Are wild horses causing accidents on the 347?

Cesar Sanchez commutes between Maricopa and Levine four times a week. It’s a jaunt up and down State Route 347 intimately familiar to the 84% of Maricopa residents who drive north across county lines for work every day.

During one recent trip down SR 347, Sanchez saw some of the usual sights — a herd of wild horses and three car accidents. It got him wondering — how often do these wild horses cause wrecks on Maricopa’s main highway?

“There’s only one sign that says there are wild animals crossing,” Sanchez said. “There are not enough signs. You know people in Maricopa, we are crazy drivers always in a rush.”

According to data from the Arizona Department of Transportation, there were 315 car accidents on SR 347 during the most recent reporting year ending Jan. 1, 2023. That’s about one every day.

The data shows there were nine accidents caused by large wild animals on or adjacent to SR 347 near Maricopa that year.

“I don’t know how many horses are dying, but if we can install enough signs, we can save a lot of lives,” Sanchez said. “Someone can die because the horses are a really big animal.”

Neither ADOT, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management nor the Arizona State Land Department keeps track of how many wild horses die in car crashes every year.

“I’m really not feeling that the different offices from the government are taking care of the wild horses,” Sanchez said.

In 2018, a wild horse advocacy group in Mesa successfully lobbied the DOT for road improvements on Bush Highway to help protect wild horses. That was two years after protestors pressured then-Gov. Doug Ducey to sign a bill making it illegal to round up, take, harass or kill wild Salt River horses.

The Salt River Horse Management Group is an independent organization that tracks horses killed on highways east of Phoenix. In Navajo County, the Heber Wild Horses Freedom Preservation Alliance does the same for the Heber wild horse herd.

But for the Estrella herd that roams alongside SR 347 near Maricopa, no such group exists.

Perhaps Sanchez and others like him in the Maricopa community will help change that.