Help RTFs American Wild Horse Sanctuary!

Dear Friend of Return to Freedom,

It's s cliche only because it's so true—we can't believe the year is going so fast!  The past few months may have passed quickly, but as well as the daily never-ending work of caring for nearly 550 wild horses and burros, a lot of other activities were crammed into this short stretch of Time.  Here are just a few...

A Fond Farewell For Now

We'd like to salute our recent in-resident intern, Jae Hyeon Choi, from South Korea. Jae resided here and worked with RTF for four months, and he became an imortant part of this little team we call family.   

We were all sad when he had to leave his internship on July 5^th. His presence was invaluable and he always worked with a smile that lit up our day. We did get to celebrate his birthday before he left, and we've included a photo of our celebration.  Jae captured our hearts and, we wish him only the best in his future adventures. Thanks, Jae!

Volunteers

RTF has many fantastic volunteers, and we love them all. We also depend on them to keep RTF operating smoothly. Today we'd like to again thank our great volunteers who come here to help out from Vandenburg Space Force Base. We are always so grateful for their contributions and the work ethic they bring with them. They arrive with smiles on their faces and they leave still smiling. On a typical day they accomplish more in two and a half hours than we'd expect in a day—or even a week!

For example, in just one day they—

• Weed-wacked several over-grown pastures throughout the property consisting of five to six feet high brush and mustard plants
• Removed all the debris and clippings
• Power-washed the horse barn and office
• Painted the entire perimeter of RTF office
• Removed invasive weeds surrounding barns, stairs and office & outdoor kitchen.       

Getting these large and laborious tasks done so quickly and with such cheerful enthusiasm, is a relief to us, you'd better believe it—looking over the place after they'd finished was like seeing a miracle!

If you live nearby or are traveling and would like to add an RTF Volunteer Day to your schedule, more Volunteer opportunities are always upcoming, including our weekly Volunteer Day every Saturday. To participate in a Volunteer Day; please contact:  volunteers@returntofreedom.org. to make arrangements.

Bringing the Issues to the Horse-loving Public

In August, Return to Freedom participated in the Horse Welfare and Animal Adoption Day in Bridgehampton, N.Y.

Presented by the EQUUS Foundation and sponsored by Georgina Bloomberg, Adoption Day includes horse rescue groups as well as dog and cat shelters.

We participated as part of the EQUUS Foundation Alliance. We’re grateful to the foundation for its shared dedication to protecting all of America’s horses.

The event gave us with a chance to speak about advocating for more humane wild horse management and the need to ban the export of domestic and wild horses to foreign slaughterhouses.

We found that those in attendance were alarmed to learn about the challenges wild horses still face and eager to help.

The federal Bureau of Land Management oversees an agency-estimated 73,000 wild horses and burros and the U.S. Forest Service about 8,000 more in 10 Western states.

Both agencies have for decades tried and failed to meet the population goals that they’ve set through capture and removal in helicopter roundups, rather than by using proven, safe and humane fertility control to stabilize herd growth.

As a result, 62,000+ wild horses and burros now languish in off-range government corrals or on leased pastures, not on their home ranges.

Horses and burros that the government adopts out or sells are placed at risk of suffering and dying in a foreign slaughter pipeline that Congress has yet to close down.

RTF Advocacy

 1. Battling for Wyoming's wild herds

Return to Freedom and our co-plaintiffs, Front Range Equine Rescue and photographers Angelique Rea and Meg Frederick, were among those that prevailed in federal appeals court rulings in July affecting wild horse Herd Management Areas in Southwest Wyoming. The court found that the Bureau of Land Management violated the law when it decided to take away 2 million acres from wild herds. The ruling also delayed a planned helicopter roundup until at least next summer.

What’s next: Prepare to face off with the BLM in District Court, where a judge must determine a remedy or whether the BLM’s plan amendment for that area of Wyoming should be vacated entirely. A status conference is set for Oct. 7, where the judge is expected to define further details of the proceedings.

2. Ensuring protections against lethal management

The president’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal left out standard protections that bar the BLM from using the killing of healthy wild horses as a management option. It also called for a 25% funding cut that would have placed the lives of 63,000 captive wild horses at even greater risk. RTF and other organizations successfully lobbied House and Senate Subcommittees that included the protective language in their Interior appropriations bills. Both kept wild horse funding flat even as many federal programs are being slashed. 

What’s next: Call on Congress to pressure the BLM to stop stalling the use of proven, safe and humane fertility control that can replace capture and removal as the agency’s main management tool.

