Counting Wild Horses – An Aerial Tour of Wild Horse Habitat

A long time ago when I was first dating Betsy, we took our mountain bikes out to some remote range in Nevada looking for wild horses.  We didn’t find any, and also found out sand and mountain bikes don’t go well together.  Now, with an airplane, I can cover a little more ground.   I did this flight for LightHawk (www.lighthawk.org) and a group of wildlife ecologists.  We flew over the Twin Peaks Herd Management area, a huge expanse of land with what seemed to me very little water or food.  Indeed, as you can imagine, anywhere there are creeks or springs that make the land usable that area is fenced off and private or at least leased from the BLM for private ranching.  The horses, burros and coyotes get the rest.  The flight data will be used to estimate the remaining population of the herd (after the fire and after BLM’s removal activities).

So, as you can see from the video, they live in an amazing place.  Hearty animals for sure.