No Longer Home on the Open Range

The 'Extreme Mustang Makeover' pits 100 professional horse trainers against 100 wild mustangs, plucked from the rangeland of the American West and handed over to a batch of horse whisperers who had 100 days to domesticate the animals before competing for $25,000 in prizes. A slice of Americana, the competition is also part of a more serious problem: keeping public land from being overgrazed by a horse population that if left unchecked doubles every four years, encroaching on private property and destroying natural vegetation. By showing these animals off, the federal Bureau of Land Management is hoping to increase public interest in adopting them. If that fails, they may ultimately have to thin the herds in more controversial ways, including selling the horses to 'killer buyers': middlemen who will take them to slaughter. Pictured: 'Helicopter cowboys' from the BLM round up wild mustangs in Wyoming. Today the BLM's official count of wild mustangs stands at 28,000. But nearly the same number are penned up in federal corrals, at a cost of $20-$50 million a year.