Diana Cervantes

Visual Journalist
   
Inside a Wild Horse Ranch Pt. 1
Location: Brooklyn, NYC
Nationality: Hispanic
Biography: Diana Cervantes is an Independent Visual Journalist based in New York City and her hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Cervantes focuses on long-form visual narratives in conservation efforts, the environment, unique intimate bonds between humans... MORE
Public Story
Inside a Wild Horse Ranch Pt. 1
Copyright Diana Cervantes 2024
Date of Work Feb 2019 - Feb 2019
Updated Nov 2019
Topics Animals, Documentary, Photography, Photojournalism
Jackie Fleming first witnessed the magnitude of wild-horse holding pens when she visited Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, in 2010. “They had about 600 horses ... all the pens filled with horses. I couldn’t believe it,” she said. Those horses were rounded up — as they still are — by the Bureau of Land Management from states throughout the West to maintain appropriate wild horse populations. The practice, along with fertility treatment, is the BLM's main strategy for keeping horse numbers at a level that won't damage the ecosystems they inhabit. The BLM estimates Western rangeland can support only one-third of the current 82,000-strong horse population, but the agency's strategy has long been controversial. Horse advocates argue that livestock grazing on BLM land have a much greater impact than free-ranging horses. In 2017, the BLM authorized grazing for the equivalent of 677,000 cow-calf pairs. /Shot and written for Bitterroot Magazine

After visiting Pauls Valley, Fleming decided to begin adopting from the BLM. “It was like the floodgates opened up after I saw those pens,” she said. “I came home, and I was like, ‘I have to go back and get a few more.'”

Fleming’s ranch in northeastern New Mexico is home to 41 horses, but that’s a drop in the bucket: BLM is still holding more than 50,000.

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