CONSERVATION
Return to Freedom is proud of the pioneering and groundbreaking work we have done over the past 28 years! RTF’s conservation work includes:
• Regenerative Holistic Land Management; RTF works with international leaders in this field to restore balance to the land, combat climatic changes, improve habitat and sustainability.
• Conserving threatened strains of America’s mustangs, some of the earliest horses to renter North America in the 1500-1600s
• Fertility control; By working with the Science and Conservation Center since 1999, RTF was the fourth project in the world to use non-hormonal, reversible native PZP on large herds of mares to humanely and safely manage population while allowing for natural herd behaviors.
Regenerative Holistic Land Management
After two decades with a large population of wild horses and burros, our sanctuary land was turning into a dustbowl in some areas. RTF Founder Neda DeMayo was fortunate to learn about regenerative land management from one of our donors who had began working with grazing expert Rodger Savory.
“I was amazed at the transformation they achieved in just a few years,” Neda said. “I was unaware that undergrazing and over-rest were just as detrimental as overgrazing. By emulating what would happen when there were endless grasslands and diverse grazing mammals and predators who kept those herds moving, we can restore balance and regenerate the soil for a sustainable healthy ecosystem.
“By managing the land holistically, the animals become part of the solution — not the problem.”
RTF advocates for these and other changes on our public lands to benefit wild horses, burros and all wildlife.
Wild Horse Conservation & Rare Strains
Return to Freedom’s American Wild Horse Sanctuary strives to keep wild horses in their original family and social groups, so they may continue to exist without the threat of capture or removal. RTF has pioneering minimally intrusive management solutions to protect wild horses and burros on their existing rangelands as well as those that through no fault of their own, have been captured and are now in captivity.
Committed to conserving the rare and diverse bloodlines that define the American Mustang, Return to Freedom maintains a rare breeds conservation program to preserve the disappearing original Spanish mustangs & unique strains that might otherwise be lost forever.
Some of the conservation herds at the sanctuary represent horses with DNA similar to the primitive Iberian horses (the Sorrias), while others are direct and undiluted descendants of Padre Kino’s original Spanish Mission strain which arrived in the 1600s. The Choctaw Ponies are a 100% pure tribal strain who originally arrived with Hernando DeSoto in the 1500s and carried the Choctaw and Cherokee on The Trails of Tears.
Most of these original Spanish horses have been destroyed and only exist in very small numbers, totaling less than 600. Our conservation program is designed to help educate the public about the origins of the horse in North America and their return to this continent, and to inspire conserving the genetic viability of these historical and biological treasures.
Other herds at the sanctuary represent descendants of larger breeds that arrived later to North America from Europe; cavalry horses and ranch horses that have interbred with Spanish mustangs on our public and park lands and have reverted to a natural state over the past five centuries.
The wild horses of today, managed by government agencies, continue to battle for their rightful place on our federal and state lands. With a continued and aggressive roundup and removal policy, our wild horses could disappear forever if we do not work now to protect and preserve them. Learn more about what threatens America’s wild horses and burros.
Wild horses are living things who have a right to coexist in what is a vast landscape, which is the American West … Let’s do something about this.
Non-Hormonal, Reversible Fertility Control
So our horses can live in their natural bands, we needed to find the least intrusive way to slow population growth, while allowing for natural behaviors. In 1999 RTF implemented native PZP, a non-hormonal, reversible fertility control vaccine, under the guidance of the Science and Conservation Center, Billings Montana.
Return to Freedom does not endorse the argument that there is an overpopulation of wild horses and burros. While livestock graze on 160 million acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM)-managed lands, wild horses and burros are consigned to only 26.9 million acres, just 11% of our public lands, where they are out-numbered by millions of privately owned livestock by an average ratio of 50 to 1.
Return to Freedom endorses the protection of predators to naturally manage large mammal populations in wilderness areas. Unfortunately, this has not been accepted as a viable argument in the current political paradigm due to livestock management and urban encroachment.
Only to the extent that population control is necessary, fertility control methods are available whose efficiency has been proven safe, humane, and effective as an alternative to permanent sterilization, capture, removal, or shooting. Native PZP, a non-hormonal form of immunocontraception widely used in wildlife, should only be used judiciously with wild horses, solely to the extent necessary to maintain healthy population levels, in keeping with the original spirit and intent of the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971. The goal is to minimize the need for costly and traumatic roundups, as well as save millions of tax dollars, while ensuring natural selection and genetic diversity by slowing down reproduction as opposed to stopping it all together or removing wild horses and burros from the range.