The 'Wild' Horses of Cloudcroft: Who Cares for Them?

Free-ranging horse herds roam the area, and they probably will for some time.

All the Pretty Horses

Spend time in Cloudcroft, and you are likely to spot a herd of horses freely roaming — from grazing on the Lodge Golf Course or Sleepy Grass campgrounds to crossing Highway 82.

Just Friday morning, a dozen horses were spotted parading by Zenith Park on Grand Avenue.

A common question posed by locals and visitors alike: What’s the story with the wild horses?

Laws (and their Limits)

In the United States, many herds are protected under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, but not the Cloudcroft herds.

Former area Game Warden-now-Lincoln National Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer Kurt Felix says that in 1971:

"Cloudcroft horses were not included in these established herd management maps. So either there was a lack of data or our horses became more established through escape, feral, since then. That pretty much means that the horses here have zero federal management or protection.”

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) directs the management and protection of wild horses on public lands. The act was created to address “mustangers” and their inhumane treatment of horses being sold for slaughter.

Since protection under the act, free-roaming horse populations have exploded on public and tribal lands, and their neighboring communities.

While photos of the majestic creatures are shared on social media and lauded as symbols of the West, Cloudcroft's free-ranging horse herds remain unmanaged, raising ecological and safety concerns.

Feral vs. Wild: The Big Deal with Designation

It all comes down to designation—are these horses wild, or are they feral?

A feral animal, or stray, exhibits wild traits after escape from captivity or domestication.

A wild animal lives in its natural state without human control or care.

Cloudcroft’s horses aren’t designated as wild—but aren’t treated as strays.

When we see a stray dog or cat, we try to feed it and find its owner. The same impulse is there when we see the new “wild” foal at the golf course, whom the groundskeepers tenderly call “Nellie.”

Nellie is sweet. She will approach us for pets, which we happily indulge in—but only when the herd’s aggressive stallion is away.

The golf course maintenance crew regularly shoos the herd from the course, both to keep them away from patrons and to protect the greens.

Nellie is adorable. She is gangly-legged, has a chestnut coat, and has a white diamond face.

Who is entrusted with Nellie’s care? The answer is frustratingly elusive.

Economic Lure or Ecologic Mess?

Proponents of free-roaming horse herds remaining “wild” cite economic benefits through heritage tourism and the case for wildfire management.

For detractors, unmanaged horse herds create concerns about unsustainable populations and ecological damage.

Another danger they present is harm to humans, especially if tourists who think they are friendly pets approach them without caution.

Recently, in the small community of Lost Lodge, immediately west of Cloudcroft village limits, two residents were separately attacked by the same stallion, with one victim’s injuries warranting a 3-day hospital stay.

Unlike other large wild animals like deer and elk, the horses here have a small flight zone, meaning they will let humans get very close.

Roaming horses cause car accidents, which former Cloudcroft Police Chief Mike Testa fears are a liability for the village. “For a while, we were getting calls because people don’t understand why there are loose horses on the highway,” says Testa

When asked about whose jurisdiction the Cloudcroft horses fall under if there is a problem, Testa says, “That’s the thing, nobody’s. It’s going to become an issue. What do we do?”

Unlike other large grazing mammals, horses that roam off public lands currently don’t fall under any expected entity’s purview: the Forest Service, Game and Fish, nor the Village Police Department—an issue since Cloudcroft’s horse herds don’t fall under BLM protection.

New Mexico is an open-range state, meaning that if you don’t want livestock or other large animals on your private property, you are responsible for fencing them out.

According to my interview with the deputy director for the NM Livestock Board, the New Mexico State Department of Agriculture assumes responsibility for the horses. The Cloudcroft Reader reached out in March and again in July but had not received a response as of this writing.

Editor’s note: On Thursday, July 18th, an NMDA representative called and gave us a lot more information and suggestions about who to ask about the horses. It turns out that NMDA has no programs that involve horses, only dairy cows.

They suggested we contact the governor’s office.

We did, seeking a resolution for all of your and our unanswered questions. We look forward to publishing our findings soon.

Here is a portion of our conversation:

NMDA Special/Executive Administrative Assistant Hevila Ramos-Ricknerhaynes said, “There's no real direct question to answer or real direct answer to your question, basically.

