Photo: Joe Whittle

Oregon’s Hells Canyon and Eagle Cap Wilderness areas are some of the most rugged, wild land in the Lower 48. Home to the continent’s deepest gorge , the nearly 600,000-acres of federally designated wilderness is managed under the Wilderness Act of 1964, which means no cars, trucks, or motorized tools. To comply with that mandate, the Forest Service’s Eagle Cap Ranger District has always used horses and mules to pack in the heavy equipment necessary to build and maintain trails within the wilderness. But the herd is aging rapidly, and the budget for replacing the animals is small.Enter the wild mustangs. For more than a decade, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has worked with inmates in the Nevada Department of Corrections to train these horses for adoption. This spring, managers of Hells Canyon and Eagle Cap Wilderness areas approached the BLM about using the mustangs on their trail crew. (The Wild Horse and Burro Act allows for exchange of horses between federal agencies.) Last spring, 11 mustangs joined the Eagle Cap Ranger District herd.This summer, I visited the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, and then followed some of its horses into the Oregon backcountry.