The Rolling Stones sang "Wild horses couldn't drag me away; wild, wild horses we'll ride them some day."

It's an old classic, like the idea of wild horses with wind-tossed manes wheeling unfenced through tall grass prairie.

There still are 125 wild horses in the South Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

People could make the song come true and ride them some day.

For the first time since 2003, the park's wild horses will be rounded up and 75 of them sold at auction.

It is one of those unpleasant facts of life that some animals thrive and reproduce so well in the park that they have to leave.

It happens with bison and elk.

And now and again with wild horses.

Henry and Marylu Weber, of rural Bismarck, have had an abiding fascination for those wild horses.

Each year, several times, they ride out in the Badlands to observe, photograph and catalog the various bands. They record the foals and their mothers and try to assess which stallion may have been the sire. They also record the location and size of the 13 different bands and keep track of the age and gender of the herd population. It is a job that for 50 years was done by Medora rancher Tom Tescher, whose health and age make it too difficult now.

Four years ago, the Webers bought their own wild horse after the roundup and brought him home to their acreage northeast of Bismarck. They named him Ember's Fire, after his sire, Ember.

Fire is a good-tempered bay roan with dark markings. As a 4-year-old, he's handsome and sturdy with muscular legs and a dashing black mane.

Henry Weber said he makes a wonderful trail horse, especially in the rough Badlands, where he feels at home. If Fire has a fault, it's that he simply won't pass up water, an instinct leftover from his earliest survival in dry gulches and hard pan bottoms.

The Webers, along with park biologist Mike Oehler, hope all 75 wild horses that will be culled from the park are sold to good homes. The Webers have found that with care and training, a wild horse can become a great riding horse, though they recognize that not all the wild horses that will be sold are yearlings or young enough to train.

They hope others, who can, will buy a wild horse out of respect and concern for the animals.

Oehler said with the Webers' help, he's selectively culling the herd with two goals in mind. The first is to prolong the number of years between when the park has to endure the $20,000 expense, and the horses the trauma of a roundup, by culling out this time a good number of producing mares and fillies.

The second goal is to eventually have more young horses for sale in future roundups by culling a larger number of older horses, including stallions, this time.

Oehler said wild horses tend to adopt a range in the park and work it over pretty hard, which is why the park habitat can sustain far fewer horses than elk or bison.

Wild horses have been in the park ever since it was acquired and fenced 60 years ago. Some of the lineage has been traced back to Sitting Bull's ponies, though draft horse characteristics from old ranch stock, as well as more recently introduced quarterhorse characteristics also are present in the animals.

Marylu Weber said the wild horses have benefited from more genetic diversity and the prevalence of crooked backs and legs from inbreeding is slowly giving way to better conformation.

Horse prices are fairly low this year and Oehler said he hopes he doesn't have to return any horses from the sales barn back to the park.

He also hopes the plan to manage the horses so there are fewer of them, and most of them generally younger, will meet the goal of fewer roundups and better sales when they must occur.

"For the folks that treasure these animals, that would be a good thing," Oehler said.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)