3. Keeping horse slaughterhouses closed

During the first seven months of 2025, 12,194 American horses were shipped to Mexico or Canada for slaughter— a 25% increase from the same period last year after years of steadily declining export numbers. RTF and its colleagues successfully advocated for the inclusion of Agriculture appropriations bill language stopping the U.S. Department of Agriculture from using tax dollars to hire horsemeat inspectors. The addition of such language to funding bills has created a year-to-year ban that has kept new horse slaughterhouses in the United States from opening since 2007, when the last one closed.

What’s next: Advocate for passage of the bipartisan Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act. The bill would place a lasting ban on horse slaughter and close the foreign slaughter pipeline currently has 166 House cosponsors. We’re also lobbying to add the anti-slaughter SAFE Act language to the Farm Bill, a comprehensive agriculture and food funding bill renewed about every five years.

4. Preventing the sale of public lands

A provision in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” a Fiscal Year 2025 budget reconciliation bill, would have forced federal agencies to sell off up to 3.3 million acres of our shared public land. Millions of acres of public land could have been on the chopping block — including land set aside for wild horses and burros. Public blowback resulted in the provision being scrapped before the bill passed.

What’s next: Continued vigilance regarding efforts to sell off public land. Opposing a planned repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule, which protects 60 million acres of public land from development.

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We are so grateful for the people like you who not only keep RTF's nearly 500 displaced wild horses and burros fed , healthy and happy, but give RTF the ability to advocate for justice for the wild equines still running free on our public lands. We never forget who makes all of this possible.  Thank you!

To the Wild Ones, and Those who stand with Them,

All of Us at RTF

Links:

• RTF Website
• RTF Videos

Dear Friend of RTF,

As Summer heats up, we take a look back at RTF's recent several months at a special Birthday, a successful grazing project, dedicated volunteers, and RTF's advocacy work both for wild horses and burros still running free—for now—on our public lands, and all horses threatened by an inhumane end.

Opening Day and Spirit's 30th Birthday

We’re so grateful to everyone who helped make our celebration of Spirit’s 30th birthday and the Opening Day of our 2025 program season so special!

More than 300 visitors from across the U.S. and around the world came to see Spirit and help us raise funds for the more than 460 wild horses and burros in our sanctuary’s care.

We were brought to tears listening to their stories of what this film and Spirit have meant to them.  This movie, Dreamworks Animation’s “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,” and this horse have affected so many so much, and have been transformative to so many lives!

Like the words written by screenwriter John Fusco, the story told by America’s mustangs and the film is about resilience, family, perseverance and determination.

A heartfelt thank you to:

special speakers Lorna Cook, “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” co-director, and animator Peter Paul

flamenco guitarist George Quitin and classical guitarist Josiah Frias

Pete Crowheart for sharing a Native American blessing,

Miguel Lupiano for showcasing his horse training skills.

caterer Full of Life Flatbread

vendors Chris West Originals, Pureredy, Pacifica, Living Energy Crustals and Youth Springs Art,

silent auction donors Montecito Med Spa, Lash On Wax Off, Blossom Salon, Carole King, Walter Claudio Salon, Petrine Day Mitchum, Cindy Rackley, C.M. Burk Western Art, The Ballard Inn, Transcendence Wines, Babcock Winery, Essence Captured, Lumen Wines, Alamo Motel, Full of Life Flatbread, Sycamore Mineral Springs Resort and Spa,

product donors Flying Goat Cellars, Beckmen Vineyards , Sadie’s Bake Shop, Two Wolves Wine, @SadiesBakeShop, Two Wolves Wine, New Frontiers Natural Marketplace, Wild West Pizza, Farm Supply of Buellton, CA.,

lift supplier Sunbelt Rentals of Lompoc, CA.,

and our hard-working volunteers and staff!

One moment, especially, will never be forgotten—as Marina, an RTF equine assistant, led Spirit back up to his pasture on the hill, 300 visitors from all over the United States, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Poland and England sang happy birthday to this special horse who carries their dreams of a free, kind world.   
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Regenerative Grazing Project

Return to Freedom has worked with advisor Rodger Savory to implement regenerative grazing practices at its sanctuary with sustainable results. RTF sees properly managed grazing and holistic management as part of a long-term solution to restore our public lands.

While the majority of Americans are unaware that wild horses still roam some of the most desolate and remote areas in the West, for decades, the American mustang has been fighting for survival on the front lines of a battle over the use of precious natural resources—­­forage and water.

Long seen by ranchers as an invasive nuisance and competition with their livestock for forage and water, wild horses have suffered brutal persecution. In the 1950s and 1960s, the inhumane treatment they suffered was exposed.

