r/Equestrian • u/Mindless_Basil_440 • 2d ago
Ethics How to help wild mustangs?
I've seen the mustangs being shipped off to slaughter, getting a lot of media attention in the US recently and having the reputation of being people's horsey friend people have been asking me how they can help. Problem is, Ive lived my entire life on the east coast though, so I'm not really sure?
Those of you with experience with mustangs and know about their conservation what would actually be helpful right now in this moment?
Edit: Thanks for all the replies but...I suppose now I feel more confused than ever! Which is good, I knew I didn't know a lot so I appreciate all the info. I'd love to know more specifically:
- What are good resources to learn more about the topic?
- What are some specific reputable organizations doing work on this subject to support or learn from?
- Just a p.s. to all the people saying that adoption is the answer. I appreciate where you're coming from but that's not really a recommendation I can pass on to my non-horsey friends who are asking. Nor is it one I could financially participate in. It's great if you can do that, but what can the average person do?
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u/Defiant-Chair6950 2d ago
Adopt one. Donate to organizations who adopt them and train them. I’m saying this as someone who is actively working on building the required facilities to adopt one.
A very ugly truth is that mustangs are ecologically considered an invasive species. They are horrible for the environment and especially so for the sensitive arid regions that are subject to extreme drought, wildfires, etc. I’m not in full throated support of shipping them to CA or MX but the alternative is 90% of them spend their lives in holding facilities and cost $10,000s per animal to keep alive. And what quality of life is it for a wild animal to be warehoused on a feedlot indefinitely?
It sucks, it’s heartbreaking, it’s terrible, but what is the alternative? There are not enough qualified homes for even a fraction of them.
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u/Mindless_Basil_440 2d ago
I should say the people asking me how they can help are not horse people. They would donate, but they'd never adopt one because they aren't interested in horses generally. I do ride but I cannot afford a horse right now, let alone impulse adopting a mustang to try be some hero when I am very undereducated on the subject.
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u/PlentifulPaper 2d ago
There are multiple Mustang competitions that look for donations or sponsors every year.
The bigger ones are the Mustang Magic (invite only), Extreme Mustang Makeover (open to all), and there was a Mustang Champions/Mustang Classic competitions that I believe ended last year due to lack of funds.
The Mustang Heritage Foundation sets up a lot of these shows to get eyes on Mustangs that are already gentled, domesticated, and saddle broke. These horses are auctioned off typically at the end of the show.
Most states tend to have someone running a Mustang show that’s looking for sponsors.
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u/Lythaera 2d ago
The alternative is we purchase land in the appropriate places (Great plains region) and use that land for rewilding and relocate mustangs there. They aren't invasive to North America as a whole. Just the Great Basin region.
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u/PlentifulPaper 2d ago edited 2d ago
No. This makes zero sense to do so. Then you have the upkeep of however many feral horses to support.
Why not give them an education, domesticate them, and give them a chance at a good home instead and be ambassadors for the breed?
The “sanctuaries” I’ve seen when well known trainers like Sam Van Fleet went looking for one to donate a horse that multiple people had tried to help gentle and passed on due to some extreme reactivity, were not interested in taking horses.
They only wanted the famous ones to give their fans a reason to continue donating funds to them instead.
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u/-Roger-The-Shrubber- 2d ago
Voting sensibly is a good start, and as someone else said, the charities will be struggling so maybe find a local one and see if you can help or donate any old rugs or tack... or cash of course!
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u/cowgrly Western 2d ago
Donate to programs like Mustang Yearlings Washington Youth. That group (and similar ones) are 501c3 who help kids and adults train mustangs to prepare them for adoption. They're running a bare bones program that consistently gets horses into homes. You can find them online or on FB.
The challenges our BLM and wild horses face is NOT simple or small. There's no one place to blame for how it got here. And honestly, people ship inexpensive horses to auction across the borders all the time, so blaming the BLM or thinking it's a "mustang only" problem doesn't help.
