Navajo Nation Seeks To Balance Resources With Feral Horse Roundups and Slaughter

Ongoing drought and decades of overgrazing have devastated grasslands on the Navajo Reservation. With a wild, feral horse population in the tens of thousands, the tribe has made the difficult decision to round up as many of the animals as possible. Most of those horses will end up at a slaughterhouse in Mexico.  

At daybreak a group of Navajo cowboys hired by the tribe’s Department of Agriculture set up a corral at a lone windmill. Then they spread out on horseback and atv's in search of the animals. The man in charge, Ray Castillo, was scouting from a hilltop.

"As we were driving in, there was eight of them right down here," say's Ray. "So we figured we'd go after them first. The further in there we go, the more horses we're probably gonna start finding." 
 
This is a problem all over the Western United States. But on the reservation it’s estimated there are somewhere between 60,000 and 75,000 feral horses. Officials say that’s four times what the land can support. So the Navajo tribe has decided to round up as many as possible and sell them since stray horses are  dominating windmills, wells, natural springs, going to corrals, breaking into hay barns and causing damage. 

Kim Johnson runs the reservation grazing management program. She says earlier this summer the president issued an emergency drought declaration that earmarked 1.3 million dollars to deal with the feral horse problem. About 60 communities, more than half the reservation, have requested roundups.  
 
"There's also animals out there that are injured and nobodies there to take care of them," she says. "They are just dying
a slow death." Once rounded up,  the unbranded animals are immediately sent to auction. Kim says the unbranded ones are sold to buyers that are bonded by the Navajo Nation and she believes the destination is Mexico to a slaughter processing
plant.

With the horse market at an all time low, the Navajo Nation is getting somewhere between $10 and $20 per head.  A quarter of what it costs to bring them off the range.  Recently the tribe officially came out in support of a horse slaughter processing plant that’s trying to open closer to home, in  New Mexico.  A lawsuit has temporarily stopped it from happening.

Erny Zah is a spokesman for the Navajo Nation.  He says this has been a really difficult decision to make. "We have a kinship with all our surroundings and the horses, they are a part of our creation myth, they are a part of who we are as people. That's where those old ceremonies come in, of asking for their help by eating their meat, because at times during the winter months our people used to do that, to get strength. The animals are revered."

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As the sun climbs higher into the sky, a man who lives nearby pulls up and speaks to Zah. "He's saying that there's 80 horses over here that he knows of, that there's a 100 horses in these canyons back over here and that they come to this watering hole around noon," Zah explains. "So he's chuckling a little bit that they got an early start. He says horses don't run on human time."

Suddenly a herd of these wild, feral horses run, full tilt, toward the corral.  "You can see some coming down right there wher the dust is kicking up," Zah points out.  "And here they come, 7 horses. And they're in the corral now. That's just awesome." Throughout the day more than 40 horses are rounded up

"This is not something we came to as an abrupt solution," says Zah. "This is something we've weighed, we've thought about we've prayed about and this is the best way we see to manage our horse population."

Some members of the Navajo Nation say taking such drastic measures with a sacred animal should be reached through consensus. Zah says the president's office is just trying to manage the Nation’s resources responsibly.

Source: KUNM Radio by Rita Daniels