The National Mustang Association of Colorado is planning a silent auction fundraiser July 11 at 5 p.m. in the parking lot between Grassburger and the Hermosa Cafe in Durango to raise money to care for feral horses removed from Mesa Verde National Park.
Grassburger is donating 10% of it’s sales for the event to NMACO, and the Hermosa Cafe will provide a bar for the event. Dozens of local businesses have made donations to the silent auction, providing everything from art and jewelry to horse tack and a paddle boat.
In 2022, NMACO partnered with Mesa Verde National Park officials in their efforts to bait-trap the horses that were roaming the park. The horses are considered invasive, as they consume limited grazing land and water ahead of the native deer and elk.
Bait-trapping is widely considered to be gentle and safer than traditional roundups, which use cowboys and helicopters to corral herds. Traditional roundup methods also risk damaging the park’s archaeological sites.
“Our ultimate mission is to keep the horses in the wild. However, when that option is taken off the table, we then advocate for humane removal,” said Bonnie Anderson, president of NMACO’s board.
Bait-trapping also results in an easier training process, said Anderson. She has adopted two horses that who were rounded up from Bureau of Land Management land using helicopters and two Mesa Verde horses caught through bait trapping.
“BLM mustangs will learn to trust a person, but will not trust people. This is because of all the trauma they have been through. My Mesa Verde mustangs trust everyone, because they have never had a negative or traumatic experience with a person,” she said.
NMACO takes ownership of the horses to ensure their health and safety.
Feral horses are often taken to sale barns, where they are sold at auction. Sometimes, horses in these auctions are bought by “kill buyers” who transport them to Mexican slaughterhouses. The transportation is such that many of them never make it that far.
In many areas, wild horses and burros are protected under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. However, the act does not protect the Mesa Verde horses because the park does not have the necessary federal designation.
On government land without a designation under the Act, the government frequently rounds up feral horses and lists them for adoption.
Of course, it is never federal policy to funnel horses to kill buyers. However, a 2021 New York Times investigation showed that the Bureau of Land Management’s Adoption Incentive Program had become a highway to slaughterhouses.
Kerry O’Brien, a mustang trainer and former board member of NMACO, said that an inability to enforce contracts that prohibit selling to kill buyers was a problem in protecting horses from finding their way to a slaughterhouse.
“(The contract) means nothing once they have actual legal ownership of the horse. So it's in the contract, but it's just not legally enforceable because now they own the horse and they can do whatever they want with it,” she said.
O’Brien also said that many advocates for keeping feral horses on public lands fail to see the intensely difficult lives that so many feral horses lead because of limited resources and no access to veterinary care.
NMACO can solve both issues. They can feed and doctor the horses they rescue, and be picky out who adopts a horse in their care. But it is not cheap. Transportation, feed, veterinary care and training adds up to nearly $2,000 per horse.
In 2022, the park had hoped to remove all the horses by the end of 2024. So far, NMACO has taken ownership of 41 horses. About 70 horses remain in the park, and officials hope to remove 30 this year.
Anderson attributed the large number of remaining horses in part to last year’s rainfall.
“Last year, we had plenty of moisture, meaning we had plenty of vegetation in a decent amount of water, so the horses weren't coming into the bait traps, because they had everything they needed out in the wild,” she said.
If NMACO does not raise sufficient funds to care for the remaining horses, they will likely end up in sale barns.
NMACO keeps the horses for about six months on average, gentling and training them. Anderson said the organization is cautious about who adopts the horses, they want to make sure each animal is going to a good home.
