with mares and young, or a band of bachelor stallions. Geldings can T. WILDLIFE/GETTY IMAGES PHOTO

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