Wild Horse Wellbeing
An Interview with Dr. Christine Reed
Dr. Christine Reed is a PAN Works Research Fellow with expertise in the ethics of public management of free-roaming horses, focusing especially on those living within the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range. Her endeavor to support their wellbeing has taken shape in contributions to research, policy work, writing, and photography. Christine’s work is informed by Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach, wherein she seeks to unearth a new way of relating to wild horses and, through advocating for the compassionate conservation of their species, strives to promote their individual and community flourishing.
Kim Hightower: How did you come to this place in your career, particularly in terms of your focus on protecting free-roaming horses?
Dr. Christine Reed: My academic and professional background is in public administration. My teaching and research emphasis since joining the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1982 has been public law and environmental ethics. In 2004, I started to focus my research on federal protection of free-roaming horses as an example of species protection policies. Then in 2009, I attended a photography workshop on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, and when the Wild Horse Specialist from the BLM field office came to visit our group and explain about the public management of free-roaming horses on the PMWHR, I decided to delve into local policies and practices. I spent several summers there while I conducted interviews and documentary research for my 2015 book, Saving the Pryor Mountain Mustang: A Legacy of Local and Federal Cooperation. Since my retirement from the faculty in 2019, I have begun to explore how to apply different approaches in animal ethics to the assessment of BLM practices. I met Bill Lynn while he was a section editor of Society & Animals. He mentored me throughout the peer review process and introduced me to compassionate conservation, then to PAN Works.
KH: How did your passion for photographing free-roaming horses come about? Is there an encounter (or two or three) that especially stands out in your mind from your many sightings and photography sessions?
CR: A friend gave me a book of photographs taken on the PMWHR, and I discovered that the author ran photography workshops! I joined one in 2009, and then returned for several more before I struck out on my own. Most of the photographs on my website are from there.
I have organized the photo galleries around themes, such as social lives and different color patterns found in this herd. Each image reflects an important encounter with the Pryor horses. Of course, I use a very long telephoto lens!
KH: Can you talk a bit about current policies and practices in need of reform?
CR: My involvement as an advisor to the nonprofit Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center board has focused on the herd management area planning process for the PMWHR. I am not well versed in current policies and practices that need to be changed or reform efforts at the national level, but I do follow news feeds from American Wild Horse Conservation. Large-scale removals of horses are a persistent problem, especially when the BLM uses helicopters in the large herd management areas. Long-term pastures take up a large percent of the BLM’s budget, and I do not believe that wild horses can possibly thrive in those environments. If the BLM spends its appropriations on large-scale removals, then it can’t focus on any sustainable solutions, such as temporary fertility control. It’s a vicious cycle. Then, there are multiple uses of public lands, such as cattle ranching, that predated federal legislation to protect free-roaming horses and overlap with herd management areas. Ranchers have an outsized influence on the BLM because of that agency’s original mission to regulate grazing and protect natural resources on public lands. The PMWHR was created by Executive Order in 1968 as a wild horse-only refuge restricting other uses to recreation. I continue to focus my work on this Range, because it is possible to envision what public management of free-roaming horses could look like without the divisive politics that surround national politics. There is a long tradition of cooperation between the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center and the BLM field office that has resulted in major accomplishments, like temporary fertility control. As an advisor to the Mustang Center’s board, I am able to participate in the Center’s ongoing collaborative work with the BLM field office.
KH: Where do you spend your time now, and what does your work both advocating for and photographing horses look like today?
CR: I return to the PMWHR every summer both to photograph the Pryor horses and to work with the Mustang Center. I have also collaborated with the Director on a couple of new research projects that we have presented at the Equine History Collective’s conferences.
KH: Are there specific groups working for change that give you hope for a better future for horses?
CR: Cooperation between local nonprofit organizations and BLM field offices give me hope for a better future. The Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center and the Billings, Montana field office is one example. Others include Friends of the Mustangs with the Little Book Cliffs herd management area in Colorado; and Friends of a Legacy (FOAL) with the McCullough Peaks HMA outside Cody, Wyoming.
KH: You say with such eloquence on your website that “photographing free-roaming horses is another invaluable opportunity to learn what it means for them to flourish.” What does it mean, in your words, for free-roaming horses to flourish?
CR: I use that term to express what philosopher Martha Nussbaum means when she says that in order for animals to flourish, they need opportunities in their environment to exercise their natural capabilities. I rely on her Capabilities Approach as an ethical baseline from which to assess BLM practices, with a focus on the PMWHR, in my research publications. I also hope that my photographs express what that means for free-roaming horses!
Kim Hightower is the associate editor for PAN Works.
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