![2017 roundup in Wyoming's Checkerboard region]()
2017 roundup in Wyoming's Checkerboard region
Dear Friends of RTF and America's Wild Horses and Burros,
Time flies when you care for almost 500 wild horses and burros, and we are back with some updates on activities at RTF's American Wild Horse Sanctuary and the fight to protect America's wild equines on the range.
Family Day
It's great when volunteers and visitors, often families, come up for a sanctuary tour or to help out with some ranch work. In recent weeks, we showed our guests how we do the special feed for some of the horses in the back pastures, as well as conducting the regular tour of the ranch.
Many people have a very personal reason to visit RTF—they want to meet our visitor favorite, Spirit, the Kiger mustang who was the animation muse for Dreamworks film, "Spirit-Stallion of the Cimarron", and the more recent TV series about this special horse. Jeff LeBeau, who was involved in the early stages of production of the Spirit film, finally met Spirit in person, and the family in this group flew all the way from MA for a private meet & greet with Spirit. It was very emotional for the Mom—this was her longtime dream!
Alpine Herd Update
We have described how we saved a number of the Alpine herd, originally captured by the The U.S. Forest Service in a bait-and-trap roundup in the Alpine Ranger District of the Apache National Forest in Arizona, from an auction in Texas. They would otherwise have likely been bought and shipped to be slaughtered.
The first eight Alpine mares and three weanlings arrived at our Lompoc, Calif., headquarters sanctuary on April 3, 2024. They explored the fence line, met their new sanctuary neighbors and quickly settled in and chowed down after their journey from Texas.
Since then, our numbers have grown. We now have 30 members of the Alpine herd at our sanctuary in Lompoc, seven of which are foals born after their mothers’ arrivals. Shannen, Minder, Lucy, Yanni, Saffron, Skylar, and Carlson are all healthy and enjoying growing up with their family bands.
Twenty-six members of the Alpine herd remain in Texas in a beautiful 40-acre tree-lined pasture under dedicated staff. Once the weather cools, the boys will travel to California and join their herd members at our sanctuary. We are preparing!
Altogether, RTF is now responsible for the care of 56 members of the Alpine herd. Most of the Alpine wild horses are young — making the commitment of a lifetime of feed, veterinary care and other needs substantial for each and every one of them.
We’ve added a number of Alpine mares and foals to our website, and the link is in this report. You can see pictures of the horses, learn more about them, and find out more about the benefits of sponsoring a horse. Thanks to our supporters, the Alpines have a good life, safe from the slaughter pipeline.
Advocacy
SAFE Act. (The SAFE Act would make permanent the ban on horse slaughter in the United States as well as banning the export of American horses for slaughter)
From January through April, 5,211 American horses and other equines were exported to Mexico or Canada for slaughter — up 3.95% from the same period last year.
That includes domestic horses as well as an unknown number of once free-roaming wild horses and burros, which the government does not track after title is passed to a new owner following adoption or sale.
American horses will continue to be shipped to their deaths day after day until Congress acts.
Right now, the slow-moving gears on Capitol Hill have all but halted, likely leaving efforts to ban horse slaughter up in the air until after Election Day.
But we must keep pushing!
—We strongly support a stand-alone bill, the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act, which has amassed 224 bipartisan cosponsors in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, there’s been little movement toward a vote.
The SAFE Act would make permanent the ban on horse slaughter in the United States as well as banning the export of American horses for slaughter.
—We are also lobbying for the same language to be included in the Farm Bill.
Renewed about every five years, the trillion-dollar ag funding bill presents another possible route to passing a horse slaughter ban. That legislation is also likely stalled until after the election at the earliest.
It’s critically important that we continue contacting members of Congress, however.
How to help:
—Call your members of Congress at (202) 224-3121. Urge them to please express to the House and Senate Agriculture Committees their support for including the SAFE Act to ban horse slaughter in the Farm Bill.
(If you’re asked for a bill number, the SAFE Act is H.R. 3475 in the House, S. 2037 in the Senate.)
—Send a letter to your members of Congress by clicking the link section of this report.
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Wyoming Case
Last week, we suffered a heartbreaking setback in our battle for the future of Wyoming’s wild horses.
In a 70-page decision, district court Judge Kelly Rankin ruled that the Bureau of Land Management did not violate federal laws when it stripped 2 million acres from wild horse use in southwest Wyoming’s Checkerboard region.
The judge ruled against Return to Freedom, Front Range Equine Rescue and photographers Meg Frederick and Angelique Rea in a lawsuit that we brought against the BLM.
For well over a decade, Return to Freedom has been standing up for the herds of the Checkerboard against both the BLM and the powerful local ranchers who want the horses gone forever.
We are not giving up! We have appealed the court’s ruling and depend on supporters like you to help us carry on the fight.
The Checkerboard is made up of alternating one-square-mile blocks of unfenced public and private land set up in the 1860s.
The BLM amended its Resource Management Plan for the area in 2023, in large part because of an agreement it entered into with a powerful group of ranchers, the Rock Springs Grazing Association.
The BLM’s primary 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, also issued Wednesday, Judge Rankin 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.
The BLM began a helicopter roundup of 586 wild horses from the White Mountain Herd Management Area, also located within in the Checkerboard, a day after the court ruled.
Through Sunday, the BLM reported capturing 536 horses and putting down 10 for what it deemed pre-existing / chronic conditions.
