Friday, Oct. 6, 2000 | 11:25 a.m.
Wild horses can be broken.
A little Nevada sun. A dash of drought.
It doesn't take more than unforgiving weather to reduce healthy nomadic herds to skeletal bands stumbling across the desert floor.
Across the West, critical drought conditions and insect infestations have forced the Bureau of Land Management to conduct emergency roundups this year in California, Oregon, Utah and Nevada.
"We've been gathering horses nationwide due either to a lack of water or a lack of forage," said Gary McFadden, a wild horse specialist with the BLM's Las Vegas field office for 25 years.
"This is the first time I remember (drought) being this large. This one was pretty much spread across the West."
Of the 3,056 horses gathered in emergency roundups between June and September, about 2,100 were in Nevada.
Locally the BLM has been conducting roundups of the horses in the Nevada Wild Horse Range near Nellis Air Force Base and Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
A partnership with the all-volunteer National Wild Horse Association ensures the animals are fed and have their wounds tended to before being auctioned off to pre-screened buyers.
About 70 wild burros and horses were rounded up in Red Rock Canyon this summer to prevent drought-related deaths. On Sunday 25 of those horses are going up for auction.
To demonstrate that, contrary to popular lore, wild horses can make great companions, the horse association will hold a competition and show on Saturday involving all formerly wild horses.
Billie Young, president of the horse association, said that after the horses are corralled it only takes a single touch to dispel much of the fear of humans the horses carry.
"Then it's like, 'OK, you're not going to kill me. You're not going to eat me,' " Young said. "Mustangs are so kind-hearted. Once they trust you, it's like they take you into their band, their family. I've never had a horse that is so sure-footed."
Sometimes it takes a little while to get close enough to stroke a wild horse or slip a harness over his mouth.
That wasn't the case with "Little Buck," a 2-year-old mustang with a buckskin-colored coat. Young said the colt allowed her to hug him within days of his July capture and has begun allowing her to lift his front legs, a sign of submissiveness.
Horses came to what is now Nevada along Indian trading routes after the Spanish began exploring the New World in the 1600s, said Gary McFadden, the BLM's wild horse specialist for the Las Vegas field office.
Then the horse populations increased as communities along the Pacific Coast began trading horses for cotton goods from the Southwest.
Nevada today is ground zero for wild horse populations.
Of the 47,000 horses and burros in 10 Western states recorded by the BLM in 1999, 24,000 were found in Nevada.
While ranching diminished in Southern Nevada years ago, there remains a stable population of equine enthusiasts.
In fact, most of those that buy from the BLM at the annual auctions are first-time horse owners, McFadden said.
That inexperience makes the lessons in horse care provided by the wild horse association in monthly "post-adoption" classes -- where horse owners are versed in basic horse care, as well as how to respond to difficult behavioral problems -- very important.
"You have to really be committed to caring for a horse, to gentle train and do it properly," said Laurie Howard, vice president of the wild horse association. "There are obviously a lot of people who claim to be horse trainers -- or horse whisperers -- and they're not."
After adoption, a one-year period must pass in which phone interviews and drive-by inspections are used to ensure the horses are being properly cared for. At the end of that trial period a veterinarian or BLM official must approve title be granted on the animal.
Saturday's horse show and Sunday auction both begin at 8 a.m. in Horseman's Park, 5800 East Flamingo Road. Bidding on the horses starts at $125.
If area streams and watering holes aren't replenished soon the BLM may have to conduct more gatherings this winter or in early 2001, McFadden said.
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