Koonce, Elizabeth2021-06-132021-06-132021-06-13https://hdl.handle.net/1794/2634064 pages. Committee chair: Kory RusselThe United States currently faces a range crisis on it’s public lands. Federally protected mustangs (Equus caballus) share a degraded range with millions of grazing livestock. Mustangs’ contentious status as an alleged invasive species is at odds with their protective status. Not managed as wildlife yet not classified as livestock, mustangs are removed from the range in the thousands only to live out their lives in costly government holding facilities which eat up most of the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse and burro budget. The BLM faces heavy opposition to mustangs from ranchers and political lobbyists. The entire public rangeland situation is a tangled web of public outcry, bureaucratic mismanagement, and dueling interests. This project seeks to untangle the issues within the rangeland crisis through a “Land Management Design” approach. It presents a thorough background in the natural, cultural, and ecological history of the wild horse in North America, and focuses on the current management approaches utilized in the United States. Through the lens of several precedent studies, a strategic management framework is proposed. This framework is then applied to three Herd Management Areas (HMAs) in the state of Oregon. These three case studies are explored in depth and drone photography and mapping show the current status of these sites. Photoshop renderings present alternatives for how the sites could evolve when the proposed strategic management framework is applied. It is possible for all parties with stake in the rangeland crisis to benefit from a land management design approach. The conclusion of the project discusses this at length, and further delves into the sociopolitical changes that must take place for our public lands and our wild horses to be saved.en-USCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USHorsesMustangsRangelandsWild horsesRange managementPublic landsTerminal Project