The BLM’s goal is to reach the low end of an agency-set “Appropriate Management Level” of 205-300 wild horses within the 393,000-acre White Mountain Herd Management Area.
By comparison, the BLM permits ranchers to graze up to the annual equivalent 9,987 cow-calf pairs or 49,935 sheep on allotments that partly overlap White Mountain. Most are grazed seasonally.
STAND WITH WILD HERDS!
Before even finalizing its management plan changes, the BLM removed 3,502 wild horses from the Checkerboard in a three-month, $1.1 million helicopter roundup ending in early 2022.
The ongoing wipeout is unconscionable — but this battle extends beyond Wyoming.
Federally protected wild horses and burros must not be allowed to be removed from our public lands due to private landowner pressure or whole herds will vanish across the West.
Fighting a federal agency is difficult and costly. We cannot do it without our supporters.
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Senate Report
The Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee has recommended allocating $143,102,000 to the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program for Fiscal Year 2024.
That’s $102,000 more than its counterpart in the House of Representatives recommended earlier in July.
The proposed funding is well below the $170.9 million requested by the BLM, but it does appear that the wild horse budget will be spared the large cuts looming for other programs. Congress allocated $142 million for wild horse management in 2024, down $6 million from 2023.
The Senate subcommittee’s report language directs the BLM to “continue efforts to reduce the wild horse population on the range through a humane and sustainable multi-pronged approach of fertility control, targeted removals, off-range holding, and adoptions.”
The report leans into BLM-like language in emphasizing that “the landscape cannot support the populations four times in excess of the Appropriate Management Level, and that the Bureau should scale up (removals).”
With nearly 70% of the BLM program’s budget now going to care of captured wild horses living in off-range holding facilities, the House and Senate recommendations would leave relatively little money for steering wild horse management in a better direction.
The Senate subcommittee expresses concern over the cost of holding, noting that it reduces money for removals and fertility control.
On a more positive note, the BLM is “encouraged” by senators to “pursue public-private partnerships to support an increase in the use of humane fertility control, reapplication in previously-treated herds, and applying such treatments in additional herd management areas.”
For more than two decades, Return to Freedom has used safe, proven and humane fertility control at its wild horse sanctuary and called for it to be utilized on the range to slow herd growth and end the costly, traumatic capture and warehousing of wild horses.
The Senate report does not designate funding specifically for fertility control. In contrast, the House report set aside $11 million, prioritizing existing fertility control, while also leaving the door open to money being used on permanent sterilization efforts.
RTF strongly opposes surgical sterilization. Previous agency attempts to sterilize wild horses have only led to litigation, not progress toward more humane and sustainable on-range herd management.
More positives in the report include the Senate subcommittee calling for:
- --a continued prohibition of killing of healthy wild horses and burros
- --the BLM to comply with its Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP)
- --continued quarterly reports to Congress.
The Subcommittee also “appreciates the (National Park Service’s) decision to continue maintaining a genetically diverse herd of horses in (Theodore Roosevelt National Park).”
NPS officials had been considering removing South Dakota’s only wild herd before bowing to pressure from the public and elected officials to keep horses in the park.
The Senate report also directs the BLM to “implement and enforce safeguards in the adoption program, including pre-approval of applicants and postadoption compliance checks.”
The BLM’s Adoption Incentive Program has resulted in instances documented by RTF and others of adopters receiving a horse’s title and $1,000 cash after one year, then selling horses at auctions where they can be purchased and shipped to slaughter.
RTF continues to call for the elimination of the incentive program or, at the very least, the creation of stronger safeguards for adopted wild horses and burros, including replacing the cash incentives with vouchers for training, vet care and other needs.
That BLM has long tried and failed to reach its own arbitrary population target of about 27,000 wild horses and burros on designated Herd Management Areas across 10 Western states. In 2020, the agency said in a report to Congress that it would use fertility control — but only after reaching its “Appropriate Management Level.”
Population modeling has shown that immediately implementing fertility control alongside any removal that the BLM is already conducting is the only realistic way to stabilize herd growth, replace removals as the agency’s primary management tool and save taxpayer dollars over the long run.
From 2020-23, the BLM removed more than 50,000 wild horses and burros from their home ranges while treating just 2,099 mares with fertility control, then releasing them.
That pattern continues this year, with a goal of removing 19,614 horses and burros from their home ranges while treating 710.
As of April, more than 63,000 wild horses and burros under BLM’s management were living in often overcrowded corrals or on leased pastures at a cost to taxpayers of more than $108.5 million annually. The agency estimated in March that there were 73,520 wild horses and burros still roaming the public lands that it manages.
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Whether caring for our precious residents, already removed from their rightful homes on the range, or fighting for the future of their kind still running free, Return to Freedom remains committed to fighting for justice and fairness for America's wild symbols of Freedom.
Thank you for your part in this—without you, there is no RTF.
To the Wild Ones, and those who stand with them,
All of Us at Return to Freedom,
American Wild Horse Sanctuary
![Happy Family meets Spirit]()
Happy Family meets Spirit
![Jeff meets Spirit]()
Jeff meets Spirit
![Meet some of the Alpines]()
Meet some of the Alpines
![A Wyoming Band-photo by Meg Frederick]()
A Wyoming Band-photo by Meg Frederick
![A fun day at RTF]()
A fun day at RTF
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