Wild Horse Fire Brigade – Update

Photo: William E. Simpson II — Wild horses calmly graze in front of approaching 38,000-acre Klamathon Wildfire.

The issue around wild horses is not a one-liner or a quick study for anyone.

Innocent wild horses are literally dying at the hands of bad actors as you read this, so I ask that you excuse my tenor and curtness… death is final… and this is an exigent matter.  And in these desperate times, I have little patience for people and nonprofits profiting from the plight of wild horses as they pretend to offer solutions.

The wild horse issue is not suited for 30-second videos showcasing a tiny portion of a hugely complex problem as means to tap into the emotional response of well-meaning people in order to obtain their personal info via so-called ‘petitions’, allegedly calling for government intervention, or other fake ‘call to action’ initiatives.

In many cases, these template petition forms are designed to obtain your personal info under plausible pretenses, so as to later hit you up for something (or the promoters are creating/selling a mailing list), or for donations to fund their fake, failed solutions.  And on it goes, with no genuine solution… as wild horses lose their freedom, families, branded, sterilized, and some killed or slaughtered.

Of course, a genuine solution, such as the Wild Horse Fire Brigade solution, would put all these grifters out of business. Then what would they do for money?  And that’s why some wild horse nonprofit Orgs don’t like me much… the truth is good for the wild horses, but bad for some Orgs who are just grifting.

The sad reality is that the situation causing the extermination of American wild horses is a complex economic tale that few people understand. Comprehension of the issue is made even more problematic by the fact that the environmental benefits, ecology, and natural history of American wild horses is poorly understood, even by some so-called experts. 

And making matters even worse is that the truth about wild horses is intentionally subverted and misrepresented by the very government agencies that are responsible under law for protecting wild horses, yet are more inclined (incentivized) to carry out the will of the trillion dollar corporations who run American politics, and ultimately, public land management.

Do you want YOUR MONEY to continue to fund a longstanding cycle of failure by the same wild horse nonprofit Orgs who have accomplished… What? Herds of sterilized, genetically declining wild horses that are treated like livestock (rounded up, branded, etc.), no longer living like wildlife, naturally?

That’s exactly what American Wild Horse Campaign (a.k.a.: ‘American Wild Horse Conservation – ‘AWHC’) has been delivering, along with providing lucrative lifestyles for their own executives and vendors, and that is the take away from their IRS 990 filings.

If you love wild horses and really want to allow them to live ‘wild & free’, ask yourself this simple question: are wild horses better off today than they were 20 years ago?  Of course, the answer is a resounding NO!  They are far worse off than ever! 

And that’s after over $100 million in donations over the past decades to the BIG DOLLAR well-known wild horse nonprofits, like American Wild Horse Campaign (rebranded at ‘Conservation’).

So what are their results? Hobnobbing and posing with politicians? Yep, and making political donations too!

Did you know that American Wild Horse Conservation spent over $400,000 just on media, according to a recent IRS 990 filing?  Yes, we pay attention! And we know who’s pulling the wool over the eyes of well-meaning advocates.

Wouldn’t you rather fund innovative, cost-effective thinking that leads to results?  That’s what we have proven we offer.

We are still seeking financial support for our many critical ongoing projects, which are all proving themselves to be valuable and effective!  And we ARE an IRS Approved 501 c 3 nonprofit.

HERE IS OUR SECURE PAYPAL FOR DONATIONS:  https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=E5WT67QR5H6X8.

Here’s a short summary of what we have already done, and ongoing projects:

1. Rescues and rewilding of wild horses suitable for rewilding. Plus, rehoming those that cannot be put back into the wild.

2. Ongoing research and studies with our native herd of 200 free-roaming cultural heritage horses in an ecologically balanced wilderness landscape. This herd was documented by Sir Francis Drake in 1580, and is the largest privately owned, free-roaming native herd of wild horses in the western U.S. wilderness.

3. Litigation that makes sense. We have one of America’s leading lawyers on our board. Mike Harris was formerly the lawyer for the Friends of Animals for 7 years. And he was a law professor at Vermont Law University. Mike has nearly 100 cases under his belt. So, when we decide a lawsuit is appropriate, we enter into that effort with the ‘A’ team. Our Board of Directors also has as its Vice President an equestrian champion and Lawyer, Kelsey Stangebye. In 2022, we sued the BLM and won, stopping the Pokegama area roundup. And we did that very cost-effectively via a collaborative pro bono litigation plan with Vermont Law University that yielded success and results. We are currently studying the BLM & USFS actions and are gearing up for another legal effort to force the BLM to conform to their legal responsibilities and the LAW. And we still maintain our collaborative relationship with the professor of law at Vermont Law Univ.

4. Education and public outreach. This is also very important work, because we are the only wild horse researchers with the empirical experience that comes from living among the herd in the wilderness in a 400 square foot cabin, and through that hardship, accumulating over 20,000 hours of intimately close-range study of naturally living wild horses in their native habitat. Properly educating others, including news media and advocates via writing and speaking on wild horse behavioral ecology with detailed insights and accuracy, requires that level of commitment and sacrifice. There is NO substitute for extensive empirical experience backed by science.

Numerous scientists and teaching professors, along with journalists with science educations, have visited our herd and research site and have come away with the same evidentiary based beliefs that we know wild horses and we are doing what we claim. Validation is everything in this new world of posers and Internet scammers.

And that’s why we are the teaching the world’s first wilderness field study course in wild horse behavioral ecology ethology.

Our Spring/Summer wilderness field study courses are coming up soon. We are expecting 2 graduate students from U.C. Davis and 6 undergrad students from California State University!

This will be our second year teaching the world’s first university Wilderness Field Study course in Wild Horse Ecology Ethology, which includes wildfire herbivory.  

Year One press release from CALSTATE: https://www.csus.edu/news/newsroom/stories/2024/1/wild horses internship.html.

We use what I have coined (in 2019) as the ‘Goodall Method’ of learning and teaching about wild horses, with the blessings of the Goodall Institute, who opined in writing that “We love your programme.”

We are not asking for donations based upon really bad ideas, like sterilizing wild horses, or putting wild horses back onto the lands (economic battlefields) where they were just removed at great public expense to suit the needs of powerful trillion-dollar corporations.  Instead, we have a genuine, humane, cost-effective, proven successful, nature-based plan and honest path to save wild horses and keep them WILD & FREE.

Anyone who won’t spend the time to learn from our recent presentation from the January 2025 Mustang Summit is just not all that serious about wild horse advocacy, and will stay in the dark, unable to help wild horses.

Here is our presentation, which took many hours to prepare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncm0RidlxuE.

Our award-winning documentary films are yet another way we help the public to gain insights into the world of our American cultural heritage horses.  We combine powerful visuals with accurate information pulled from our genuine, authentic empirical experience with wild horses.

So far, we’ve produced and/or collaborated on three award-winning documentaries:

Fuel, Fire and Wild Horses
HORSE of NATURE
Wild Horses

Plus, one award winning trend setting wild horse music video that triggered other wild horse Orgs to subsequently copy the idea. We Are the Wild Horses has clearly made an impact on the market for wild horse music videos… here again, we were first, with something fun and new that helped audiences get a glimpse into the world of wild horses.

The entire team at Wild Horse Fire Brigade are very grateful for your ongoing support.

Please donate here.

Visit www.wildhorsefirebrigade.org for more information.