Run RTFs American Wild Horse Sanctuary for a Year

Dear Friend of RTF,

When it's a drought, you wish for rain, and when it rains, IT POURS.

Return to Freedom operates the American Wild Horse Sanctuary, which is currently home to 370 wild horses and 50 wild burros. Here at the sanctuary ranch, rain and heavy mud makes managing a large number of animals that more difficult, but we've been doing it for 25 years, rain, shine, wind and mud.  When we look at the horses and burros, who rightly expect great care and food, we just put on our boots and forge ahead.

Sanctuary

We have had substantial damage to several roofs, and to some hay. Two of the barns really took a beating. Major repairs are needed, but will wait until we raise the funds for construction. But as the challenging tasks of cleanup and repair from winter rainstorms continue at our sanctuary locations, wildflowers are now blanketing the rolling hills.

As Spring approaches, we start to dry out, and then we can conduct the workshops, volunteer events and tours that educate youth and adults and inspire new wild horse advocates. We have announced our 2023 summer schedule, and look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones as we walk through the herds and learn the herds' histories and work toward a better future for them on the range.

In March, RTF founder Neda DeMayo was featured in an article called "Wild, Wild Horses." in Red Canary Magazine! The article describes how Neda's devotion to horses began, and how it led to Return to Freedom and 25 years of work on their behalf. The link to the article is in the links section of this report.

We talk a lot about the wild horses living at RTF, but equally precious are our burro residents, Our 2,000-acre San Luis Obispo satellite sanctuary provides a safe home to 24 of our 50 smart and curious resident wild burros, while the rest live in a beautiful hillside oak forest at our Lompoc headquarters. All our resident burros once roamed freely on our public lands or were born in government off-range holding after roundups. They are visitor favorites, and it's easy to see why.

RTF has never been home to cows, but when we were alerted that a herd of pet Longhorn cows in Oklahoma needed a place to go, we began to network a solution and to raise funds to transport them, in bonded groups, to new homes. Their guardians were aging, and wanted to make sure their cow friends were well-situated before the kind couple became physically unable to care for them. 

We still are looking for the transport funding, but the great news is that Rosette and her immediate family of 9—Cher and her baby girl, Shari and her baby girl, Precious, Berry, plus their babies soon to be born—in addition to Mary’s offspring and up to 30 more- depending on transport funds- have been promised a safe and beautiful new home on 1400 acres owned by a supporter of Return to Freedom. Here they will live among rescued cows, horses, burros and goats in the rolling oak studded pastures in San Luis Obispo County, California—protected for their lifetime. 

Advocacy

Wild Horses

On March 9, President Joseph R. Biden included $154.8 million for the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Wild Horse and Burro Program in his Fiscal Year 2024 budget proposal. That would amount to a $6.9 million increase, with $5.9 going toward skyrocketing hay prices and other off-range holding costs.

While RTF appreciates the president’s call for additional funding, that amount will only see the program tread water. Lawmakers will need to allocate more on the front end in order to create a successful program of safe, proven and humane fertility control that can also save taxpayer dollars over the long run by shrinking off-range holding costs.

Congress has been reluctant to micromanage the BLM, but RTF is strongly urging congressional appropriators to press the BLM harder on fertility control implementation.

Congress should no longer judge the agency’s work based solely on the BLM’s short-lived progress toward agency-set population targets for wild horses and burros on the range. Instead, lawmakers should demand measurable results for fertility control implementation, movement of captured animals from corrals to more natural and cost-effective pastures, and other landmarks of real change.

Adoption Incentive Program (AIP)

RTF continues to push for changes in the BLM’s $1,000 cash incentive program or an outright end to the program. AIP resulted in an unknown number of wild horses and burros being held for a year until title is transferred, then sold at auctions frequented by kill buyers who ship equines to Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses.

RTF has called for a full outside investigation of the program and, if the program is to be continued, more thorough background checks for adopters, the replacement of cash incentives with vouchers for training or veterinary care, and other changes to better safeguard wild horses and burros.

Last spring, the BLM took what initially appeared to be the positive step of enlisting a mediator to discuss with RTF and other advocates problems with AIP and ways to improve it. RTF also sent the agency information that it has collected about recently titled wild horses turning up in sale barns.

In October, the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board also recommended that BLM should continue to investigate vouchers for AIP, among other possible changes, and quickly respond to the suggestions and concerns expressed by RTF and other stakeholder groups.

As of this writing, the BLM has not responded to a report based on the stakeholder meetings, however. Agency leadership is reportedly calling for additional public comment.

Horse slaughter

RTF’s lobbying efforts in 2022 helped amass 225 bipartisan House cosponsors, a majority, in support of the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act to ban horse slaughter, as well as thousands of supporter letters in support of the bill.

Unfortunately, a small number of pro-slaughter groups—among them a handful of tribal nations—slowed the bill enough to prevent passage before the end of the last Congress in January.

While RTF refused to compromise on a possible carve-out that would have allowed horse slaughter on tribal land, RTF and others did offer to meet with the tribes, advise them on horse non-lethal management strategies, and to seek funding support for them. Unfortunately, the lobbyist for the tribes showed no interest in compromise.

RTF is currently working with its colleagues and SAFE sponsors on legislative strategies for this Congress.

We are so grateful to everyone who chips in to make the care of our residents, our work on behalf of the horses still running free, and the ability to help innocent animals like the Longhorns possible. It's the only way all this good happens.

