Tag Archives: Wild Horse Fire Brigade

Community/Charity

More Mustangs Rewilded by Wild Horse Fire Brigade and an Extended Team of Great People

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Photo: William E. Simpson II.

Here is the latest video posted on our Twitter page about 6 more mustangs that were saved from the kill pens and are now safely rewilded in a wilderness area:

https://twitter.com/OfficialWHFB/status/1593724583462539264

Please help us grow the Wild Horse Fire Brigade (‘WHFB’) plan to save our forests, wildlife (and habitat), and watersheds, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and humanely save wild horses, all in one move using our novel, proven plan (tested by actual wildfire in 2018).

More about WHFB here: https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/589827579/national-media-coverage-details-new-plan-to-reduce-wildfire-called-wild-horse-fire-brigade.

As time permits, we will be producing a short video showing the process and the dedicated, selfless people it takes to monitor kill auctions, raise money, bail horses out, transport, and arrange for quarantine (QT) and vet health certificates for horses, feeding during QT (30-45 days), evaluating horses to determine which ones are properly suited to rewilding, and finally transportation to a suitable wilderness location for rewilding.

Working with an extended team of amazing selfless dedicated volunteers, our nonprofit is providing our overview and guidance that has helped return what was stolen from these wild horses/mustangs: their freedom. At full scale using our plan and experience, with proper support and funding, we can do the same for thousands of wild horses/mustangs, and in the process, reduce catastrophic wildfires.

Through our larger vision and regional/national plan, we intend to scale up our rewilding program into several counties and states on the American west coast, where rewilded wild horses will reduce wildfire fuels and thereby reduce the frequency, size, and intensity of catastrophic wildfires.

Unlike any other nonprofit wild horse and burro org. in America today, our organization is uniquely qualified for this mission. Our team and Advocacy Board is made up of dedicated volunteers, each with specialized real-world empirical experience, which is absolutely required for the proper outcome.

The Wild Horse Fire Brigade plan incorporates multiple disciplines in natural resource management and science.

This is not about moving horses from one corral to another. Wild Horse Fire Brigade is about reestablishing wild horses as north American keystone herbivores into wilderness areas that are both ecologically and economically appropriate, and that takes the kind of experience that only comes from working in wildlife law, forestry, fisheries, wildfire, and with the wild horse ecology of free-roaming wild horses in wilderness.

Our nonprofit is the only one in America today with a team that has that aggregate of experience to see this through properly. Wild Horse Fire Brigade Org. is an all-volunteer California-based 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, with our research station at Wild Horse Ranch in the mountain wilderness area on the California-Oregon border.

Your generous financial support will support our vision to save remaining American wild horses, and also help more mustangs regain their freedom. Please consider a one-time or monthly contribution to our work via our ‘CHIP IN’ page, here:

https://www.wildhorsefirebrigade.org/chip-in

Note: In 2019, Simpson was nominated to serve on the BLM’s WHB Advisory Board. He was not seated because he would not consent to the ongoing mismanagement of American wild horses. Some of his nomination letters of reference can be read at this PDF: https://www.wildhorsefirebrigade.org/_files/ugd/b50928_d4424087009e4d319c0915981ebcbf25.pdf.

*Featured/Spotlights

Preventing Wildfire with the Wild Horse Fire Brigade

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Like a growing number of people in the American West, naturalist William Simpson is intimately familiar with wildfire. He lives in California’s rural Siskiyou County where overgrown grass and brush routinely fuel hot-burning and deadly wildfires. This year, the McKinney fire killed four people and burned more than 60,000 acres.

But it was a wildfire four years ago that posed the greatest risk to Simpson’s home. The 2018 Klamathon Fire burned uncontained for 16 days, sending giant flames toward Simpson’s property.

“The fire just came right up over that ridge,” Simpson tells NPR during a visit to his property. “[It] burned all the trees and destroyed all that conifer forest up there.”

Yet Simpson’s land and much of the local community remained safe. He credits the community’s Wild Horse Fire Brigade.

“It started getting into the area where our local herd of wild horses had reduced the fuel… large areas that were grazed open became safe zones for Cal Fire personnel and equipment that were stationed in front of the fire,” Simpson says. “These horses helped mitigate the Klamathon Fire.”

This local herd is the collective poster child for Simpson’s proposal to re-wild horses rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and placed in government holding facilities.

The Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act

The BLM is charged with managing the nation’s wild horses under the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. Congress passed it to protect America’s wild horses and burros that had been hunted to near extinction. Whenever the BLM determines there are too many horses in a given area, it can order helicopter roundups.

But the roundup is controversial. BLM helicopters sometimes swoop down above frightened wild horses, chasing them, sometimes for miles, until they’re funneled into traps on the range.

Read more here.

