Wild horse and burro auction held at Sonoma County Fairgrounds

Teri Bowman took her time eying a buckskin yearling with a dark, spiky “Punky Brewster” mane, wondering if the mustang gelding would make a good companion for Cash, the horse she has at home.

Bowman, a Santa Rosa resident, said Cash's “soulmate” - a quarter horse mare named Sayka - recently died and left Cash depressed, uninterested in food or much else. She said Cash often goes over to the site where Sayka is buried and lays on her grave.

“I really just want to give a good home to one of these mustangs,” Bowman said Saturday as she stood near a steel pipe fence where the gelding and a handful of other mustang yearlings were corralled during a weekend adoption event organized by the Bureau of Land Management at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.

“But I also want to make the right match,” she said. “It's guess work, really, for your horse at home.”

Dave Christy, a spokesman for BLM, said the wild mustangs, about 13 of them, as well as 10 wild burros, come from federal range land in northeast California and Nevada, where herds of wild horses are allowed to run largely run free.

More than 67,000 mustangs and wild burros roam across 10 western states, more than desired overall herd size. Half of the animals live on BLM land in Nevada.

The federal government, under the authority of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, manages, protects and controls the equines, and is authorized to remove excess horses and burros from the range to sustain the health and productivity of the land for other livestock and wildlife.

The roundups have drawn the ire of animal activists, who say that the removals are inhumane.

Christy said that about 1,800 equines are adopted each year, not enough to curb the wild population. Because they are wild, once trained, mustangs make great trail horses as they are hardy animals with hard feet. Some owners do not shoe their hooves, Christy said.

Once captured from the wild, the equines are sent to regional preparation centers where they are corralled until they are adopted. Some stay at the facilities for several years. Those who do not get adopted are put out to pasture in the Midwest, said Christy.

None of the horses are sold or used for commercial purposes, such as being slaughtered for food or used as rodeo bucking stock. Those who choose to adopt an equine must sign an agreement that they will not use the horse for such purposes, and the federal government monitors the adoption for a period to ensure the animal is safe, Christy said.

“If we find out they did that, they could be prosecuted for perjury because they lied on a federal document,” he said.

The adoption fee is $125, but caring for the horse is a big responsibility, amounting to hundreds of dollars a month for boarding and feed, Christy noted.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at (707) 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.