Thread: Inmates train horses to protect America's borders {update}

Inmates train horses to protect America's borders
The U.S. Border Patrol wants to save money by establishing its own herds instead of leasing horses from vendors.
By TRACY HARMON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
CANON CITY - Eight prisoners will be "sprung" from captivity at the East Canon Prison Complex Monday to take up new lives working with law enforcement.

The prisoners are actually wild mustangs who have been at the prison complex since their capture on public lands. The free-range horses once roamed unclaimed and neglected.

While at the prison complex during the last six months, they received proper food, care and training - all provided by inmates working for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Colorado Correctional Industries Wild Horse Inmate Program.

The mustangs have been transformed into proper saddle horses with well-kept coats, manes and hooves. No longer are they wild animals but they still have free spirits.

The highly trained mustangs are ready to go to work with the U.S. Border Patrol agents under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, helping comb 308 miles of mountainous, rugged Canadian border lands in Washington, Idaho and Montana.


CHIEFTAIN PHOTOS/TRACY HARMON
Cupid the foal, so named because he was born on Valentine's Day, takes an early morning walk with his mother. Foal and mother later may become law enforcement horses.

"We are the only sector of among 20-plus throughout the nation to utilize mounted patrols," said LeAlan Pinkerton, assistant chief patrol agent in Spokane, Wash. "The reason we do is because we cover from the Cascade Mountains to the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains in Glacier National Park."

The only way for agents to patrol that section of the border is on foot or on horseback. The agents currently lease horses from vendors, but it is a cost-prohibitive venture.

"We are trying to establish our own horses to cut costs," Pinkerton said. "We have to pack in for four to five days to a week and it's very rocky terrain, so we need very durable horses."

The eight mustangs are the first to be trained in the pilot program.

In his younger days, Pinkerton worked as a logger in Burns, Ore., not far from a U.S. Bureau of Land Management wild horse capture program. Pinkerton recalled the mighty

mustangs when the agents began to consider options for establishing their own horse herd.
"Those mustangs have big, hard feet, big-boned legs, bulky hips and shoulders. They fit what we do and they are used to eating wild grasses, so we are probably not going to need to pack in the bulk of feed domestic horses need," Pinkerton said.

Agents working the Canadian border are not as busy as their southern border co-workers, Pinkerton said, but they still must be vigilant. Canada's immigration policies, which allow some foreigners to enter without visas, can unwittingly aid illegal immigrants who then enter the United States through its northern border.

Another target of the northern Homeland Security patrols is a Canadian grown high grade marijuana that is being brought into the United States by smugglers, Pinkerton said.

"We couldn't have found a more perfect fit for our needs," Pinkerton said of the wild horses.

For the past 18 years, BLM workers have rounded up wild horses on public lands, then turned them over for training by inmates at the prison complex. The eight horses going to Washington represent the states of California, Nevada, Wyoming and Colorado.


Fran Ackley, BLM director of the Wild Horse Program gives a pat to Ripples, one of the rare curly wild horses that was captured in Wyoming. Ripples is the Wild Horse Program's mascot.

"Three of the horses came from the Crooks Mountains in Wyoming, so I like to joke it is the cops riding the crooks," said Fran Ackley, BLM director of the Wild Horse Program.

Ackley said saddle-trained wild horses sell for a reasonable $1,000 and are in high-demand because buyers like getting horses that have been gentled.

"There is a market niche for the saddle-trained horses and they are in demand. I wish we could train more saddle horses because they are adopting out easier than the $125 (untrained horses)," Ackley said.

"We also have a halter-training program and those horses are proving to be very popular," he said.

Asked about the future, Ackley said he expects to see a change in the wild horse population.

"I think we will be looking to gather 5,000 to 6,000 horses a year instead of the 9,000 to 12,000 we are now. So we will be at a maintenance level instead of a surplus," Ackley explained.

The BLM also sells the saddle and halter trained horses to the public during auctions. DOC and the BLM maintain Web site information about burro or wild horse adoption.


CHIEFTAIN PHOTO/TRACY HARMON
Border Patrol agents and inmates take a trail ride on the open range land at the East Canon prison complex Thursday, which was led by McEnulty of the Wild Horse Inmate Program.
http://www.chieftain.com/metro/1176012099/4

They should go to Kentucky, there are thousands of unwanted wild horses down there.

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Customs agents patrol border on wild mustangs | KXNet.com North ...
KXMC - Sep 5, 2007
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Customs agents in Montana patrol U.S.-Canada border on wild mustangs
11 hours ago

KALISPELL, Mont. (AP) — Lean back in the saddle, point heels down, and let the horse pick his own way down the rocky slope. Trust the horse.

There's little other choice. The slope is at least 45 degrees, maybe steeper. It's also about 30 metres long. If a horse stumbles and falls, broken bones or worse are likely for the rider.

