Wild Horses Kick Up a Cloud in Palm Canyon

PALM SPRINGS —  If you ride an hour or more up Palm Canyon, out of the lush oases and into the rugged desert beyond, you might catch a glimpse of the wild horses that roam here.

Sheltering under California fan palms and cottonwood trees, drinking from a spring-fed trough and munching native grasses, wild grapes and honey mesquite, the dun-colored horses blend into the rocky landscape, looking for all the world like they were born to this land.

But they weren’t. Instead, say officials with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, most of the animals have been illegally introduced in recent years by people in love with the romantic ideal of wild horses in the canyon.

And this has created a headache for rangers with the BLM and the local Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians, who share control of the land. Though environmentalists say the animals do not belong in the fragile canyon, where they compete with native species for water and food, members of a Palm Springs equestrian group see the wild horses as a legacy of the area’s rustic past.

“It’s part of the Old West,” said Desert Riders president Carole Gans. “This is an outdoor museum. This is the heritage and history of these mountains, and it would be unfortunate if it all disappeared.”

Indeed, Palm Canyon has had wild horses for decades, beginning with stragglers left behind on Spanish trails between New Mexico and California.

The animals received protection from the Bureau of Land Management under the federal Wild Horse and Burro Act in 1971, said Alex Neibergs, a BLM wild horse specialist. But the punishing terrain and possible mountain lion predation took a toll. By the mid-1990s the herd had dwindled to a single aging palomino mare.

Local horse lovers resolved not to let the herd disappear. In 1997--without official sanction--they released a stallion and three mares secured through the BLM’s wild horse adoption program from herds in Nevada, Neibergs said.

Who reintroduced the animals is a matter of debate. Neibergs said members of Desert Riders have acknowledged releasing the horses into the canyon. Rocky Toyama, tribal ranger director for the Agua Caliente Indians, also pointed to Desert Riders. “They brought them by helicopter,” he said. “They spent a lot of money to bring those horses up there.”

Gans said she knows nothing of the reintroduction. But Desert Riders member and former Palm Springs Mayor Frank Bogert, 90, offered a more ambiguous comment.

“We got more wild horses from the government and put them up in Palm Canyon,” he said, then added: “Desert Riders didn’t have anything to do with putting them up there.”

There are now eight horses in the Palm Canyon herd: four reintroduced animals, three of their offspring and the old palomino. The BLM’s management plan for the area allows for a herd of six horses. The agency had anticipated that number would soon drop to zero.

Although they came from wild herds, the reintroduced animals are now deemed domestic under law and aren’t covered by the Wild Horse and Burro Act, Neibergs said. The BLM and the tribe must now decide whether to let the herd remain, capturing and removing only new offspring, or to remove all the horses from the canyon now. Safety and environmental concerns complicate that decision.

Though the animals draw horse lovers, they can threaten inexperienced riders. Two women on horseback tumbled from their mounts in 1999 when the wild horses charged, Toyama said. The riders were not seriously hurt, but the tribe closed the trail through the horse habitat as a precaution, he said. The trail has since reopened with a warning sign.

“Riders would go and look for the wild horses and try to get close to them,” he said. “That’s the problem. You’re in wild horse territory; they don’t want you around.”

The horses, which pasture in peninsular bighorn sheep habitat, may compete with that endangered species for water and forage, officials said. Environmental plans in the works by local officials and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will consider whether the species can coexist.

Local environmentalists say the wild horses erode hillsides and muddy streams in the pristine canyon. The horses themselves live a hardscrabble life; they nearly perished during a drought last year until tribal officials improved a spring to make water more available.

Yet the free-ranging horses carry great cultural currency for longtime desert dwellers, who have watched the remains of a frontier lifestyle--cattle drives, mining and horse corrals--vanish within their lifetimes.

Desert Riders has pledged to help provide veterinary care and housing to the horses should officials decide to remove them, said Gans, 62.

“People who have been coming out there for years know there are horses there,” Gans said. “They bring their cameras, they hike all the way out there, they look all over with binoculars, and it’s a real thrill when you see them.”