Mustang Wild horses in the American West It is natural to believe that wild horses have "always" drive across the American West, but this is simply not the case. The horses were native to North America until the end of the last ice age, from 10 to 12,000 years ago, and then they vanished.
It took the joint actions of Christopher Columbus and Hernando Cortez, to put the horses back in North America. In 1493, Christopher Columbus horses from Spain to the West Indies, during his second voyage to the Americas. In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Cortez brought horses to the continent, as the captain of the third Spanish expedition.
The horses arrived in North America, through Mexico and Florida as a tool of the Spanish conquistadors, and were used successfully by Cortez's defeat of the Aztec empire.
Many horses went wild after their riders were killed. Other horses escaped from their enclosures, and many more horses have been integrated into Native American societies. In a few decades, the horses have migrated from Mexico and Florida and entered the North American interior.
The story of American race horses
Almost all wild horses running in the ranges of the western United States came from the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe, in a region defined by present-day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations indicates that 17 individual breeds of horses that can be defined as Iberian horses. "Three races hail from Portugal and 14 other from Spain . Most of the Iberian horse breeds are considered baroque horses, which consists mainly of horses Andalusian, Arab and non Barb.
Many Native American tribes became master horse breeders, the most important, the Comanche, the Shoshone and Nez Perce nations. Through selective breeding by Native American tribes, the horse race first real American was the Appaloosa.
The wild horses of the western United States are in fact more accurately to horses that have gone "wild", or horses that were once domesticated and are now wild. Just as there is a huge population of stray dogs in close proximity to major American cities, particularly near Miami, Florida, there is also a large population of wild horses in America.
Horses at liberty eventually required the protection of Congress
In 1900, it was estimated that there were only two million horses at liberty in the United States. During the early twentieth century, the horse population at large has been greatly reduced through a combination of factors, including the capture of horses for the army, and most revolting, by companies that killed the horses to dog food.
In the 1970s, the plight of wild horses in the United States drew the attention of the U.S. federal government. This new attention eventually led to the adoption of horses running free and wild donkeys Act of 1971.
In recent years it has been estimated by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management that there are as many as 29,000 wild horses and burros on BLM-managed lands in ten western states. Ten of the western United States indicates that wild horses Running Wild includes: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.
It is estimated that more than half the population of wild horses is in Nevada and Montana and Oregon are the other states with large populations of wild horse numbers. There are another few hundred head of horses in the wild in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada.
With the horses running free and wild donkeys Act of 1971, the Bureau of Land Management has responsibility for management.
Posted on April 26, 2010.
