Rancher and author Dayton O. Hyde saw hundreds of wild horses in a Bureau of Land Management feedlot in Nevada in 1986. The animals had been removed from public rangelands and were among horses the federal adoption program had not placed in private homes. Hyde's response was to imagine a large tract of land where unwanted mustangs could live in herds rather than remain in holding facilities. Two years later, that idea became the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary in southwestern South Dakota, and covered 11,000 acres.
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