Yes, mustangs are not as pretty as their cousins in the show ring of Santa Barbara or the Madison Square Garden Arena. But I suspect that your adversion to mustangs goes beyond their appearance (conformation).
Perhaps what you really object to is that they consume range resources that rightfully belong to other large mammals such as antelopes, mule deer, and ranchers.
Those herds (near the Carson District) and the herds up in the Virginia City Highlands north into the area near Lockwood are the ones kept in the nicest shape, because there are more people that see those herds than any others in Nevada.
You need to see the herds from east of Fallon to the Utah state line, from Nye County north to Idaho. Especially the herds in Lander, Eureka and White Pine Counties. Woof.
My aversion to the mustangs is that the entire program is a monstrous boondoggle. The BLM practices a “out of sight, out of mind” strategy for managing HMA’s. The HMA’s nearest the urban areas produce the most static coming into the BLM offices, so they manage those HMA’s fairly regularly.
In the very rural areas of Nevada, the BLM will allow HMA’s to build up to 10 times the AML (appropriate management level) of horses.
Here, don’t believe me. Here’s the text from a recent BLM publication I had on the Diamond Mountain HMA:
“During a capture of wild horses, conducted from August 1 through August 23, 1997, 1,397 horses were captured within and outside the boundaries of the HMAs. Of the total captured 1,177 of the horses were transported to Palomino Valley Center north of Sparks, Nevada for preparation into the adoption program. The remainder, ages 10 to 28 years old, were released back inside the HMA boundaries.
The most recent gather was completed in 2004, in conjunction with the other two HMAs within the Complex. The gather involved the capture of 643 wild horses followed by the release of 116 wild horses back to the range. Fertility control was also implemented on 86 of the released mares.
The primary colors of the horses captured from within the Diamond, Diamond Hills North & Diamond Hills South included bays, sorrels, and browns. Other colors included palomino, buckskin, chestnut, grey, variations of roan, and pinto/paint.
The current estimated population on the Battle Mountain side of the mountain range is 129 horses. The Appropriate Management Level (AML) is 151.”
What happens when you have nearly 10 times as many horses in a HMA as the AML, which is set by the BLM’s range conservation officers? ie, people with degrees in range management?
They wreck it. Completely. The BLM finally looked at how many horses were dying over the winters up in canyons and decided “eh, perhaps we oughta do something about this — the pictures aren’t pretty.” And they’re not. Come springtime, you can go up into the canyons and find dessicated horse carcasses where the carcass came straight down onto it’s own feet. The only way this happens is that the horse is up in the canyon, a big snowstorm comes in and the horse dies standing up. Why did the horses stay up in the canyon in a snowstorm like that? Because that’s where the only food was - up in the higher areas of the range, the first areas to receive any moisture come fall are up in the higher country.
Most people who see only the urban herds have never seen a hammerhead. They never see the dead come spring. They don’t see horses run deer, elk and pronghorn off of springs. They don’t get out onto the range enough to see how horses foul springs so badly that nothing will drink the dung-infested water unless they’re forced to - and then, only if the stud is far enough away that they can get in on the spring.
Again, the BLM manages the HMA’s near urban areas to make sure they continue to have public support for their idiotic program and as little static as possible.
The rural areas, where there are very few people (eg, Eureka County, with a total population in the county of about 1700 people), the BLM paints the locals as a bunch of greedy ranchers, who view the horses as mere competition for their capitalistic cattle grazing. What the BLM and the horse advocates don’t tell people (and most people are utterly ignorant of) is that a horse can over-graze pasture/range faster and more permanently than any other animal out there.
And the answer to “why?” is seen by looking in a horse’s mouth.
Quiz time: What does a horse have that cattle and sheep don’t have?