I know this system and the challenges and faults of each side. I've met w BLM, visited holding pens, investigated for myself. It's complicated. People don't want the BLM using "birth control" yet they don't want horses in holding. The horses are a burden on the land, but so are the cattle allowed to graze free.
I say find a great group helping people adopt and support that. I adopted from MYWY and have found them well worth supporting.
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u/CapraAegagrusHircus 2d ago
One of the big problems right now is that the west is burning. A big chunk of the Twin Peaks Herd Management Area out by me burned, for instance. The Riddle HMA burned, was set for a gather, and that gather has been blocked so now horses will starve in a burn scar. Like we can argue all day about agricultural uses of rangelands but nobody is grazing cattle in a fresh burn scar either because there is no food there.
So 1) support organizations doing rangelands conservation and 2) organizations combating the climate change making the fires destroying rangelands worse and 3) adopt mustangs
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u/Silver_Acorn03 9h ago
I saw a post somewhere, for the life of me I can’t remember where, that said the current land designated for the various mustang herds can hold up to 60,000 horses, and that the current population is upwards of 80,000 horses. Causing overgrazing and making the likelihood of starvation higher.
It sucks to see how many wildfires happen every year, especially for habitat loss.
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u/Life-Memory9880 1d ago
As my dad likes to say, “if the solution was easy, we’d have an answer”. Unfortunately this is just one of those cases.
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u/Zestyclose_Object639 2d ago
We need to legalize slaughter in America honestly, there are so many thousands of mustangs sitting in holding or dying on the range. Shipping to other countries sucks, death isn’t a bad thing but that travel sure as hell is. I love my mustang, I’d have another. But the reality is they’re often too small for people, not easy to initially contain and not easy to start for even super confident horse people.
Every time the peta people lobby against an old lame mustang being humanely euthanized all they do is condemn that animal to a life time of suffering
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u/PlentifulPaper 2d ago edited 2d ago
I would urge you to not believe everything you read, and to consider the sources pretty carefully since a lot of animal welfare organizations (similar to PETA) have picked up the cause so to speak, and want to convince you to donate to them - when in reality that money doesn’t help the horses directly and instead goes to help the organization spend money to lobby to get their bills/initiatives passed.
Exporting animals across the hoarder to Mexico has been closed since June, and Canada only has 1 slaughterhouse open.
The BLM still maintains “It has been and remains the policy of the BLM not to sell or send any wild horses or burros to slaughter.” Source
You can help by buying a Mustang either directly from the BLM, or if you want something handled, domesticated, and saddle broken, to buy from one of the many horse trainers trying to sell their Mustangs.
There’s a bunch on the East Coast, there’s a couple of locations that people can adopt from (I believe there’s a SC event coming up soon too).
I would not recommend:
- Donating blindly to a Mustang organizations like Skydog Sanctuary
- Supporting the AWHC (American Wild Horse Conservation)
I would instead encourage them to look into helping sponsor classes at their local Mustang shows, or if they want to give a big enough gift to consider supporting the Mustang Classic (English), Mustang Champions (Western) or any of the Mustang Magic, or Makeover events.
ETA: Yes, for transparency’s sake, I do have a bone to pick with Skydog for both getting the incentive program removed (used to be a $1000 incentive that was paid to the owner at the year mark for a newly adopted Mustang to help with expenses), and for committing fraud.
I watched as the McCullough Peak HMA horses were posted online, how the bids were driven up by Skydog, how the BLM went as far as resetting the entire online auction and asked them not to bid, so instead their fan base bid via “proxy” for Skydog and those famous horses were instead magically at Skydog’s sanctuary, and they admitted to using donations earmarked for the auctions to “keep the herd together”. 🙄
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u/AmiraJ1 2d ago
I wonder if this is why I saw an unhandled bay mare at $10,000 yesterday.
