When Shane Adams heard a stampede of wild horses run by the area where he was camping eight years ago, he ran from his tent only to see his stallion, Mongo, join the herd and rush off into the Utah desert.
Small herd of wild horses on desert land
Thanks to federal officers with the Bureau of Land Management, Mongo, a much-loved horse, is returned to the family that has missed him for the past eight years
© 2017 by Mitch Barrie New window.
In less than five minutes, Mongo had joined the approximately 71,000 wild mustangs that roam the West, according to Bureau of Land Management figures.
Adams searched for years for the much-loved horse, and last week, when Mongo was returned by federal officers with the Bureau of Land Management the entire family rejoiced.
Seeing Mongo — now 18 years old and “a few hundred pounds” skinnier — brought back a flood of memories, the 40-year-old said.
It was during a roundup of wild horses in Tooele County, Utah, that the Bureau of Land Management found Mongo. Unlike the other horses, Mongo behaved like he had been trained in a previous life, and the brand on his coat was a sign that he wasn’t wild like the other mustangs.
In Utah, some 22 herds have called the state home since the 1800s, most of them descending from horses that banded together after escaping from early settlers and ranchers. They now live on nearly 2.4 million acres controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.
Since 1971, when Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses & Burros Act, the horses have been protected as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West.” But their mushrooming population has sometimes eroded Utah’s ecosystem.
In the midst of a severe drought, some of the horses haven’t been able to find enough to eat and drink. That’s why the Bureau of Land Management in September rounded up about 700 wild mustangs in the Cedar Mountain herd management area — where about 920 horses free-roam in a space with the appropriate resources to manage between 190 to 390.
Now that Mongo has returned home, Adams' goal is to get him back to a more healthy weight after years of free-roaming on scarce land.