“We are very happy to present this award to Madeleine. This woman not only works hard to help animals and horses but has put her money where her boots are and where her passion lives. People like Madeleine deserve to be recognized and applauded for their efforts. We will do everything we can to help promote her and her efforts. It definitely will be my pleasure to hand her this award,” states WHIN’s Executive Director, Catherine Masters.
Animal rights advocate Madeleine Pickens started her career in horse racing in 1983, a passion she shared with her late husband and Gulfstream Aerospace founder, Allen E. Paulson. They achieved enormous success in racing and had a total of 800 horses, including breeding and racing World Champion and U.S. Hall of Fame inductee, Cigar. They achieved much esteem for their successes racing many champion Thoroughbreds, breeding many brood mares, and creating three successful farms from the ground up. Together, they owned a breaking and training farm at Ocala and a breeding farm at Brookside North in Kentucky where many of their champions were raised. They also had one more facility in California. Madeleine managed all the business aspects, farm decisions, and race decisions for the entire operation. The Paulsons owned more than 115 winners of graded stakes races. To this day, they still hold the record for the leader of the most ‘Breeder’s Cup’ champion horses and earnings.
Today, she is still breeding a few racehorses, but adamantly opposes horse slaughter and the use of the drugs in these animals. Until that is cleared up, she won’t ever participate in the race world like she had once been.
In 2005, she married Legendary Energy and Texas Oilman, T. Boone Pickens. In him she found someone as passionate and committed to animal rights, land conservation, and philanthropy as she is. It was when she met him that she decided the satisfaction of philanthropy and making a difference in the world was most important to her.
During the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, T. Boone Pickens donated $7 million to the Red Cross to aid the victims of the city of New Orleans. Madeleine couldn’t bear to watch all the animals being left behind to fend for themselves, so she arranged and personally paid for a commercial aircraft to transport about 800 dogs and cats to safety in Southern California. In the blazing summer heat, they loaded up the aircraft, occupying every seat with a rescued dog or cat. They made several trips across the country, until every animal was admitted into a shelter facility in Marin, Los Angeles, or Rancho Santa Fe, CA. Her heroic efforts, along with the volunteers networking in each city, helped facilitate the return or adoption of these animals to loving homes, including returning many dogs and cats back to their original owners.
In the fall of 2008, it was when Madeleine embarked on her own journey to raise awareness for the American wild mustangs. She founded the Saving America’s Mustangs Organization to preserve and protect these iconic creatures. She continues to work on getting the bill HR503 passed to ban horse slaughter permanently. In 2009, she created a solution to work together with the Bureau of Land Management on the costly and inhumane federal holding practices costing taxpayers upwards of $70 million by developing an eco-sanctuary in Nevada. For the past three years and several meetings with the BLM, she is confident that they can come to an agreement for the wild horses. The eco-sanctuary, called Mustang Monument: Wild Horse Eco-Preserve, is being constructed in Northern Nevada. It will be a permanent home and living museum where visitors can stay on the land and see their horses roaming free in the wild. It will be a tourist destination similar to National Parks where tourists from all over the world can be a part of our great American history. Saving America’s Mustangs has spent millions of dollars generating awareness about the issues the wild mustangs are facing and continue to take steps to educate the public. Madeleine Pickens will continue to work with the BLM to finalize the best solution to this very important issue and is excited about the possibilities this will bring.
“Mustang Monument is the right solution. We are overjoyed to have so many supporters worldwide and cannot wait to finally open the doors to the public. This is something that will create positive changes for our wild horses and American families alike,” said Madeleine Pickens.
For more information on Madeleine and her efforts, please visit: www.savingamericasmustangs.org or www.facebook.com/mustangmonument.
Other WHINNY winners include Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Mike and Martha Borchetta, Bonnie Garner, William and Elizabeth Shatner and Templeton Thompson. A complete list of WHINNY winners is on the WHIN website.
The WHINNY awards are part of the Women’s Horse Industry Network’s Annual Business Networking Expo. In addition to the WHINNY awards, there will be a silent auction to raise fund for several equine related charities, exhibitors and seminars. The event runs from October 6th through October 8th.
The WHIN has hundreds of members in all areas of the horse industry in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.
To register to attend this event or to find out more about the Women’s Horse Industry Network, please visit www.womenshorseindustry.com or call 615-730-7833. Limited sponsorships are still available.
Contact:
Catherine Masters
WHIN
615-730-7833
Stacie Daigle
Saving Americas Mustangs
Stacie@savingamericasmustangs.org