The Wild Horse Problem in America (and What We Can Do To Help!)
Currently there are 60,000+ mustangs waiting in BLM holding pens to be adopted.
My FREE course helps potential mustang owners learn how to adopt and bring home their very first mustang! Learn more about the FREE course HERE.
There is an estimated 2 million horse owners in the United States. If I can inspire just 3% of horse owners to give one of these wild mustangs a forever home, we can clear the pens completely.
My work helps passionate horse lovers around the country deepen their horse-human connection through private training and a supportive online community.
Through the TIP program, I gentle mustangs one by one and find them perfect homes, showing what it’s like to own and train a mustang along the way.
Help me help mustangs find forever homes!
Why Take Wild Mustangs Out of the Wild?
“In North America, mustangs have no real natural predators, and left to their own devices, they’ll breed. Herds can double in size every five years. Spaniards brought horses to the continent in the 1500s, and by the end of the 19th century there were 2 million mustangs scattered throughout North America.
Then people started killing them. The horses were easy prey for anyone with a rifle and a flatbed truck; slaughterhouses paid cash for carcasses and sold the meat to pet-food manufacturers. In 1959, thanks to a grassroots campaign by Velma B. Johnston, a.k.a. “Wild Horse Annie,” Congress enacted a law that banned using motorized vehicles to hunt mustangs. It was only laxly enforced, so in 1971 Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, which mandated that the US Department of Interior protect the mustangs “from capture, branding, harassment, or death” and designated them as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West.” (-MotherJones.com)
Overpopulation of people is also becoming more and more of a problem in the United States. Cities are growing and people are buying little plots of land all over the Western states to grow their own produce or livestock. Many of this land is where wild horses are roaming. Farmers, ranchers and others are seeing that there is not enough land for all of the animals to graze freely, and many of the wild horses are starving to death because of it. They do not have enough water, food or resources to remain free and populate at the rates they currently populate in. Every few years the Bureau of Land Management rounds up horses in various areas and places them in short term holding pens until they can be adopted out to the public.
THIS VIDEO TALKS WITH AN ORGANIZATION ABOUT HOW THEY'RE TRYING TO KEEP HORSES WILD>
“The BLM is caring for 32,000+ (over 60,000 now today) captive mustangs at a cost of $29 million annually—a whopping 68 percent of the BLM’s $40.6 million wild horse and burro program budget.
Meanwhile, sell-offs to private developers, oil and gas exploration, and, more recently, areas targeted for renewable energy projects have swallowed up about 20,000 square miles of viable mustang habitat. Of the original 303 HMAs, only 180 remain, on a patchwork of rangelands totaling 45,150 square miles—69 percent of the 1971 range. With so many horses on so little land, the BLM must gather and board an increasing number of mustangs each year.”
My FREE Mystery of the Mustang course helps you learn more about the BLM and its various adoption programs! Learn more about the FREE course HERE.
What We Can Do To Help Mustangs
The way I see it, we need these round ups in order for the horses left on the land to have enough resources to survive, and we need to find great homes for the ones rounded up so we don’t flood the holding pens with no solutions in sight. Mustangs have incredible potential in almost any riding discipline if trained with patience and trust from the start.
We can adopt a mustang ourselves, celebrate with those who adopt, inspire those thinking about adopting, and support horse owners around the world that love mustangs! Together we can solve this problem with love and connection – the mustang way!
There are many holding pens on BLM land in various states, and these corrals are open to the public so that you can go and look at the horses, and talk to the employees there about adopting one! The government has even recently offered a $1,000 incentive for adopting a wild mustang! (You can find out more about this incentive program in our FREE COURSE.) While this may sound very enticing, these animals can be extremely dangerous, so be careful. In order to have your application approved to adopt, one of the requirements is a 6-foot fence, because many of these horses will jump right over a 5-foot fence!
Some of these horses have so much fear for humans and may never be able to be tamed, but many of these horses are very docile and eager to learn and become partners with a human! Once you decide to adopt, make sure to have a great support network in case you get stuck! Our online community is a great way to get the help you need! If you’re not sure if you’re ready for a mustang straight from the wild, don’t worry, there are other (more safe and already trained) options!
Mustang Trainers & Our Ultimate Mission
The BLM has maintained a partnership with the Mustang Heritage Foundation (MHF) since 2006. MHF is a 501(c)(3) public, charitable, nonprofit organization dedicated to facilitating the successful placement of America’s excess wild horses and burros into private care. The Mustang Heritage Foundation created the Trainer Incentive Program, which is better known as TIP, to bridge the gap between the public and excess wild horses held in off-range corrals. TIP supports a network of hundreds of horse trainers who gentle, train and find homes for wild horses and burros. As of 2016, TIP has helped find homes for more than 3,900 wild horses and burros and supported a network of 440 approved trainers in 47 states. In September 2023 BLM and MHF dissolved their partnership but the BLM still works with many mustang trainers to put on adoption events and challenging competitions.
I am a mustang trainer in Las Vegas and my ultimate mission is to personally help 150+ previously wild horses find homes! My overall mission is to inspire enough families to, together, help clear the holding pens completely! If you're interested in learning more about the previously wild mustangs and how you can adopt one, my FREE COURSE "Mystery of the Mustang" has tons of information and pictures! Let me know if you sign up for the course and how you enjoyed it!
