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Today, in parts of the country
where herds of wild horses still roam,
there is a curious yearly ritual.
Anywhere the Bureau of Land Management
decides wild horses are overpopulating public lands,
it sends in the helicopters.
Like flying sheep dogs, the aircraft chase bands
of horses out of the hills, herding them, coaxing them,
scaring them into a funnel-shaped corral.
Whether the roundups happen in the heat or in the snow,
they follow the same pattern,
and they end when cowboys on the ground
release what's called a Judas horse --
a domestic animal trained
to lead its wild disciples into captivity.
Watching the drama from the sidelines
are contenders in a high-plains standoff.
-If it was just a little bit warmer...
-Wild-horse advocates like filmmaker Ginger Kathrens
are against the culling of the herds.
-It doesn't happen very often, but on occasion,
a horse might come in and might slip on the ice...
-Sometimes, she confronts the BLM directly.
-We want to go on record as saying that we don't think
that this roundup ought to start today.
We think it's too dangerous, too cold, and too risky.
Helicopter roundups are incredibly stressful
on the animals.
Foals will sometimes literally have their hooves
fall off their feet.
-On the other side, ranchers paying
to graze sheep and cows on public lands.
They say unchecked mustangs are damaging the range,
eating grass that ought to be feeding domestic stock.
-I have a place in my heart for the wild horse,
but there would be a lot of us out of business
if we didn't have public lands to graze on.
[ Helicopter blades whirring ]
-So, how did this situation get so tense
that the federal government is sending in herders
in helicopters to mediate this standoff?
It's a classic tale of unintended consequences.
In 1970, the wild-horse population
had fallen from approximately a million
at the turn of the century to less than 18,000 --
victim of a pet-food industry hungry for cheap meat.
-Get that horse!
/
-Hyah!
-The 1961 movie "The Misfits"
dramatized the brutality of capturing wild horses,
a practice which enraged a growing number of animal lovers.
-Shut up! Murderers!
-The mustang, maybe more than any other animal in America,
is a symbol.
It means freedom. It means defiance.
It means scrappy but noble.
In a sense, it means us, right? It is the American.
And to have something that we hold in such esteem
at the same time not only abused but turned into dog food
was just something that people could not deal with
in their minds.
-Knowing that animals were being hunted down,
slaughtered, butchered,
and sold as pet food just really burned me up.
-Greg Gude was a young boy when he discovered the plight
of the mustang in the pages of an illustrated children's book.
It's main character was a tenacious
Nevada activist with a catchy nickname.
-Velma Johnston has fought
for the protection of these animals all her life,
and she is known as "Wild Horse Annie."
-Wild Horse Annie enlisted schoolchildren
in a national letter-writing campaign.
By some accounts, they flooded Congress that year
with a volume of letters
second only to mail received about the Vietnam War.
But Greg Gude didn't need to write letters.
His father, Gilbert Gude, held one of Maryland's seats
in the U.S. House of Representatives.
-I lived with my congressman.
I could lobby at the dinner table.
I think it probably took a hunger strike.
-An 11-year-old boy persuaded his father,
a congressman, to introduce a bill
to protect wild horses and burros on the Western plains.
Then the boy, Greg Gude of Maryland,
appeared today to testify.
-And so, a few months later in December of 1971,
the wild horses were saved.
-Today, President Nixon signed a bill
to make killing them a federal crime.
-This largely halted the commercial capture
and slaughter of wild horses roaming the West,
but it wasn't long before mustangs were making news again.
-It may surprise you to hear there's a surplus of wild horses
in what was once the Wild West.
-Soon as the law passed,
there were essentially more horses
than the government knew what to do with.
There's only a certain amount of grass out there,
especially in the West,
and most of it's already spoken for.
-Ranchers who rely on public lands for their livestock
say what's at stake is their claim on the American West.
-I roped my first wild horse when I was 11.
That was in 1952.
There are people that think the wild horse
is a symbol of the American West.
I think every rancher will tell you
that we're riding the horses that built the American West.
-Garrett says activists have brow-beaten the BLM
into culling too few mustangs.
Of course, activists like Ginger Kathrens
see it differently.
-If you're wondering why our public lands
are overgrazed or degraded,
you need to look at the millions of head of livestock --
cattle and sheep -- that are permitted to graze out here.
-If you talk to advocates,
spend some time at a roundup with them,
eventually they'll talk about how the BLM
is in the pocket of big ranchers.
And if you talk to the ranchers
and you spend any time at their ranches,
they will talk to you about
how the BLM's in the pocket of the advocates.
-The BLM removes approximately 4,000 horses a year,
hoping to find them permanent homes.
But periodic exposés over the years
reveal that the animals sometimes met a different fate.
-NBC News has been told by just about everyone we talked with
a large number of BLM horses likely end up slaughtered.
-The BLM sort of binges and purges when it comes to horses.
They'll ignore the problem of overpopulation
until it gets really bad,
and then they'll do something they regret.
So, in the '80s, they sold a bunch of horses
to people that then slaughtered them.
And in the '90s, they started doing the same thing again.
You know, they would sort of do a "don't ask, don't tell"
type of thing where, "We're gonna sell you the horses.
Don't slaughter them. We're just never gonna check."
-The BLM insists it does not knowingly sell horses
to so-called "kill buyers."
And today, the growing number of horses
and fewer people willing to adopt them
have given rise to what may be
the biggest unintended consequence of the 1971 law.
-The Bureau of Land Management is probably
the largest horse owner in the continental United States,
maybe the world.
-There are more than 46,000 formerly wild horses and burros
living in corrals and long-term holding pastures in the midwest,
eating grass on the government dole.
The BLM spends almost $50 million a year
to board these captured animals.
The Government Accountability Office has warned
the ballooning holding costs will overwhelm the program.
-I mean, we're talking 40%, 50%, 60% of our budget
is going to just holding and caring of animals.
We're full up. There's nowhere to go.
There's nowhere to go with them.
I really don't know what to say other than it's not sustainable.
-The BLM estimates the number of wild horses
on federal range lands could soon exceed 100,000.
Drastic measures like euthanasia provoke a strong public outcry,
so the agency treats some horses with birth control
and recently added a new program offering up to $1,000
to anyone who adopts a wild horse.
-It's unclear what's gonna happen when they no longer
have the money to expand the system.
Do they leave horses on the range and get sued?
Do they sell horses to the market
and have them slaughtered?
Do they euthanize them in some massive, crazy process
and just bury them in a big pit?
Seriously, when they run out of money, what happens?
-It's a problem, and not an easy one to solve.
-They've really made a mess of it.
Are they wild horses when they are in captivity?
-It's awful.
We have to manage wild horses on the range.
-I don't think anybody likes it,
but nobody can find a way out of it.
The law really did save the wild horse.
The question is, "What do we do with the horses we saved?"
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