Someone is killing wild horses in Arizona. One woman is determined to find out who
, and other species nationwide are bumping up against human concerns that they’re becoming intrusive and endangering humans and livestock. The clashes raise questions that resonate beyond the Arizona forests: What does it mean for an animal to be free, and can the law truly protect that freedom?
“Horses are shot in very remote areas with no witnesses. They can remain undiscovered for days or weeks. The horses could have walked miles from where they were initially shot,” Alford says. “By the time we find the horses, sometimes they are in an advanced state of decomposition, or their carcasses could be scattered by predators or scavengers.”
While out walking on a quiet, chilly morning, Nixon suddenly stops. She looks down and points to the hip and pelvis bones of a stallion known as Big Daddy, all that’s left of the horse shot in the face in January 2019. A dead mare once lay next to him, and a second mare, Angel, was shot and crippled not too far away. Forest officials later euthanized Angel.
Soon, the blood bay mare would just be a skeleton. Her skull would show where the bullet hit her in the face. The skull of a mare, that was part of a band led by a black stallion known as Midnight, shows a bullet hole directly in the middle of its headThe history of wild horses in Americawild horses, originally known as mustangs, from Spain in the 1500s. Today’s wild horses in Arizona may be descendants of the Spanish mustangs, but many have bred with ranch and farm horses.
But Francisco says the horses are paying the price for a “two-legged problem,” humans arguing over whose land-use rights take precedence. “The horses lose the most,” says Francisco, who has horses of her own and says the shootings make her “extremely angry.” “It makes all of us infuriatingly mad that someone would do this.”Bryan Schutmaat for TIME
"If I'm going to have a ranch 50 years from now, it's got to support all the wildlife, if it's going to be good for my cattle."Nelson Shirley pays for a permit for his cattle to graze on the land but says the horses have decimated some stretches. “The horses are scouring it down to the dirt,” says Shirley.
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