There is, as far as who manages or who would be in charge of this sort of area, we're looking at, first question to ask: is this a question of ownership of whether the horse or horses are wild or astray?

Meaning that they've had owners previously, but now they're, you know, they don't have owners anymore. Now they're just wandering about, which is defined by the livestock board.

If these horses aren't true, like feral or wild horses, then the livestock board would be your first first stop now.

If they are wild horses, then it becomes a question of whose land are they on?

Are they on BLM land? Are they on Forest Service land? Things to that nature.

The Cloudcroft Reader also contacted the Sacramento District Wildlife Biologist Phillip Hughes several times about the horses but has yet to receive a response.

On the Lincoln National Forest “Nature & Science” page, Wild Horses are listed as “wildlife of interest,” alongside Bald Eagles and Mountain Lions.

However, according to the Federal Register,

“Feral horses were inadvertently released onto the Lincoln National Forest around 2012. Horses are not native to the Sacramento Mountains and add significant browse pressure to meadows.”

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, opponents of the horse herd presence in the Sacramento Mountains call for their management because they destroy riparian and other endangered species’ ecosystems, cause soil damage, and affect the watershed.

Beyond small species concerns, hunters and conservationists fret over horses’ displacement of larger mammals like deer, bighorn sheep, and elk from water sources.

Predators like mountain lions, who can more easily feed on more vulnerable species yet increase in number due to predator-mediated apparent competition—are yet another issue.

Our Neighbors’ Lessons and Litigation

Horse herds also freely roam Ruidoso, Alto, and the Mescalero Apache Reservation.

Cloudcroft Reader received video footage from equine advocate Myranda Tortilla. The gut-wrenching footage is of one injured, starved, and sick horse in the Ruidoso area, under no one’s legal care.

Tortilla contacted the NM Livestock Board, and Cloudcroft Reader followed up with the board’s Deputy Director, Shawn Davis.

An injured and malnourished wild horse in Alto. Screenshot of a video shared on June 6th, 2024

Davis spoke with me about different court rulings that affect the board’s ability to intervene.

Davis says,

“In regard to those Alto horses and then by that definition, the Ruidoso horses and other horses in the state, like the Placitas area—those horses are considered wild horses under 77-18-5.

In those decisions and in the Court of Appeals decisions, it's stated simply that the Livestock Board did not have jurisdiction over those horses, mainly because they don't show signs of being domesticated.”

Davis continues,

“So for them to fall under the Livestock Code or Livestock Definition, they've had a halter on them where they were carrying… you can see where they've had saddle marks on their backs or some type of thing that would give us an idea that someone had owned those horses at one time.”

In 2016, Alto residents had one horse herd rounded up and removed for auction. The herd landed on a ranch with adequate food and water sources near Carizzozo.

However, advocacy groups swiftly called for the horse herd’s return via lawsuit and won.

(During the recent South Fork and Salt Fires, folks were rightly concerned for the Alto herds’ safety. Videos and photos of many of the horses were posted online, showing them out of harm’s way in Ruidoso’s midtown during the blaze. No updates on the herd’s welfare in the ensuing flash floods have been received at this time.)

Legal barriers to the care or adoption of free-ranging horses in New Mexico have been in place well before the Alto herd’s return to the area.

In 1994, then-Attorney General Tom Udall ruled similarly for horses on the White Sands Missile Range.

“In their decisions, they stated that the livestock board doesn't have jurisdiction over them, then nobody does,” says Davis.

So literally those horses have no one, they're not held under any jurisdiction. We can't touch them. We can't estrange them. We can't do anything with them, you know, whether they're on public or private property.

We have no jurisdiction over them.”

“That's the problem with this ruling and the way that the law was written by people who thought they were doing the horses some good. The problem is that nobody has any jurisdiction or any obligation to care for those horses.

Someone could have given that horse care, but no one's obligated to.

And, you know, the people that put those laws into place, they thought they were doing the best thing for the horses. But like most of those people with good intentions, they did the wrong thing.”

Lincoln National Forest isn’t the only area where horses are suffering. Nearly 200 wild horses died of thirst in the mud of a former watering hole near Gray Mountain in Arizona in 2018.

The scope of how exactly the horses should be cared for or managed varies, ranging from contraception to adoption to hunting.

The Navajo Nation recently proposed a hunt for their overpopulated herds—but public outcry quickly shut down their solution—a ruling delivered from the court of opinion.

