"COROLLA, N.C. -- On a stretch of barrier island without paved roads, some of the last wild horses in the eastern United States are seeing their world get smaller each year.

A boom in vacation homes in the last 25 years in this remote place has seen the descendants of colonial Spanish mustangs confined to a 7,500-acre sanctuary on the northern tip of North Carolina's Outer Banks. And now the herd itself may shrink along with its habitat.

A plan backed by the federal government would see the herd reduced from about 115 horses today to no more than 60 in a bid to stop the animals, designated North Carolina's state horse this year, from competing with federally protected birds for increasingly hard-to-come-by resources."

Tom Breen reports for the Associated Press September 20, 2010. [2]