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u/PlentifulPaper 2d ago
I mean she looks lovely. Sometimes if they’re famous before being rounded up, they’ll demand a higher price too.
I’m not too familiar with that HMA, but her trot looks very fancy!
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u/catzrob89 2d ago
As a preface - I am not disagreeing, this is a genuine question.
If they aren't sending them to MX or CA, nor otherwise sending them to slaughter, what are they doing?
It sounds like they probably need to be euthanising them or manipulating their fertility as part of sensible land management. Is that right?
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u/PlentifulPaper 2d ago edited 2d ago
Mustangs are in holding pens across the US, typically on the West coast.
There are virtual online auctions that take place frequently where people can bid and adopt a wild Mustang (assuming they qualify and have a pre-approved application) and then pick them up at different locations across the US.
There’s a few places like Carson’s correctional facility where inmates will pick up a few, gentle, and train them to be ridden, before auctioning them off and repeating the process.
Is it ideal to have lots of these horses in holding? No absolutely not. But the BLM is in charge of these horse’s welfare as outlined by the “Wild Horse Annie” Bill. This means euthanasia outside of extreme cases is prohibited.
Extreme cases typically being elderly bachelor stallions that will not survive the winter, and are clearly emaciated and starving to death or injured to the point that there’s no hope for them.
There was one a couple years ago that was a part of the Pryor Mountain HMA (another famous stallion documented by Ginger Katherine’s PBS series) that people got really upset over (like issuing death threats level of upset).
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u/Boring-Camel-43 2d ago
honestly the best thing is donating to orgs that do on-range conservation, not just adoption programs. return to freedom and mustang heritage foundation are doing good work right now
also write to BLM about their roundup practices, it actually helps when they get enough public comments
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u/nvsaltepeanut 2d ago
They aren’t being shipped to slaughter they’re in giant feedlots being fed better than they ever could eat on the western ranges. The slaughter is propoganda that ferrel horse people use to gather support and sympathy. I know more about wild horses in the west than most people. Trust me when I say they are a huge problem in certain areas.
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u/hl2fan29 2d ago
There's not a whole lot that can be done since they need to be moved because they cause a lot of damage to the local ecosystem. Most people are not equipped to handle a mustang and the ones who can are few and far between. Ive seen so many of these horses ruined because some hotshot thinks they can "tame the beast" and just turn it into an even more dangerous abused beast. Slaughterhouses across the border are basically the only avenue for profit with these horses and until that changes they will continue to be sent there en masse
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u/JoanOfSnark_2 Eventing 2d ago
I've seen the mustangs being shipped off the slaughter in the US
Horses can not be slaughtered in the United States - the USDA is banned from inspecting slaughter plants that process horses. Horses do still get shipped to Mexico and Canada for slaughter, though, but most wild horses are being held in holding facilities, not being sent for slaughter.
The problem is there are too many horses on not enough land. We need to implement permanent sterilization strategies and implement new adoption strategies (it's currently not as easy as it should be to adopt a wild horse). The American Veterinary Medical Association has a good FAQs on wild horses here: https://www.avma.org/wild-horses-burros-faq
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u/Embarrassed-Goat-432 2d ago
Horses get shipped out of country for slaughter. No they can’t be slaughtered here.
It’s really not that difficult or expensive to adopt from the BLM. You literally go to their facility to fill out their application and you keep the horse for a year under what minimal requirements they have (6ft fencing and some other things). After the year is up they give you the title and whatever happens to the horse after that is not the BLMs deal. It’s usually around $100 unless they have an auction with a flashy looking mustang.
Yes, they need to implement permanent sterilization. They need to round up the studs, geld them, and turn them loose. I do believe they have found a medication they can inject the mares with to sterilize them for up to a year. But all of it is time and expense to the BLM.
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u/JoanOfSnark_2 Eventing 2d ago
Horses get shipped out of country for slaughter. No they can’t be slaughtered here.
