Devil’s Garden wild horses at RTF’s San Luis Obispo, Calif., satellite sanctuary. Photo: Meg Frederick.
Right now, the U.S. Forest Service is capturing more wild horses like these in a helicopter roundup at Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory in Northern California.
Our sanctuary gave these 10 geldings and two mares from Devil’s Garden a safe new home in 2019, following another in what has become a series of annual roundups there.
In 2016, USFS estimated that there were 2,246 adult wild horses on the 258,000-acre territory located just north of Alturas, Calif., mainly on Modoc National Forest land.
Year after year since, the agency has chosen not to use proven, safe and humane fertility control that could slow herd growth without stopping it.
Instead, USFS has tried and failed to reach a population goal that it set of 206-402 on the range through capture and removal.
More than 3,500 wild horses have been captured.
That includes 104 this year: the first 24 in traps made of livestock panels baited with feed or water, then, since Sept. 2, the others with a helicopter driving them into a trap site. Four have been killed, put down for what the agency has only described as “chronic” conditions.
USFS plans to remove 350 of what it says are “more than 700” wild horses at Devil’s Garden.
In 2018, USFS announced unprecedented plans to sell captured older wild horses without any restrictions against slaughter. We and others sued.
As the case progressed, USFS was able to adopt or sell the horses with protections in place — including the dozen that we were able to rescue.
The Devil’s Garden horses at our sanctuary have remained loyal to each other. It’s a calm group, always together.
Watching their tight-knit band underscores the tragedy that is the ceaseless cycle of capture and removal at Devil’s Garden, which had been home to California’s last large wild horse herd, and elsewhere across the West.
There is a better way — and you can help: