Pryor Mountain mustangs: on the range or on the bring?

Monica Gokey, The University of Montana

Abstract

At the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range straddling the Montana-Wyoming border, the fate of a herd of mustangs rests with the Bureau of Land Management and local horse conservationists. Nationally, the two sides are generally pitted against each other in the ugly world of horse politics. But in the Pryors, advocates and government have forged a tenuous partnership. Both sides want to see healthy horses on healthy range. And there could hardly be a better herd to benefit from such a truce. The Pryor Mountain mustangs have a unique genetic heritage at stake. The horses are some of the last surviving relics of an old-world horse lineage that dates back to the equines originally brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors. It’s a lineage on the cusp of being eclipsed in the wild.