With the help of funding from a Malibu resident, cowboy Poss Chapman and others are fighting to save wild horses from slaughter in New Mexico.
By Ed Kamen / Special to The Malibu Times
Jonathan “Poss” Chapman doesn’t look like an old Southern Californian. The squint in his eye isn’t from the Pacific sun. His hard-bristled moustache isn’t flecked with sand and the only waves he rides are tall and golden and bend in the wind from the gentlest hilltop to the deepest valley.
Side-by-side, he and Malibu resident Randall Prouty couldn’t look more different-although Prouty spends more time outdoors and in worn boots and jeans than most successful entrepreneurs and businessmen-but they share a connection and a determination in the name of preservation.
Both are literally on their high horses over what is happening to the hundreds of thousands of wild horses that roam the public lands in this country.
The story begins in 1998. Bowing to pressure over cattle grazing rights and permits, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service began a program to gather up wild horses in an attempt to avoid over-grazing and starvation. Tens of thousands of wild horses were taken in. Although relocation and adoption programs were the goal, the reality was that most of the horses met a far worse fate.
One of the areas falling under the new program was the Jarita Mesa Wild Horse Territory in New Mexico, where Chapman collaborates with kindred spirit Sandi Claypool.
Claypool says most of the horses have wound up being transported to Canada or Mexico and destroyed. Many of the “adopters” were actually slaughterhouse workers. “Kill buyers,” they’re called. Chapman says 50,000 horses face slaughter this year for something as simple as grass.
“I don’t want to paint anyone with hooves and horns, but it’s terrible what is being done to these animals,” Chapman said.
So people like Chapman and Claypool did the only thing they were able to do. They adopted as many of the horses as they could. In 2003, Claypool and her late mother Ila founded Monero Mustangs, a nonprofit entity devoted to the preservation of wild horses, specifically the bloodlines of the Spanish horses, which came to the New World 500 years ago. Claypool wound up adopting 60 Spanish horses, among the many others she’d taken in.
“He and I have the same love for these horses,” Claypool said of Chapman. And, although it’s just a drop in the bucket of an overflowing problem, it’s making a difference in one small slice of New Mexico. Claypool’s bigger problem was where to put the horses she had.
Enter Randall Prouty.
His California company, World Associates, Inc., was looking for a suitable site for an agriculturally oriented sustainable community, a way for residents to use land in its most productive way. The site he found was called Yellow Hills Ranch near a small town called Tierra Amarilla, next to El Vado State Park, about 90 miles northwest of Santa Fe.
Since Pouty wanted to keep a large portion of the 4,700 acre ranch in Tierra Amarilla to remain an open range and Claypool was looking for a better living situation for the horses she had, it was a perfect match.
“It has been a perfect fit,” said Prouty of the 2008 move. “The horses are just amazing, beautiful. And Sandi is very dedicated to them.”
At 64, Claypool oversees the care of the horses, giving them as much freedom as possible. Today, there are 110 horses on the land, and although steps are taken to limit the birth rate, Prouty thinks there’s room to add perhaps 50-75 more. But, for the most part, the horses are on their own.
The results have been positive, as the horses have proven to be even more efficient than cows in the way they graze.
“Environmentally, they were much better for the land,” Prouty said. “They have a system to grazing. It’s how they’ve managed to have 40 generations, isolated, in a population living on their wits with difficult living conditions and found a way to survive.
“It’s a hopeful message,” he said, “that those horses can be a dynamic part of the fabric (of the environment) and part of their own solution, as well.”
And a solution is needed. Claypool said 100,000 horses-mostly domestic horses-are slaughtered every year.
There are other preserves around the country, but the location and draw of the Jarita Mesa Spanish horses has made Yellow Hills an area ripe for eco-tourism.
“Families can come out and spend time with the horses in a scenic location,” Prouty said.
“We’re trying to use the land in a productive way,” Prouty said. “People think the time has come for that, like the use of passive structures, for instance. We want to integrate agriculture in a way that makes sense.”
The property in Rio Arriba County has wild horses, elk and mountain lion among its wildlife. The Charma River, which leads to a lake, flows there and a state park is just across the street. If it sounds like heaven, imagine what the mustangs think. And that pleases Poss Chapman to no end.
“It would be nice to use our lands for something else but somebody else’s cows,” he said.
For more information about visiting Yellow Hills Ranch for a horse tour, go to www.yellowhillranch.com. Anyone wishing to sponsor one of the horses for a year or make a donation can contact Sandi Claypool on her website www.moneromustangs.org.