Alpine foals at the sales yard in Bowie, Texas.
To make a donation to support the care of the rescued Alpine wild horses, please click here. All donations will go only to the care and feeding of these horses, which are being temporarily quarantined in Texas while they receive vet care and vaccinations.
Partnering with fellow nonprofit organization All Seated in a Barn and with the support of Salt River Wild Horse Management Group and generous donors, Return to Freedom on Sunday, Dec. 3, rescued 45 Alpine wild horses, including seven foals, at a Bowie, Texas, auction from which they could have been sent to slaughter.
Working together, the organizations have raised a combined $158,339 through Tuesday, Dec. 12, which allowed for the purchase of the horses with all additional funds paying for their temporary quarantine in Texas, including vet care and feed.
Four of the bachelor stallions have been since gone to Red Orchard Animal Rescue, a Texas sanctuary at which they have been released on more than 100 pastoral acres. A portion of the funds raised went to Red Orchard for those horses.
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) originally captured the horses in a bait-and-trap roundup in the Apache National Forest in Arizona. Previously, the agency had sold wild horses captured in the Alpine Ranger District at a public auction in Holbrook, Ariz., or on the website of the contractor, Rail Lazy H, which offered photos and limited information about the horses. Another wild horse advocacy organization, the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group, had bought and adopted out 270 horses to new homes and sanctuaries.
However, it appears that in July 2023 there was a breakdown in the relationship and communication between stakeholders, the agency, and contractors involved in bait-trapping the horses. This resulted in the contractor taking some Alpine horses directly to the Texas sales yard known for selling to buyers who haul horses to Mexico for slaughter.
The USFS first began removing about 400 horses from the forest in 2022 after reaching a 2021 stipulated agreement in federal court with the Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon Society, which had sued over the horses’ impact on the endangered New Mexico meadow jumping mouse and other federally listed species in the Black River watershed.
The Alpine horses are not afforded protection under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming and Burros Act. The law directed the USFS to identify unclaimed horses or burros located on the lands they manage, but there were none in the Apache National Forest at the time of the act’s passage, according to the USFS.
At the time that Congress passed the Act, horses were found in Sitgreaves National Forest. That resulted in the establishment of the Heber Wild Horse Territory.
The USFS contends that the horses did not migrate to the Alpine, Ariz., area from the Heber, Ariz., area herd, which is located more than 100 miles away by road.
Rather, the USFS says, the horses most likely came from unauthorized livestock, including from the neighboring Fort Apache Indian Reservation. A 2011 wildfire destroyed about 14 miles of the 19-mile boundary fence that would have kept the horses from entering USFS-managed public lands.
The court agreement, federal law, and state law regarding unauthorized livestock all pointed to the removal and sale of the horses, deemed “unauthorized livestock,” and that USFS could not give the horses away, the agency said.
Local wild horse advocates argued that the horses were part of historic herds dating back to Spanish explorers and that the USFS was removing the horses in order to increase grazing of private livestock on public lands, of which about 1,000 head were allowed on half a dozen seasonal grazing allotments under a federal multiple-use mandate.
The agency said that the concerns caused by the horses were not within an active grazing allotment and that damage was increased because the horses were there year-round.
The USFS entered into conversations with a number of wild horse advocacy groups, including Return to Freedom, with the stated goal of reducing the chances that horses would flood the local market and be bought by kill buyers. RTF tried to persuade the agency that it need not follow the timeline for unauthorized livestock sale under state law but the agency’s attorneys believed that Arizona law was congruent with federal law and USFS policy.
As of this writing, there are about 150 horses remaining in Apache National Forest. There are an additional 47 horses in holding, with the next auction to be all weanlings.