Around 75 symbols of the American West visited Lake Waccamaw Friday and Saturday, and a number of them stayed here in Columbus County.
The Bureau of Land Management brought wild horses and burros from Nevada, Arizona and Utah to the Boys and Girls Home Expo Center as part of an adoption program. Some of the animals were reserved in the BLM online “corral,” while others were picked out by local horse lovers.
The BLM mustang program was founded during the Nixon administration to help control herds of wild horses and donkeys on public lands, mainly in the western states. Public outcry over the slaughter of mustangs and the sale of captured horses to meat markets led BLM to begin rounding up, sterilizing, and confining horses. The horses and donkeys – descendants of animals released into the wild by settlers and others after the advent of automobiles – can have a negative impact on sensitive ecosystems as well as endangered and native species.
While most of the visitors to the Expo Center Friday and Saturday were horse enthusiasts, many of the crowd on both days were just interested to see the wild horses. The horses were divided into three age categories: one to two years, two to four, and five and up. Donkeys were grouped together.
Under the BLM mustang program, equines are sold for $125 each to qualified applicants. Some owners can qualify for a $1,000 grant if they agree to maintain the horse after it is trained.
