Just days after it submitted a proposal to the Arizona Department of Agriculture, a group hoping to take over the management of Arizona’s beloved Salt River horses has fractured due to infighting.
The Wild Horse Transition Team is hoping to win a zero-dollar contract to manage the wild horse population in the Tonto National Forest east of Mesa. However, one of the group’s founders, college history professor John Mack, announced he has left the group over disagreements with co-founder Jacquelyn Hughes over how many of the roughly 280 wild horses should be removed from the herd.
The split occurred five days after request-for-proposal applications were due to ADA on Aug. 25. Hughes and Mack both say Mack was asked to step down from his role with the group. On Facebook and in a statement to Phoenix New Times, Mack wrote that it became clear the two had “irreconcilable differences.”…