The Courts of Law and Opinion

In 2023, the New Mexico legislature tried to address the proliferation of herds that affect communities like Ruidoso, Alto, and Cloudcroft.

The proposed bill, NM SB301, died in committee.

One horse advocacy group, WHOA, pushed for legislation to designate the Alto area horse herds as wild, retroactively covered by the 1971 Act. The 2019 Wild Horse Protection & Habitat Act was postponed indefinitely.

Shawn Davis says that WHOA (The Wild Horse Observers Association)is responsible for a lot of the legal decisions surrounding our horses.

“There's been attempts by legislators to do something over the last few years to approach this subject and to work on it. And it always gets killed, mainly by animal rights activist groups like WHOA. It's the people that kill it.

They don't want anyone touching those horses, and they think it's natural for those horses to get sick and die, even like that bay horse that was in Ruidoso that you just referenced,” says Davis.

Legal issues aren’t the only barriers affecting the horse controversy—the courts of public opinion have stopped management solutions in their tracks.

At an “All Voices Summit” at New Mexico State University, the sovereign Navajo Nation proposed a small horse hunt of non-protected equines on their reservation in response to drought, a strategy that was quickly vetoed due to public outcry.

In the words of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “If you crush a cockroach, you're a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you're a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria.”

Legal Guardians

Those entrusted with free-ranging horse management are frustrated.

Dr. Tolani Francisco, the Wild Horse and Burro Coordinator for the National Forest Service and BLM and a member of the Pueblo of Laguna Tribe, discusses public sentiments that drive people to interfere with special-status horse management (from the Meateater Podcast in 2018):

“We have the responsibility to try and keep this land usable…beautiful. It’s hard in these arid areas.

We lose [our] sense because of what Hollywood gives us. We see Hidalgo…that’s what [people] associate, not the reality that horses are starving to death, 192 are dying of thirst, stuck in the mud,” says Francisco.

“The problem is litigation— we settle things in courts of law with people who have probably not even smelled a horse.”

When Congress declares that “wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West…they are to be considered in the area where presently found, as an integral part of the natural system of the public land,” how can federal agencies proceed?

While the act later states ecological concerns, the burden of cost and the public’s emotional attachment tie the hands of those entrusted with their management.

Dr. Francisco understands the cultural views that divide the public:

“You get a different look with people from rural communities outside of urban areas where people don’t know where their food or fiber comes from. Every fall people sell their steers off so you can eat your steak—people are very separated from that.

To them, every horse is Secretariat…Black Beauty. There is a huge responsibility in keeping those animals to where they don’t damage the landscape. The loss of interconnectedness, separation from animal life, is part of the responsibility problem.”

While the BLM is responsible for wild horse management and removals, the cost of housing the horses while they find humane placements has become unsustainable.

According to one National Geographic piece from 2017:

“The vast majority of the BLM’s budget goes to feeding horses in holding pens, which limits the agency’s ability to gather other horses off the range.

Without the budget or facilities to round up and hold enough horses to equal the birth rate, the population in the wild has increased to nearly three times the Appropriate Management Level.”

According to this 2016 BLM article, the costs for the BLM wild horse storage, which involves leasing private lands for grazing, will be nearly $1 billion of taxpayer dollars for horses in their care over the course of their lives—about $50,000 per horse.

Potential management strategies range from these costly BLM round-ups, adoption programs, sterilization and contraception initiatives, and even slaughter.

There is no clear indication anything will change soon. The government isn’t even sure how many horses roam free now, and the herds are proliferating.

The Trail Ahead

When asked how many free-ranging horses roam our nation, even the experts are unsure.

"We just don't know. It's an issue,” says Dr. Francisco.

An issue, and more. How long will it go unresolved?

According to the Federal Register, in 2021, there were 60,000 feral horses in the Sacramento Mountains.

With our horses meriting designation neither as stray nor wild, they remain unmanaged—with both immediate and long-term effects.

If our horses are deemed feral in court, the horses could be cared for, adopted, and managed through various private solutions.

If they are deemed wild in a court of law, the horses may be treated like other large wildlife in the public sphere through disease tracking, population management by hunting or removal, and more.

If resolutions remain on the current trail of court rulings, all signs point to well-meaning advocates standing in the way of common-sense management.

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