It’s time for land managers to get serious about implementing a sustainable, humane, and

professional process to get wild horses and burros into private ownership. With almost every

wild horse territory overpopulated and degrading, the land managers have their hands full.

They need a way to efficiently dispose of excess animals that is humane, respectful, and acceptable to the diverse stakeholders involved in this issue.

     Training gets animals adopted and into private homes. Several university studies of the

economics of the BLM adoption program have shown this. When the perceived value of the

animal exceeds the asking price, people are eager to adopt them. This matches our experience

of having trained and placed more than 600 horses into private placement. We first proposed

a large scale gentling program to the BLM in 2012. They opted instead to have small scale

training programs relying on amateurs and prisoners, with the attendant headaches of unpredictably variable results, high rates of adoption failure, shuffling paperwork by mail with

thousands of individual adopters, and the financial burden of indirect costs of working with

organizations with broader missions. These are unnecessary problems. It’s time for a more

professional approach.

     We are proposing to build a dedicated (and replicable) wild horse and burro training facility,

staffing it with professionals, and providing a very efficient adoption service to help solve

the American mustang crisis. We are seeking a grant of just under $1.4M and a commitment

to keep us supplied with horses and burros.

The following proposal details this facility, it’s operation, and our thoroughly documented

taming protocols. We hope that you will realize the value of this systematic approach and will

find a way to help us to make this a reality.

Click here for a PDF digital copy of our proposal.

Talking Points

Campaign Objective: To inspire people to give money, time, or expertise to help save captive mustangs through our novel but thoroughly tested plan for training and adoption.

I hope readers:

• sense the urgency of implementing a new solution quickly. 

• find hope for addressing what seems an intractable problem. 

• see our plan as a rational science-based approach. 

• sense the boldness and daring of our maverick solution.

What are the benefits?

Benefits to the animals - gets 200 to 1000 per year of these iconic animals out of holding facilities to a more enriched life. Saves them from slaughter. Example: we have placed over 500 animals and most of them become important parts of people's lives where they are loved and cared for. 

Benefits to equine science - provides an opportunity to study the taming process. Example: Despite limited time, we have produced innovative research on laterality in wild horses, flight distance as a measure of tameness, comparison of negative and positive reinforcement in reactive animals, and the need for education of trainers in the equine rescue rehabilitation environment. Much more will be possible when the volume of horses is higher and the work of training, management, logistics, adoption and research is better distributed.

Benefits to government - disposes excess horses in a humane way and gives them better options for wild horse management. Example: if the BLM or USFS had a less litigious option, money saved in legal fees fighting the advocates could pay for the solution. Government employees that care about the animals will be very happy to avoid the controversy of bloodshed.

Benefits to us - allows us to continue our mission in an effective way. Example: we have spent 10 years trying to convince the BLM or USFS to try this. We realized the limits of our old location, we had to move or close. We were not ready to give up; we don't know how to give up.

Benefits to the major mustang adoption program, The Mustang Heritage Program - we will be training and adopting horses under them and our success will be recorded as their success.

Benefits to animal welfare organizations (AWO) - helps animals that otherwise have a tragic end that the animal welfare organizations have not been able to address. Example - other than the development of PZP by HSUS, the AWOs have not felt capable of addressing this huge problem and mustang issues have not be defined as "of interest". This project allows them to engage in the solution in a way that is consistent with their core values of preventing animal suffering.

Benefits to animal lovers - provides them with a source of pride for making a difference. Provides them with a positive story about themselves. Example - people love to watch the taming and training of individual animals we tell on social media. It gives them hope and models a compassionate solution to life's problems.

Benefits to adopters - people can adopt a living legend and have a animal they can handle without extensive training. An animal will be trained to a consistent criterion that facilitates later stages of training. It will be much easier to visit MC to shop for mustangs in a location near pavement.

Benefits to local economy - heritage tourism, local economic benefit to services and farmers, doesn't take money out of the local economy. Brings in a pro-social academically oriented workforce. Example - Mustang Camp should have daily tours and a gift-shop museum staffed with local community members.

Contact Information:

Patricia Barlow-Irick, Executive Director MC

phone: 505-419-2575

email: patricia@mustangcamp.org