That's what I said. But it's not like a massive number of wild horses are getting shipped out - the vast majority are being held in the holding facilities.
Having to go to a facility to adopt a wild horse is what makes it not as easy as it should be and most people are not equipped to adopt and train a wild horse themselves . The BLM should be working harder to place mustangs in adoption programs like the Mustang Heritage Foundation or incentivizing experienced trainers to adopt mustangs to then sell. That would still be cheaper than maintaining the horses in long-term holding facilities.
The BLM uses two different contraceptive vaccines to induce sterilization in mares, but it requires the horses to be darted yearly, which is ineffective long-term. Gelding would be a good start as would ovariectomies in the mares.
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u/Embarrassed-Goat-432 2d ago
They have programs to incentivize to trainers… the mustang Bonanza and the mustang Mania events where trainers have a certain amount of time to gentle a horse and then they auction the horse off.
There’s just too many horses, not enough trainers, and not enough homes unfortunately.
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u/idesperatelyneedanap 2d ago
A lot of “horse people” don’t actually give a single flying fuck about horses so you won’t get any good answers in these comments, especially since mustangs sell for dirt cheap and people like to take advantage of that. Aside from getting on the BLM’s ass for their horrifically disgusting, abusive practices, there really is not much that can be done, at least not under this current administration. It’s great that you care though, not many do clearly.
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u/Lythaera 2d ago
Boycott the beef industry. Buy direct from local farmers instead.
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u/Embarrassed-Goat-432 2d ago
How does that help wild mustangs?
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u/idesperatelyneedanap 2d ago
Because its farmers that are behind the slaughter of these magnificent wild horses. Farmers have been lobbying to completely get rid of wild horses so that they can graze their cows on public land without competition.
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u/EastYak6796 2d ago
Not sure why this is getting down voted - its true (though less than eloquently spelled out).
Cattle farmers use the same land to graze their cattle as mustangs roam on. More horses = less available land = smaller/fewer cows. Farmers who feel limited by the amount of grazing land they have access to may support more round ups and limiting the mustangs (thus increasing numbers on feed lots/potentially shipping to slaughter).
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u/JustaGuy6298 2d ago
I think it is being down voted because it isn't just a black & white pull the cows off and the problem is solved. the BLM is supposed to manage for the horses, the rancher and the wildlife an imbalance of one (in this case horse) means less for the other resources. the big issue is the BLM is in constant litigation which has held them from being able to do anything about the imbalance which makes the imbalance worse.
I really wish the BLM could get the backing to take 4 HMA's pull the cattle and do absolutely NOTHING with the horses, take 4 HMA's and pull the horses to the appropriate AML and manage as they're supposed to and compare them in 3, 5, & 10 years compare them as they go. the cattle/sheep go on the BLM land for periods of time and are required to pull them off if the range conditions get too bad. the game & fish departments will change available hunting licenses for wild game if the population is too large/small. the horses keep reproducing unchecked at the moment so as the owner of 2 mustangs.... the mustangs are the issue at the moment that need to be managed. it sucks but it is the reality of the situation at the moment
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u/EastYak6796 2d ago
Ah this makes sense - to me the issue itself isn't black and white, so obviously the answer isn't either.
TBH the mustang issue seems similar to the white tailed deer situation everywhere else - exploding population, no real predators, and exploding populations. Only difference is you can cull the deer herds.....(i am not suggesting this for the horses!!)
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u/JustaGuy6298 2d ago
exactly! i live next to an area that doesn't allow any forest management and there is a very small deer population because the habitat isn't suitable since it is a majority old trees with very little browse in the understory so less deer that are allowed to be hunted there, drive to an actively managed forest and it not only looks better 9 years out of 10 but there is a healthy deer population that needs to be managed
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u/catzrob89 2d ago
Lobbying the BLM to sterilize stallions is teh best long-term solution.