This story includes details about the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM. Some of those details are accurate, and some of them are skewed for the purposes of this story. It’s true that private ranches across the United States are in business with the federal government to provide long-term care for wild horses born on and gathered from public lands throughout the west. The horses remain the property of the government throughout their lives, and the ranchers who house and manage them are paid a daily fee for their care.
Most of the ranches working with the BLM are much larger than Riverside, the Chases’ ranch in this book. In 2020, the public solicitations for new ranches to participate in the program that I could find expected applicants to request at least two hundred horses.