Craig Downer Explains The Importance of Wild Horses Roaming Free

The Human-Animal Studies Department and ASUR hosted the last Human-Animal Studies Fall Lecture of the three-part series on Nov. 17. The last lecture consisted of a presentation by wildlife ecologist and the president of the Andean Taper Fund, Craig Downer, on the importance of protecting the wild horses of the west. Downer started the presentation with a 30-minute documentary where he was a scientific consultant on Wild Horses of the Nevada Desert. The movie was an introduction to how horses were originally introduced to America, through Spanish explorers entering the North American continent. It also gave detailed descriptions on the laws and regulations against wild horses and their fight for survival with help from individuals like Downer. Downer explained there are objections in the cattle industry with wild horses, which graze on their land. Cattle ranchers hold that when wild horses eat all the food on the land, there is no food leftover for their roaming cows. Downer commented that the cattle industry is “very large and powerful,” which in turn makes it hard for wild horses to have a fighting chance when collected in cages called bureaus. These are where the horses are captured by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in order to stop overgrazing on cattle ranches. The BLM is the department in which the government is assigned to regulate the “wild horse problem.” Downer believes that although the BLM are supposed to somewhat protect the wild horses, the state in which these horses are in due to the fact they are in captivity is "appalling." He shared, "We have a natural connection to horses, a mutualistic symbiosis between horse and man. We wouldn’t be where we are today without horses and the bureaus. They’ve been the protection of man, and now they are being blames for what man did.” Toward the end of the lecture, Downer and his colleague and longtime friend Randal Massaro, a U.S. representative for an underground wildlife advocacy group, called the Preservation of Wildlife, said, “The amount of money spent by tax payers to put down wild horses is way up in the millions,” and because of this, through their research, they believe that there are about 30,000 wild horses roaming the United States because of their captivity and their killings. Downer expressed that he was always in love with horses from a young age. He had a horse himself living in Nevada, called Poko. He mentioned, “I really feel horses are the healers upon the earth and I have personally felt that myself.”