Also please visit www.wildhorsefirebrigade.org.

by Stephanie O’Neill, NPR

*Featured/Spotlights, Publications/Media

EQUUS Film & Arts Festival Officially Selects New Music Video ‘We Are the Wild Horses’

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California wild horse and burro nonprofit Wild Horse Fire Brigade has produced a new music video for wild horses featuring award-winning singer/songwriter Ginalina

YREKA, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, October 26, 2022 /EINPresswire.com — An emotionally powerful music video about wild horses has just been honored by the 2022 EQUUS Film & Arts Festival. This new music video, titled ‘We Are the Wild Horses’, produced by California nonprofit Wild Horse Fire Brigade, has been officially selected by the 2022 EQUUS Film & Arts Festival and will be premiered during the 10th annual EQUUS Film & Arts Festival in Sacramento California.

The EQUUS Film & Arts Festival will be held in Sacramento California and will run from December 2 through December 4th, 2022. Tickets for this event are available online at the Festival website.

The music video ‘We Are the Wild Horses’ is based upon actual events. It tells the story of a young poet-musician (Ginalina) who, upon learning about wild horses, their lives, and their plight after visiting the website of Wild Horse Fire Brigade, was compelled to compose a song about wild horses.

This was the beginning of her odyssey of discovery, which led her to travel over 2,000 miles and into the rugged wilderness of the Cascade Siskiyou mountains on the Oregon-California border in search of wild horses and the truth of their existence.

Upon reaching the wilderness and the wild horse observation station known as Wild Horse Ranch, Ginalina met wild horse ethologists William E. Simpson II and Michelle Gough, who are engaged in a continuous ongoing study of the behavioral ecology of free-roaming wild horses that was started in 2014 by Simpson.

“Uniquely in the study of any wildlife, Simpson has lived among the free-roaming wild horses as an embedded observer for the past 8 years. Simpson has coined the study method he uses as the ‘Goodall Method’ in honor of Dr. Jane Goodall, who pioneered the method of being an embedded observer during her study of the apes in Gombe Africa in the early 1960s,” said Deb Ferns, President of Wild Horse Fire Brigade.

Filming on location in the wilderness with Simpson and Gough presented many interesting challenges. “When some of the talent are wildlife, in this case wild horses, capturing the desired imagery is a tough assignment,” said Gough.

Interview: The making of the new music video ‘We Are the Wild Horses’ at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMVfBBhj6SA.

For more information, visit: https://www.WildHorseFireBrigade.org.

For more information about Ginalina Music, visit: https://www.ginalinamusic.com.

Information about 2022 EQUUS Film & Arts Festival can be found at these websites:
1) https://filmfreeway.com/EQUUSFilmFestival
2) https://www.equusfilmfestival.net/

*Featured/Spotlights

An Update on the Pokegama Herd from American Wild Horse Campaign

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Due to legal actions taken by the legal team for Wild Horse Fire Brigade at Vermont Law, led by our legal advisor, Professor-Litigator Michael Harris, the DOJ attorney had the BLM in Klamath Falls Oregon temporarily stop the bait and trap at and around the Pokegama HMA on Oct 4th, to give time for the DOJ to consider our lawsuit and potentially file a reply to our legal action filed in Federal Court in Washington D.C.

The press release below cites the lawsuit brought against the BLM by Wild Horse Fire Brigade’s legal team at Vermont Law:

https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/596270269/vermont-law-and-graduate-school-files-motion-for-preliminary-injunction-in-federal-court-to-stop-blm-wild-horse-roundup

Now, here comes the American Wild Horse Campaign (‘AWHC’) who sends out an article making it seem like they are somehow involved in stopping the Pokegama roundup, arguably to grift donations via a donation button at the bottom of their article page for simply citing already published news, but actually doing nothing to help in any way: they are not litigating, they have not contributed a dime; they are just watching, just like when they boasted about watching nearly 1,000 mustangs go to slaughter via their so-called ‘investigation’.

This is akin to offering just a part of the total $25,000 reward for the murderers of the Alpine horses.

AWHC full well knows that on average, only about 17% of such rewards are ever claimed. So they get lots of press and limelight for probably not having to fork out a dime.

It’s schemes like these that bring in lots of donations with little money spent that builds massive multi-million-dollar bank accounts funded by good-hearted donations to these BIG nonprofits. HSUS, for instance, has over $100 million in donations sitting in their bank account, while millions of dogs, cats, and other animals suffer and die.

Wild Horse Fire Brigade is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization. We walk the talk.

FACTS:

*Wild Horse Fire Brigade is the only Wild Horse nonprofit that has team members living full time among and studying the free roaming wild horses in the balanced ecosystem of a wilderness area.

*The founder (William Simpson) has been living among and studying wild horses in wilderness full time since 2014.

Wild Horse Fire Brigade is the ONLY organization that filed a lawsuit to stop the BLM Pokegama bait and trap roundup.

The fakery of feigning some kind of involvement with the Pokegama roundup by AWHC is consistent with the last misleading social media post by AWHC crafted to create the impression that Gandhi endorsed them, which he never did.