With deep thanks,

All of Us at RTF

Links:

• RTF Website
• Red Canary Article

                                                                Report from  RTF Lompoc Headquarters

Dear Friends of RTF,

Time flies, and it's time again to check in with our Supporters to say thanks, and give a little bit of ranch news. While the care of nearly 450 rescued wild horses and burros is a constant and challenging task, our days are also peppered with landmarks, large and small, that season our daily caretaking chores.

As we've described previously, keeping horse family bands intact and even reuniing horses torn from each other in roundups, is an over-arching principle at RTF. We've accomplished this a number of times, but only with the help of our supporters. These are detectiver stories, takng time and resources, without which these family members and friends would be lost t each other forever. Reunions are a happy time for all of us, horse and human.

Ares and Gracie reunited

Ares and Gracie were reunited a year after the roundup that tore them from each other.

The following report is from Meg Frederick, a celebrated equine photographer who has befriended these horses on the range, and remained a fierce advocate and protector after some of the horses have been heartlessly rounded up and separated.

 “Today I wanted to talk a little about family. A wild horse band is made up of the stallion, his mares and the offspring. I keep hearing that these horse don’t care about being with their mares. I live out with the wild horses 7 months out of the year. I can tell you for a fact they do care. Some stallions stay with the same mares for years and years. Yes the young ones do move on. I am focusing on the stallion and his mare. Another argument I keep hearing is once they are gelded they longer care about their mares. I was involved in reuniting two family bands last year and I can tell you that is false. The first photo is Ares and his mare Gracie when they saw each other. A once confident band stallion was cowering in the corner of the corral at the auction. His mares were very skittish and terrified. The second we reunited these horses you could see a hundred pound weight just drop off their shoulders. They knew they were safe back together. Yes in the wild bands split up. I have watched several bands at a sanctuary and they stay together and the geldings still fight to keep their band together. So many false narratives out there and mostly said by people who have not spent one day watching a wild horse in the wild. Mustangs are not solitary animals and need to be with a herd. “

We thank all the supporters, volunteers and advocates who work so hard to bring these shattered families and lost friends find each other again. It’s one of the most rewarding aspects of our work, but it would not happen without your help..

Amante is now Fully Sponsored

It's very important for us to find personal sponsorship for our horses, burros and herds. Knowing that these animals have ongoing support from outside the ranch not only increases our confidence and stability, it also frees us to do more outreach and advocacy for the wild ones still on the range.

Our handsome friend Amante now has that all-important backup. There are a number of RF residents and groups that still need friends to help ensure their happy lives. Please visit www.returntofreedom.org/sponsor to see the beautiful faces you could be feeding!

Our deep thanks to those who have already put their arms around horses, burros and herds—you can't know how great it makes us feel!

Special Film Screening

In October, RTF hosted a special theatrical screening of The Mustangs: America’s Wild Horses.

The 200 seat theater was sold out and remained packed for the panel discussion with a truly engaged audience. The feature documentary--executive produced by Robert Redford, Patti and Jessica Springsteen, takes audiences on an odyssey throughout America to meet just some of the people helping America’s mustangs and burros in different ways.

The journey begins with an introduction from Robert Redford and continues with a narrative from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Philipps, songs by Bruce Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson and an original song written by Diane Warren and performed by Blanco Brown.

Then, a dynamic panel was facilitated by Elizabeth Kaye McCall and included producer Steven Latham, RTF founder Neda DeMayo, Las Cumbres Ranch (regenerative agriculture and holistic land management) owner Patricia Selbert and renowned wild horse photographer Meg Frederick.

"It was a truly engaged crowd filled with familiar and new faces of all ages,” said Neda DeMayo

"America's wild horses are fighting their last stand," said Executive Producer Robert Redford --

Thank you to everyone who came to the film and to all of you who stand with America’s wild horses and burros.

RTF In Print

RTF is grateful to have been featured recently in Young Rider Magazine!

"On the central coast of California, a special place for wild horses is nestled among the rolling hills and native oak trees. It’s a place where both horses and burros find refuge, where the grass grows high in spring and the sun shines warmly nearly all year-round."

So begins a feature article about RTF's American Wild Horse Sanctuary in the September-October issue of Young Rider magazine. The story touches on RTF's efforts to provide a home for wild horses and burros displaced by roundups, even as we work to change the way those still on our public lands are managed by government agencies. The magazine also highlighted our work to conserve rare strains, such as the Choctaw Indian pony, and our ambassador Spirit, the Kiger stallion who acted as muse and model for the beloved animated film "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron."

We hope you will visit our website to read the article in full and share with any young wild horse lovers in your life. Thank you to Young Rider Magazine for featuring our work in such a thoughtfully written article.

Advocacy 

Until Congress takes action, the needless slaughter of American horses will continue day after day.
Between January and September of this year, 14,402 American horses were shipped to slaughterhouses in Mexico or Canada.

Slaughter is not euthanasia. It is horrific. and even the truck transport there is a living hell.

Time is running out for this Congress to pass the SAFE Act (H.R. 3355 / S. 2732), which would permanently ban horse slaughter in the United States as well as the export of American horses for slaughter.

ACT NOW: Please contact your representative at 202-225-3121 and urge him or her to push for the movement of the SAFE Act (H.R. 3355) to end horse slaughter.

As always, we homnor those people—like you— who love and respect America's symbols of Freedom.

To the Wild ones, and those who stand with them,

All of Us at RTF 

Links:

• Please visit us at the RTF website here-