The fight to save a memory : creation of the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range (1968) and evolving federal wild horse protection through 1971

Abstract

The Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, traversing the Montana-Wyoming border, was established through Executive Order by Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall in 1968. Creation of this 32,000-acre refuge demonstrated that wild horses were, to a certain segment of American society, an aesthetic and historical resource, worthy of federal protection and preservation. The national publicity generated by the fight to save this wild horse herd from roundup by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and subsequent formation of the wild horse range, expedited passage of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act in 1971, giving full legal protection to wild horses and burros found on BLM and U.S. Forest Service lands in the American West The key period of the imbroglio surrounding BLM's plan to reduce or decimate the Pryor Mountain herd was March 1966 through September 1968. However, events leading up to the public controversy span from 1934, when the Taylor Grazing Act was passed, to control and monitor livestock grazing on federal rangelands. The establishment of grazing allotments led directly to a long-term conflict, over horse grazing permit violations, between the Tillett Ranch family and land management officials. Although the Tilletts were permitted for 20 head of horses in the 1930s, the Pryor Mountain wild horse herd gradually expanded to exceed this limit, and, by the 1960s, had grown to more than 200 animals. The battle over these horses graphically illustrated the influence of print and electronic media, and the power of public opinion, on public land agency decision-making. In the early 1990s, E. Gus Cothran of the University of Kentucky and D. Phillip Sponenberg of Virginia Polytechnic Institute determined the Pryor Mountain wild horses to have a strong genetic link with Spanish Paso Fino horses, that is, descendants of horses brought to the New World by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1493 and on subsequent voyages. Phenotypic characteristics of the Pryor Mountain herd had pointed to Spanish blood for some time; however, modern DNA analysis confirmed this origin, leading to enhanced interest in the herd as a rare American biological and historical heritage.