From the Chronicles of the Heber Wild Horse Herd Part 18

After the 2005 Temporary Restraining Order was issued preventing the Forest Service from rounding up and removing the Heber herd one of the failed arguments by those wanting the horses removed was that they were feral trespass horses from the White Mountain Apache Reservation and therefore not wild. The anti Heber herd people believed that claim would make the horses fair game for capture and removal. They had nothing to back up their claim that the horses were trespass and not descendants of horses brought in by the early explorers and settlers. However, there is plenty of historical data to support that the horses descended from horses introduced into the area as early as the 16th century. But that’s really a moot point as Patricia Haight aka the Heber Wild Horse Annie succinctly stated the following comment in 2008.

“However, the Wild Horse and Burro Act makes no distinction between an unbranded, free-roaming, unclaimed horse of Spanish descent or of any other descent as a wild horse under the law so the Spanish lineage, while clearly there in some Apache Sitgreaves wild horses, is irrelevant to their status under the Act. The unbranded, unclaimed, free-roaming horses in the Apache Sitgreaves National Forests are wild horses protected under the Act. The Spanish history of some or all of them certainly adds to the richness of the culture and history of the area but has no bearing on their protected status under the Act.” Patricia Haight, Ph.D.
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Old Buck’s son from a bay mare. He was 3 years old at the time this photo was taken in 2017.