The slope is on the U.S.-Canadian border, a 12-metre-wide, endless straight line cut through the forest, a weird-looking contrast to the tall pines enveloping it on either side.

Also, it's in the middle of nowhere.

The spot is a three-hour ride from the nearest dirt road and a rarely used U.S. Border Patrol station. That station is a 2½-hour, back-road drive from Columbia Falls.

Three experienced U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents rode their horses single-file down the slope.

However, the horses are rookies.

These are formerly wild mustangs, captured on federal land, recently saddle broken.

The four - Chase, Hidalgo, Ike from Wyoming and Cisco from California - have been with the border patrol's Whitefish Station since June with agents James Perkins, Kevin Orr and Jeff Jeude, taking three at a time on patrol four days a week.

Customs and Border Protection began patrolling with contracted Tennessee walking horses in Glacier National Park late in the summer of 2006.

Prior to that, agents would patrol the rough, roadless wilds of northern Glacier on foot with occasional multi-day hikes.

Smuggling people and drugs through Glacier National Park's mountains, ravines, creeks, thick woods and heavy underbrush would be difficult and extremely time-consuming. Even the trails are rough and sometimes clogged with fallen timber.

Lots of backwoods savvy would be needed to survive the days it would take to hike from a Canadian back road through Glacier to reach an American back road.

No smuggler has ever been caught doing so.

But history and Hollywood are full of examples of people outflanking guards by going through seemingly impassable terrain.

So the border patrol, aided by strategically placed sensors that they won't discuss, keeps a routine eye on northern Glacier, with ground patrols looking for signs of someone sneaking across the border.

Horses cover more rugged ground much more quickly than hikers. So riding patrols began with rented Tennessee walkers - sure-footed with stable personalities and lots of stamina - in 2006.

The federal Bureau of Land Management routinely rounds up some wild mustangs each year to sell and to decrease the horses' impact on grazing lands.

This spring, the BLM gave eight mustangs to the border patrol. Prison inmates at Canon City, Colo., did the initial work in getting the two-to four-year-old horses ready for riders.

Then four mustangs went to the patrol's Spokane, Wash., station and four went to Whitefish in June.

So far, Perkins, Orr and Jeude are the only experienced horsemen at Whitefish. The station plans to begin seriously training the rest of its 10 agents - soon to grow to 15 - next summer on wilderness horse patrols.

The mustangs - sure-footed, energetic, frisky and tough, with a springier gait than the slightly bigger Tennessee walkers - are still getting used to not running free on their own.

Crossing creeks and rivers under human direction can be disconcerting to them. So can being prodded to go through or around thick underbrush and branches on forest trails. Actually, being ridden up and down the steep 30-metre-tall slope didn't faze the mustangs, who had to be kept from galloping uphill, but gingerly worked their way downhill.

But an agent can doff his hat and hold it out to the side, just within his mustang's peripheral vision, and be almost guaranteed that the horse will be spooked.

On this particular trip, sometimes a mustang ignored its rider to go where it wanted to.

That always led to the agent yanking the reins in one direction and spinning the horse in a circle as the rider growled in a partly subliminal lecture about who's the boss.

Orr claimed he would repeat "glue, glue, glue" to Chase when he misbehaved.

"They do everything we ask 'em to, but they're young horses and still figuring things out," Jeude said.

Perkins said: "We need to build more self-confidence in the horses. ... They're comin' around. They still need a lot of trail time."

Meanwhile, the three agents are also learning on their daily patrols.

Obscure trails meander about in northern Glacier and across the Canadian border. The agents know some. But they don't know all of the trails, and spend much of their patrol time becoming more familiar with the back country.

The agents look for signs of hikers - footprints, food wrappers, bottles. Once in a while, they'll meet and chat with hikers, the type of hardcore outdoors people who explore the outer limits of Glacier National Park.

All this translates to long, butt-numbing, back-nagging days.

That includes five hours daily on driving a horse trailer back and forth from Solona Farms near Whitefish where the horses are stabled. That also includes 20 to 30 kilometres a day in the saddle: another six to 10 hours.

On the trail, Perkins, Orr and Jeude swap tracking and mustang handling tips, or gossip.

Or they sing together, just like in a Roy Rogers flick.

Their favorite: "Mah Na Mah Na," a tune popularized by the Muppets.

All this leads to Border Patrol agents in felt cowboys hats and leather chaps riding mustangs in the high country, singing in a nasal twang followed by a falsetto:

"Mah-na-mah-na, doo-doo-di-doo-doo.

Mah-na-mah-na, doo-doo-di-doo.

Mah-na-mah-na, doo-doo-di-doo-doo, di-doo-doo, di-doo-doo-doo ... doo."


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