Carol Walker chronicles Wyoming wild horses' loss of freedom

For more than six years now, Carol Walker has lovingly photographed the proud spirits of the wild horses who have claimed the rugged ranges of Wyoming as their home.  Her careful, caring, creative eye has captured the precious moments as newborns take their first steps, mares nurture their foals, and stallions protect their fiercely won families.  In the process, she fell in love with these untamed equine denizens of the west, and her photographs made us fall in love with them, too.

Mindful that these horses were becoming increasingly endangered by the BLM's single-minded determination to sweep them forever off public lands, Carol made it her mission to follow and document several vulnerable herds in the 1.7 million-acre Adobe Town and Salt Wells Herd Management Areas (HMAs) in southwest Wyoming.  Her iconic images of the horses giddily galloping through the grasses, brush, and craggy hills in a display of raw wildness are a tribute to them, and to the American character.

When the BLM announced its intention to capture almost 2000 of these horses, and asked for public comments on its proposed plan, Carol Walker collected more than 3500 messages from citizens and advocates who wrote to express their strong opposition to the roundup.  She personally hand delivered them to the BLM in early August, hoping to halt the decimation of the largest of Wyoming's wild herds.

In the end, her effort--and the expressions of so many others who sought to preserve the wild horses' freedom--didn't matter.  The BLM not only proclaimed that the roundup would go on as planned, in mid-October, but rubbed salt in that wound by further declaring that a "census flight" had revealed that an additional 157 horses should be taken from the two HMAs.

And so it was with a heavy heart that Ms. Walker went once more to see the wild horses of Adobe Town on October 10th, this time to bear silent witness as they were relentlessly chased by a helicopter hell bent on ensuring that they would roam free no more.  She posted her poignant accounts of the daily captures on her Facebook page as she struggled to document the horses' fates, in spite of the BLM's efforts to keep her far away from the trapsite in case something went wrong.

After 12 days at the Adobe Town site, the BLM's hired helicopter and wranglers had muscled 995 wild horses into makeshift corrals.  The official record shows that two horses died as a result of the extreme duress of the capture, while 120 stallions and mares were eventually released back into the Adobe Town HMA, after some of the mares received anti-fertility treatments.

But those statistics don't come close to telling the story of how the horses were forcibly removed from Adobe Town.  To understand what really happened to them, you'll have to read the blog account, "Wild Horses: The Destruction of the Largest Herd in Wyoming," that Carol Walker published today.

She wrote of her feelings upon seeing the once-free horses confined in metal cages:

"Seeing these beautiful horses through the mesh on the fences, some stallions scrapping, others standing listless, was one of the most awful sights I had seen.  Where were the proud beings who recklessly ran away from the helicopter, heads held high?  Something essential was lost as they were held in the pens, separated from their families."

As the roundup neared its conclusion at the Adobe Town location, Carol described the scene:

"The last three days of the Adobe Town roundup are conducted at the Powder Rim trap.  At this site, we are only 300 yards from the trap and we can see them driven into the trap and the pens, but much of the landscape they can travel along is out of sight.  We are instructed to crouch down and get low, but I know the last thing the horses are concerned about is us.  So far, over 600 horses have been rounded up and only 22 released back into the wild.  The plan is to remove over 500 more horses at this trap site, and I am concerned there will be virtually no horses left in the area after this roundup.

Today they are using two helicopters to drive the horses, which I have never seen before.  This way, one helicopter can be driving a group and the other can head off an escape, or it can be working a different group so they can work with an almost assembly-line efficiency.  The horses do not have a chance."

And then there was the old grey stallion:

"One of the most dramatic chases was of a small band with two mares, a foal and a noble old warrior of a grey stallion.  He is battle-scarred with hoof prints and bites and had clearly lived a long eventful life, but was clearly a tender and caring father--his colt ran beside him almost the whole way instead of next to his mother, and he kept close to the colt as he tired.  He had probably been trapped before because he put up a valiant fight--dodging and turning and running to evade the helicopter which at some points was directly over his head. . .

Two wranglers finally rode out on horseback, and after some more time, came back with the grand old stallion, whom they had roped.  His sides were heaving, head hanging down, and he finally entered the trap--one of the saddest sights I have seen.  I hoped that he would be among the lucky few released at the end."

In sadness and in anger, Carol asks the questions that defy reasonable answers:

"What kind of a life is left for these horses that are shipped away from the only home they have ever known?  When they arrive, the foals will be weaned, the horses vaccinated and freeze-branded, and the stallions will be gelded.  This is traumatic, especially for the older stallions, and some of them will die."

It doesn't have to be this way.  As Carol Walker points out, America's wild horses do not belong to the Bureau of Land Management.  "They belong to us, the American people, and they are a part of us, our heritage, our history, our land, our freedom."  

Amen.