For the past 26 years, RTF has been at the forefront of wild horse conservation, identifying and pioneering minimally-intrusive solutions at its sanctuary that can be implemented on the range for long-term herd management to keep wild horse and burro herds wild and free. As a solution-focused organization, RTF collaborates with a broad range of stakeholders including advocates, animal welfare organizations, sanctuaries, land owners, diverse associations, agencies and legislators.

RTF bases its work on guidance from leading scientists in genetics, ancient DNA research, proven safe and humane fertility control, and regenerative holistic land management.

At first glance, a program to restore the land at RTF's San Luis Obisbo satellite location may not sound as exciting as the rescue of an endangered wild herd.

But those two things are related in a way we need to understand, and this land experiment could be a key to our government valuing the presence of wild horses and burros on public lands, rather than blaming them for its destruction.

The immediate benefits to RTF are easy to see—what was once a parched landscape which couldn't provide enough forage for the horses, requiring heavy supplement with expensive hay, now bursts with more vegetation than they can eat.

Regenerative land management with horses and donkeys was initially developed and most commonly used for agriculture and livestock farming.  In contrast, RTF has been pioneering the use of these techniques purely for restorative conservation—it's about healing the land, and that in turn brings far-reaching benefits for many stakeholders, including the horses, burros and other wildlife.

By using rotational grazing, moving horses from well-grazed areas and letting that land rest sufficiently to become healthy and vibrant with life again, we have shown that it's not the number of horses on the range, it's the management of the horses that make the difference,

The horses, by moving constantly and spreading and trampling seed,  replenish the land by their very nature. They are part of the solution, not the problem..
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Volunteers

Each year Vandenberg Space Force Base sends RTF a crew of their own, and they work very hard to help out around our Lompoc Headquarters.  We thought they deserved to be seen and appreciated by our supporters. Like all non-profit organizations, RTF depends on volunteers to augment the staff to get the hard work done, and we are so grateful to those who generously give their time and energy to help make this a great home for our hundreds of displaced wild horses and burros.
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Wild Horse Advocacy

Litigation

Return to Freedom is now awaiting a ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in a case crucial to the future of wild horses in southwest Wyoming. RTF is fighting the BLM’s decision to strip 2 million acres from wild horse use for the benefit of private ranchers in the Checkerboard, an unfenced area of alternating blocks of public and private land set up in the 1860s.

In March, we took part in a hearing before a three-judge panel in Denver. Our attorney (who represents RTF, Front Range Equine Rescue and two equine photographers) and those representing other wild horse advocacy groups collectively argued that the BLM had violated the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burro Act and National Environmental Policy Act.

In August of last year, a federal district court judge ruled that the BLM did not violate federal laws when it decided in 2023 to amend its Resource Management Plan. The BLM’s primary stated reason for taking land out of wild horse use: it is difficult to create a barrier between public and private lands there.

In a separate ruling, the district court denied the ranchers’ request to force the BLM to immediately remove all of the Checkerboard’s wild horses or conduct a new management plan amendment process. We entered that case along with Front Range, Frederick and Rea to oppose the grazing association’s demands, and successfully defeated the ranchers’ lawsuit.

Horse slaughter

Return to Freedom continues to work alongside animal welfare and horse industry groups alike in the push for passage of the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act. It would place a lasting ban on horse slaughter in the United States and bar the export of American horses for slaughter.

This important legislation was recently reintroduced in Congress. The new version (H.R. 1661 in the House, S. 775 in the Senate) has amassed 121 bipartisan cosponsors.

During the last Congress, 236 House members cosponsored the bill. Unfortunately, it was not put up for a vote.

In 2024, a total of 19,915 American horses were shipped to their deaths in Mexico or Canada. While those numbers are horrific, they represent a new low this century. The number of horses exported to foreign slaughterhouses has fallen almost 90% over the last decade.

The last domestic slaughterhouse closed in 2007. Since then, RTF and others have successfully lobbied Congress for annual funding bill language preventing the hiring of horsemeat inspectors. That’s created a year-to-year ban on slaughter here at home.

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We wish you could have been there on Opening Day, singing Happy Birthday to a beloved horse—maybe someday you will visit RTF! But no matter what, it is people like you who have made all this possible, and who will achieve even more for wild horses and burros in the days to come.

Thank you!

To the Wild Ones, and Those who stand with Them,

All of Us at Return to Freedom

Links:

• RTF Website
• Opening Day-Spirit's Birthday Party