Preserving the West

Syndi Musland Miske was practically born with boots on. Growing up in rural North Dakota, she spent her free time riding horse, practicing barrels in the arena near her family’s farm and ranch and riding to the Do Drop Inn in Merricourt for malted milkshakes.

A cardiac rehab nurse, Miske and her husband, Darin, now live on a ranch in Wibaux, Mont., served by Goldenwest Electric Cooperative, just 40 miles away from Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP). It’s a dream come true for the cowgirl who dreamed of riding her horse in the Badlands.

To many locals like Syndi, horses and the park go hand in hand.

“When you see the (wild) horses grazing, it is like a step back in time. It is just breathtaking,” she says. “There is something healing about them. … They sense their freedom. It is liberating. They are magical, and they belong there.”

But that nearly changed in 2023, when the National Park Service (NPS) released an environmental assessment of TRNP’s livestock plan outlining three options for management of the horses and longhorn cattle in the park: continue managing them as has been done since 1970, remove all horses from the park promptly or remove all horses from the park gradually, allowing a handful of sterilized horses to live the remainder of their lives in the park.

“To think of the park without them, it just seems bare,” Syndi says.

For the Tescher family, it is about history and heritage.

The history of horses in western North Dakota can be traced back to their use by tribal nations in the area and later homesteaders. For generations, ranchers used the land which became the park for open-range grazing of horses and cattle. Horses would be turned out to live and breed in the Badlands, then rounded up and gentled for use as ranch horses.

“It’s all horses. That’s the American West. Horses are the main part of every person that’s lived here. That’s what they farmed with, that’s what they went to town with. The West was built on the back of a horse,” says Ray Tescher, a McKenzie County Electric Cooperative member and board director.

The Tescher family has ranched in the area since the 1900s – well before TRNP became a national park in 1947 – and cousins Ray and Ted have been intertwined with the park horses for as long as they can remember. Ray’s father, Alvin, and his family operated Tescher Trail Rides at the Peaceful Valley Ranch in TRNP for many years. Ted’s father, Tom, a professional saddle bronc rider and 1998 inductee into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame, was the resident expert on the wild horses in the park. The park’s records of the horses are Tom’s.

When Ray and Ted were boys, they were sent into the park to capture branded horses that roamed the grasslands before the fence went up.

“It was the closest thing to the Wild West there was, to be on the wild horse roundup,” Ray says.

“And then to be a 13-year-old in the middle of it,” remarks Ted, a Roughrider Electric Cooperative member.

To this day, those roundups were the adventure of Ted’s life.

“In my entire life, the one thing that I think was the most exciting adventure, most exciting thing I ever did, is what it was,” Ted says. “I think what made it such an adventure is that we were all together. You were with half a dozen cousins, with your best friends.”

Both Teschers will tell you horses belong in TRNP. Ray says it’s the overwhelming local attitude.

But that runs contradictory to much of what’s contained in the 2023 assessment, and attempts to speak to an NPS representative for this story were unsuccessful. According to the report, removing the horses would save staff time for use elsewhere protecting park resources, eliminate the disruptions caused to native species and vegetation, and reduce competition for resources like water among the other animals in the park, including bison, elk and pronghorn.

“I’ll tell you something, those prairie dogs are ruining the park faster than those horses ever will,” Ray says.

“People want these horses here because our heritage is horses. It’s not prairie dogs, it’s horses. And they were a main part of every ranch, on every farm, and the most critically needed thing that is on the ranch. So that’s our history, and that’s why we want them left in the area,” Ray says. “We can’t understand why the park would want to get rid of them.”

Over 25,000 letters were submitted during the environmental assessment’s public comment period – a large majority urging the preservation of the horses in the park. Syndi’s was one of them, along with 50 others she helped write, advocating for the horses to remain in TRNP.
 

A BATTLE WON
Last April, the park announced it would abandon the resolutions outlining the horses’ removal. Christine Kman, Roughrider Electric Cooperative member and president and co-founder of Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates (CHWHA), a nonprofit committed to advocating for the horses to remain in TRNP, cried when she heard the news.

“We told everybody, celebrate this moment, but we can’t stop, because it is just a matter of time before they figure out where their loopholes were, and they come back again and try to take these horses again,” Kman says.

CHWHA is still working tirelessly to ensure the horses remain protected in the park. Recently, the group worked with state legislators to introduce Senate Concurrent Resolution (SCR) 4006 during the 2025 legislative session, which urges Congress to establish federal protections for the wild horse herd in TRNP. More than 175 pieces of testimony were submitted in favor of SCR 4006 during its Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing. The resolution passed the Senate on Feb. 12 and will be considered next in the House.

Another bill, though unsuccessful, would have created a working group within the North Dakota Century Code focused on the TRNP wild horses.

Sen. John Hoeven continues to be an advocate in Washington for the herd, and with former N.D. Gov. Doug Burgum now overseeing the NPS as secretary of the interior, local voices may even find theirs heard in the highest levels of the federal government.

“The greatest thing for me is just the amount of people that have come forward and rallied around this. There’s a quote by Margaret Mead: Never doubt that a small group of citizens can change the world, indeed, that’s all that ever has. That’s what we did. There’s no silencing us now,” Kman says.
 

A LASTING TESTAMENT
Syndi, Kman and the Teschers don’t understand who or what is driving the push to remove the horses from TRNP. But it’s certainly not the neighbors.

“There’s just no one around here that doesn’t want the horses, whether they’ve ever ridden a horse or not. They know how important the horses were to us, our ancestors,” Ray says.

“It’s just too important to our history in this area. You got to realize, when they ask for comments (on the livestock plan environmental assessment), they can come from New York, from everywhere. We don’t have any people compared to that, and everybody’s comments are equal. We are outnumbered, absolutely,” Ted says.

For now, the wild horses get to remain in the Badlands, as Theodore Roosevelt himself would have experienced it during his time at Elkhorn Ranch.

“They are amazing animals. They are incredibly resilient. I mean, 78 years they’ve been fighting for their right to be in this park, and they’ve won so far,” Kman says.

The wild horse presence in the park is a lasting testament to the American West and the wildness that still exists there today, Ray says.

“I don’t care if they were Custer’s horses or Sitting Bull’s horses. I just care that there are horses in the park, because that’s some of the last ties we have left to the American West and what this country was built on,” Ray says.

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Kennedy DeLap is interning with North Dakota Living. She can be reached at kdelap@ndarec.com.