in North Dakota. Nonetheless, the park sought to eliminate these horses. The National Park Service was declared exempt from the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 that covered free-roaming horses and burros on other federal lands. This allowed them to view the herds as nuisances and deal with them as such, including sending many to slaughter. In the late 1970s, growing public opposition to the removal of feral horses prompted management strategy changes, and today the herds within the Theodore Roosevelt National Park are managed for the purposes of historical demonstration. However, in 1986 the park added outside bloodlines with the aim of modifying the appearance of the Nokota. Park management felt that the horses created with the outside bloodlines would sell better at subsequent auctions. The dominant herd stallions were removed and replaced with two feral stallions from Bureau of Land Management Mustang herds, a crossbred Shire stallion, a Quarter Horse stallion and an Arabian stallion. At the same time that the stallion replacements took place, many horses from the park were rounded up and sold. At the 1986 auction, concerned about the welfare of the Nokota horse, Leo and Frank Kuntz purchased 54 horses, including the dominant stallion, a blue roan. This was in addition to smaller numbers of horses purchased in 1981, 1991 and 1997. After researching the history of the breed, the Kuntzs stated that they had found evidence that the horses in the park were probably related to the remaining horses from the band of 250 Sitting Bull horses, who had been range-bred by the Marquis de Mores, who founded the town of Medora. However, the short-lived Nokota Horse Association stated that there was no evidence for this claim. 1990s to today By 1993, the Kuntz brothers had a herd of 150 horses, including those purchased from the park over the course of several auctions and their descendants. They used the horses mainly for ranching and endurance races. In 1993, the Nokota was declared the Honorary State Equine of the state of North Dakota. In 1994, researchers conducted a study of the horses in the park and on the Kuntz's ranch, and discovered that none of the horses in the park, and only about 20 on the ranch, had characteristics consistent with the Colonial Spanish Horse. Since then, the horses on the Kuntz ranch have been bred to maintain and improve their