Here are some things that American Wild Horse Campaign can take credit for:

1. Sitting on millions in their bank account while boasting of their ‘investigation’ that, according to them, showed nearly 1,000 mustangs going to slaughter, as they failed to rescue them from the slaughter auctions.

The average sale price for a mustang at the slaughter auction is about $125/horse. Their last IRS 990 shows they are sitting on over $2 million in donations.

Using just $125,000 (6% of their cash on hand), they could have saved ALL of those mustangs, and then, using $500,000 more, they could have bought some remote grazing lands and rewilded those mustangs, which are now likely in pet food cans at a Mexican-based pet food cannery.

2. Helping the BLM eradicate wild horses from the landscape via supporting a key tactic (using genetic poison) included in the sinister PATH FORWARD: roundups plus genetic molestation via castration of stallions (lost genetics) and chemical treatments of mares with PZP & GonaCon — both are genetic poison, are known toxins, and further result in Genetic Erosion.

Stalking and shooting wild horses with high-powered gas-powered firearms that shoot heavy darts filled with genetic poison PZP is ‘harassment’ and is a violation of the Intent of the 1971 Act to protect wild horses.

The EPA labeling for PZP cites it as a toxin. It also uses ‘disclaimer’ language (terms) like ‘we assume’ and ‘we believe’, and that’s because HSUS arguably got them to waive all the normally required safety studies. So, since there are no studies to cite, the EPA instead uses disclaimers.

The EPA label also suggests there are ‘indirect’ toxic effects for both aquatic and terrestrial threatened and endangered species in areas where PZP is used; a chart of those species is also listed in the EPA labeling.

So, with due consideration to what the EPA labeling was required to state, how reckless is it to shoot that dangerous toxin into any wild animal, let alone our noble and precious American wild horses?

The damage to wild horses via PZP promotion and use doesn’t stop with just genetic poisoning; there’s more!

These two EIN NEWS Press Release cites the other serious issues:

a) https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/550887360/wild-horses-wild-horse-management-non-profit-organizations-wrong-chemical-use-on-wildlife-populations-flawed

b) https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/543923114/can-wild-horse-non-profit-advocates-save-america-s-wild-horses-by-drugging-them

3. Paying themselves handsomely as they live in the lap of luxury, even as they watch their own media showing wild horses being abused in every way.

This EIN NEWS press release cites the questionable behavior of American Wild Horse Campaign:

https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/553798287/american-wild-horse-campaign-got-it-wrong-wild-horses-paying-the-price

As we can all now appreciate, American Wild Horse Campaign was so busy heaping praises and kissing the backside of Deb Haaland to get into her good graces, arguably for some of the $48 million in PZP/GonaCon grant money, they didn’t care about her actual agenda for American wild horses.

Hindsight is 20/20, and if advocates cannot start learning from history, then wild horses in America are DOOMED!

Wild Horse Fire Brigade has a credible, natural, cost-effective plan for our government and local authorities to start managing wild horses in manner consistent with the fact that they are keystone herbivores, and with their status as the foundation stones upon which this country was built, and as the native sentient beings that they are.

Wild horses have earned and deserve our utmost respect and support, without compromises!

Our organization may be small, but we truly represent the wild ones, as advocates who literally live among them.

Since we live among them, visit with them daily, and share breath with them, we are inspired by them and informed directly by THEM, the wild ones! That is the essence of the discipline of being an ethologist… in this case, learning directly from the free-roaming wild horses in a natural ecosystem/wilderness as we do.

We do need funding… and urgently.  We need to execute the tactics to implement our solution ASAP!

We are doing all that we can, and smartly applying the little money we do have available.

We have already saved 32 wild horses at risk by rewilding them into Our Herd, and they are now living naturally and happily so.

We are an all-volunteer organization, unlike the big dollar gold plated orgs. like American Wild Horse Campaign, who arguably have a conflict of interest in their mission, because a genuine holistic solution for wild horses, which ends their plight, also ends the need for AWHC and their bloated organization.

In contrast, Wild Horse Fire Brigade, a California-based 501(c)(3)organization, uses all the money we get on working to save wild horses using intelligent strategies for natural conservation, using a multiple of tools, including a focus on educational outreach of our plan to legislators and the public, explaining our research and supporting science, and how we can humanely and cost-effectively rewild and relocate wild horses away from pathetic government holding and away from areas where they are in conflict and subjected to extreme prejudice and grave risk via barbarians.

We can do this with proper financial support.

Please visit our website where we have a ‘Chip In’ button. We accept credit and debit cards or PayPal: https://www.wildhorsefirebrigade.org/chip-in.

Alternatively, we can also accept checks made out and sent to:

Wild Horse Fire Brigade
404 S. Main Street – #162
Yreka, CA  96097

Best Regards,
William E. Simpson II, wild horse ethologist
Founder/Executive Director:  Wild Horse Fire Brigade