Columnist Susan Snyder: Adopting a strident horse plan

Friday, May 18, 2001 | 4:52 a.m.

Acommercial tour van stopped at the edge of Blue Diamond's tiny county park, and its occupants filed out armed with cameras and enthusiasm.

They moved briskly to the edge of the baseball field to capture images of the wild mustangs that symbolize what's left of the wild West.

Click.

Unfazed by the attention and stir, three rust-colored horses continued munching on left and center fields. Three others meandered across the street to a home, where they nibbled on the lawn like old saddle mounts or family pets.

Blue Diamond's herd is unlike the rest of Nevada's estimated 24,300 wild horses in that they are not afraid of the people with whom they share land.

But they reproduce as quickly as their skittish kin.

A couple of years ago only three horses grazed on the baseball diamond, says Jeannie Leavitt who runs the town's Village Market. Now there are five adult horses -- including a youngster from last year -- and one new filly born this spring.

That's twice as many horses in the same amount of space -- or less, depending on rainfall and habitat encroachment. Blue Diamond's half-dozen provide a snapshot of what's happening to wild horse herds across the West 30 years after creation of the Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971.

Bureau of Land Management officials have decided there isn't enough rangeland left to support the wild horses and burros in the 10 Western states that have them. In Nevada, the BLM hopes to reduce the wild horse herd statewide to 15,000 by 2005.

That means rounding up and adopting out 9,000 horses in the next four years. That's almost twice as many wild horses as the BLM adopts out from all 10 states in a year, figures show.

From September 1999 to September 2000, only 39 of the Silver State's mustangs were adopted. Another 4,022 were taken to long-term pastures that the BLM contracts out for their care.

Can they actually find homes for 9,000?

"That's the question of the year," said Philip Guererro, spokesman for the BLM's Las Vegas field office.

The agency has hired a public relations firm to hawk the wild horse and burro adoption program. Guerrero says Nevada's adoption market is saturated. The BLM needs adoptive people in other states.

"In Las Vegas I think it's very clear to us that it's getting to be more and more difficult to find folks with the resources for adoption," he said.

Nationally, wild-horse advocates and watchdog groups have said the counts aren't accurate, and the range will support the animals.

But in Blue Diamond, even those who relish the daily sight of the animals -- especially that sweet-faced foal -- know it's only a matter of time before some won't be back.

"They'll have to take that little female," Leavitt said. "Her mother will kick her out anyway. She'll just go and start another herd or be inbred. And they're inbred enough already. They have to take them."

U.S. Census figures show all that we've gained out West over the past decade. But a little patch of grass in Blue Diamond shows what we're losing -- one horse at a time.