Pryor Mountains Wild Horse Range

Pryor Mountains Wild Horse Range
IUCN category IV (habitat/species management area)
Location	Carbon County, Montana, and Big Horn County, Wyoming, United States
Nearest city	Billings, Montana
Coordinates	45°03′12″N 108°19′21″W / 45.05333°N 108.32250°W / 45.05333; -108.32250Coordinates: 45°03′12″N 108°19′21″W / 45.05333°N 108.32250°W / 45.05333; -108.32250
Area	39,650 acres (160.5 km2)
Established	September 9, 1968
Governing body	Bureau of Land Management
Website	Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range

The Pryor Mountains Wild Horse Range is a refuge for a historically significant herd of free-roaming Mustangs, feral horses colloquially called "wild horses", located in the Pryor Mountains of Montana and Wyoming in the United States. The range has an area of 39,650 acres (160.5 km²) and was established in 1968 along the Montana–Wyoming border as the first protected refuge dedicated exclusively for Mustangs. It was the second feral horse refuge in the United States. About a quarter of the refuge lies within the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. A group of federal agencies, led by the Bureau of Land Management, administers the range.

Because of the unique genetic makeup of the Pryor Mountains Mustang herd, equine geneticist Dr. E. Gus Cothran concluded in 1992 that "the Pryor herd may be the most significant wild-horse herd remaining in the United States." Dr. D. Phillip Sponenberg, equine veterinarian at Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, agreed, noting, "[These animals] don't exist anywhere else."

In 1900, there were two to five million feral horses in the United States. However, their numbers were in steep decline as domestic cattle and sheep competed with them for resources. After the mid-1930s, their numbers fell even more drastically due to intervention by the U.S. government. The United States Forest Service and the U.S. Grazing Service (the predecessor to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)) began to remove feral horses from federal land. The two agencies were concerned that there were too many horses on the land, which led to overgrazing and significant soil erosion. Ranchers wanted the feral horses removed because they were grazing on land ranchers wanted to use for their own livestock. Hunters were worried that as horses degraded range land, hunting species would also suffer. It was not clear that there were too many horses, or that the land was incurring damage due to the presence of the horses. Nonetheless, both agencies responded to political pressure to act, and they began to remove hundreds of thousands of feral horses from federal property. From 1934 to 1963, the Grazing Service (and from 1946 onward, the BLM) paid private contractors to kill Mustangs and permitted their carcasses to be used for pet food. Ranchers were often permitted to round up any horses they wanted, and the Forest Service shot any remaining animals.