But in recent years, the Bureau of Land Management has been losing that fight on two fronts: It hasn’t been able to round up nearly enough horses to limit the wild population. And it doesn’t know what to do with the ones it has managed to capture.

The roundup operation itself is strikingly efficient — a helicopter and a few workers in jean jackets can catch scores of mustangs in a day. The bureau rounded up 7,300 in 2019.

But once they are caught, they have to be fed and cared for. And the costs and frictions of having so many animals on the government’s hands — 49,000 at last count — have pushed the whole wild horse program toward collapse.

The rented pastures and feed lots where they are kept now devour more than two-thirds of the program’s budget, leaving little money for anything else, including looking for ways to get the bureau out of its current fix.

Low on cash, the bureau cut roundups drastically in recent years. But officials acknowledge that the move just made matters worse, by allowing the population on the range to grow rapidly. There are now about 100,000 wild horses and burros on public lands — more than at any time since the days of the Old West. The government reckons the land can sustain only about 27,000.