Speaking for the Horses Wild horses find hope in Challis
PHOTO BY ANDREA MAKI
BY MIKE MCKENNA
T
here are moments in life when it seems like fate whispers to us. For Andrea Maki, fate didn’t so much whisper as whinny. In 2009, Andrea—an artist and photographer from Seattle—found herself in the mountains of Idaho, not too far from the Salmon River. She had a chance to encounter horses from the Challis Herd Management Area (HMA) during a round-up. Wild horses thrive around Challis, one of a half-dozen HMAs in the state. To keep populations at bay, every few years helicopters are usually used to round up
the horses and remove them from the wild. While some of the horses will go on to be adopted, others won’t be so lucky, and none of them will ever be wild and free again— at least that used to be the case. When Andrea witnessed the round-up she could feel the pain and fear the horses were going through. “I made a promise to those horses that I would try to help, “ Andrea says, and she has been keeping that promise ever since. Over 460 wild horses were roaming around Challis that year, in terrain that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) says can only maintain healthy populations in the 185-250 range. The 167,848-
acre HMA is also home to other wildlife as well as grazing allotments for cattle ranchers. Miners and ranchers who first brought livestock to the region in the 1870s are said to be much of the original source of the Challis herd, but there are beliefs that wild horses’ history in the area runs much longer than that. The genetics of the Challis herd include New World Spanish, Heavy Draft, and even True Pony. The wild breeds of Challis are considered large horses for such rugged, mountainous terrain. The black, gray, and reddish-brown colored horses can be 14 to 16 hands and weigh up to 1,000 pounds.
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