Neda DeMayo battles the government to stop the roundup--and slaughter--of wild horses

Listen well and you will hear it-a low, distant rumble like thunder. It is the sound of a herd of wild horses, but what it really is, Neda DeMayo will tell you, is the sound of America. "These horses are unique to the United States," she says of the stallions and mares that roam free through parts of the U.S. states. "They represent the pioneer spirit of the American West."

Now this freedom, and the horses themselves, are being threatened. Lifting the ban on the, sale of wild horses "opens the floodgates for their slaughter;" says DeMayo, who shelters 220 horses on her land (below)

In December, Montana Republican Sen. Conrad Burns slipped a last minute amendment onto a 4,000 page appropriations bill that lifted a federal ban on the sale and slaughter of wild horses and burros, animals that had been protected by the government since 1971. The Bureau of Land Management estimates there are 37,000 horses and burros roaming across public range lands in the West-by their count, this is 9,000 too many. Their concern is that the herds are depleting land