As published by Cowgirl magazine
Their glossy coats glisten in the bright sunlight as they gallop across the Northern Santa Barbara landscape. This is an image that symbolizes the American West – Wild Horses running proud and free and have held this country’s imagination for centuries. “But close your eyes,” says Neda DeMayo, founder of Return to Freedom, American Wild Horse Conservation (RTF), “and imagine them gone forever.”
DeMayo has devoted the past twenty-six years of her life working to solve wild horse and burro issues, founding Return to Freedom, a national 501(c)(3) wild horse conservation organization focused on Sanctuary, Education, Conservation, and Advocacy.
In 1998, RTF opened its American Wild Horse Sanctuary at its first location—a 300-acre ranch in Lompoc, California. Today, the sanctuary operates in three California locations. This past January, she was honored by the EQUUS Foundation and the United States Equestrian Foundation with their Humanitarian Award for her tireless work “to make the quality of life of our equine partners paramount.”
But what would draw a woman away from the glamorous life of a Hollywood costume designer and stylist, where clients included actress Sandra Bullock, into the open range of Northern Santa Barbara County, swapping out her designer duds for jeans and well-worn boots? DeMayo, the visionary behind
Return to Freedom did just that.
To understand her work, you must understand DeMayo’s deep devotion to these animals and her grit. Her mother would say that ‘horse’ was her first word, and when she was just five years old, she began taking riding lessons near a stable outside of her New Haven, Connecticut, home. “I would look for horses everywhere growing up in rural Connecticut,” DeMayo remembers. “When horses weren’t around, I would feed and ride my neighbor’s fence. I couldn’t get close enough to nature—being fascinated and at home within it—horses allowed me the adventure to move through nature.”
Since its creation in 1998, RTF has advocated nationally for the redirection of funds used for the traumatic and costly government roundups and warehousing of wild and free horses and burros to minimally-invasive-on-the-range alternatives. RTF’s sanctuary was created as a model to explore and inspire a new approach—viable minimally intrusive management alternatives to keep wild horses on their ranges. With a focus to maintain intact family bands and bonded social groups from their capture to the sanctuary, in 1999 RTF began using a proven safe, humane, reversible, fertility control vaccine to manage population growth. The concept has gained momentum with more organizations and community volunteers actively participating in the last 8 years.
Return to Freedom’s conservation work spans from the preservation of some of the rare and threatened historical strains of the early Spanish horses that were the foundation of the mustangs in America. Bands that include the pure strain Spanish Mission Horses, the Wilbur-Cruce herd, the Sulphur/Sorraia horses, and the Choctaw herd. This began as a cooperative project with screenwriter John Fusco, equine geneticist Dr. Sponenberg, and Choctaw horse conservator Bryant Rickman, which resulted in a program for regenerative holistic grazing to improve land management, with grazing animals as the solution not the problem.
“This solution-focused approach is firmly rooted in the founding principles and management model of the RTF sanctuary, which provides care for almost 500 wild horses and 50 burros,” said actor and activist Robert Redford, RTF supporter and Board Member.
DeMayo has had a lot of help and support along the way from such national organization as The Humane Society of the United States and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) who have worked closely with Return to Freedom on national policies concerning wild horses. RTF has a unique voice on Capitol Hill with its decades of hands-on experience in land and herd management. The organization has also gotten great support from the Hollywood community; including Redford, Youth Ambassador Amber Midthunder, Shannon Doherty, Viggo Mortensen, Elle Fanning, Ed Harris, Wendie Malick, and the late super-model, Tatiana Patitz.
A rescuer by nature, Malick, who recently co-starred opposite Sam Elliot and Ashton Kutcher in The Ranch, wanted to learn about the ongoing plight of this country’s wild mustangs and 17 years ago agreed to emcee RTF’s annual Spirit of The Horse Event. Shortly after, Malick journeyed up to RTF’s sanctuary to visit them in a close-to-natural habitat. “Neda is a remarkable woman, warm and fierce, and she introduced me to the world of wild horses,” said Malick.
“I went into one of the pastures and felt breath on my back and looked into the gentlest eyes I’ve even seen. This was Stuart. A big, beautiful black mustang, I fell in love with him immediately and we hung out for hours,” she says. Stuart was from the Challis herd in Idaho, and lives with Malick, her husband, and a menagerie of horses, mini donkeys, and other animals! “We rode Stuart ever since the day we adopted him. He is gentle, very engaging, and wants to please you.”
Shannon Doherty visited Return to Freedom in early 2024 and became passionate about the Sanctuary’s mission and the work that DeMayo is doing. A huge star in her 20’s and 30’s, she has been riding and owning horses ever since she starred on Beverly Hills 90210. Battling Breast Cancer for 8 years, “relations
hip with horses have given me peace and solace during this difficult battle,” she explains.
Always looking for young people to support the Sanctuary, indigenous female actor Amber Midthunder became an RTF Youth Ambassador fifteen years ago when she was just eleven years old. “Return to Freedom saves horses and gives them a place to live,” Midthunder simplistically told New Mexico magazine when she was just fifteen years old. “I so admire Neda for the work she is doing, as I believe that there is such a horse/human connection that has to be preserved.”
Return to Freedom is also open at both the Lompoc and San Luis Obispo sites for guided tours and photo safaris for individuals or small groups. Guests are invited to photograph and observe the diverse strains of the American mustang living in natural family “bands” and meet the “ambassador” horses like; “Spirit”, the Kiger mustang stallion who was the muse for DreamWork’s 2002 animated feature film “Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron,” and Isadora-Cruce, the 2010 Breyer Model Horses Mustang model.
When DeMayo first got passionate about the plight of wild horses in the mid 1990’s, she was both deeply moved and angered, reading about the failed adoption programs and where horses were slipping through the cracks into the slaughter pipeline. Knowing that she could not save them all, she travelled throughout their ranges in the West to investigate and better understand the conflict over the use of our public land resources and the plight of the American mustang. She realized that one of the keys to creating a vital appreciation for today’s wild horses is to develop a comprehensive educational platform, as the community at large needed to understand and embrace the social, biological, and historical value for these horses in modern world.
“Something had to be done about the mismanagement of wild horses, as the public, with the best of intentions, did not understand that these herd animals that have spent their lives evolving in a natural habitat, have lost everything. They are often traumatized, scared, and confused, and some have a very difficult time transitioning to a domestic environment that all too often is not even equine friendly for domestic horses,” DeMayo explains. “These fabulous horses were suffering; the programs were failing, and I knew that I had to do my part.”
This philosophy and practice are what makes Return to Freedom different and unique from other sanctuaries and rescue groups. “It became very important for me to create a place where the horses were with their natural family herd groups, and we have been able to relocate entire herds of harem families and bachelor stallion bands and release them at the sanctuary where they are thriving because they are together,” she says with gratitude. “They are born to live in herds. Why would we want to take that away from them?”