If you’ve wondered what it’s like to visit Wild Horse families that you know and love before a roundup, this episode is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker, and let’s get started.

Welcome to the Freedom For Wild Horses podcast, the place to find out about wild horses in the American West and what you can do to help them stay wild and free. If you love wildlife, wild horses, and the freedom that they stand for, this show is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker. Let’s get started.

Two weeks ago, I traveled to the Red Desert Complex in Wyoming for several days to visit the horses there that I’ve come to know over the past 10 years. The BLM had announced that the roundup was going to begin on October 15th and that 931 horses would be removed.

The Red Desert Complex consists of five herd management areas: Green Mountain, Crooks Mountain, Antelope Hills, Lost Creek, Stewart Creek, as well as one herd area in the middle, no longer managed for wild horses, Arapaho Creek.

I started in the morning, driving on Crooks Gap Road, and started looking for families that I knew. I saw Takini and his family standing and staring at oil workers near the road who were talking loudly, with one man in a white suit whinnying loudly looking at the horses. It was rather surreal. They did not look concerned, the horses, but curious as to what was going on.

This family is one of the most colorful in the complex, with Takini the stallion, a bay roan, three red pinto mares, a black pinto lead mare, Natasha, a bay roan three-year-old mare, daughter of Natasha, and four foals, two of them very loud pintos. One of the foals was brand new, maybe a week old, and her mom was keeping her a bit apart from the rest of the family. I watched for a while, and I left, hoping they would move away from the construction.

I continued driving and looking for Fallen Star, a gorgeous dun stallion with a stripe down his back and primitive markings, stripes on his legs. He had lost his family to a gray stallion two months ago, and it must have been over a course of time with several tough battles because it left him thin and with wounds on his flank. He had filled back out in the last month and healed.

When I first met him, after the terrible winter of 2022 to 2023, he had a long flowing mane, which fell out in late May of 2023. This year, it’s grown back completely, thick and long and flowing as he moves. When I spotted him from a hill through my binoculars, I looked for a two-track that would take me near him.

I started driving down the hill, and when I looked up, I saw him rearing up. The black stallion who had been dogging him earlier in the year was there, and Fallen Star chased him away. He is not lonely looking for company. No, I think he’s building strength and getting ready to get his family back.

When I made it out to a flat area where I could see him, he was still tense and amped up from his challenge. He wasn’t going to stay still and hang out, but instead he moved back and forth in front of me, striding effortlessly, mane flying. Below where he finally stood, there were cattle, lots of them, in an area in Arapaho Creek where they should have been taken off the range weeks ago. The BLM had been saying they had scheduled the roundup because of the drought and the horses were going to starve.

None of the horses in the complex that I saw or had seen over the past months were starving, not even close. And if there was a real concern about the health of the range and the lack of the forage, why on earth were there livestock even turned out at all this year? I said goodbye to Fallen Star, my heart hopeful that he might evade the helicopters in this upcoming roundup. I turned around and headed out.

On my way back to the highway, I saw that Takini had moved his family way up the hill and away from the construction and the workers. Good. After leaving them, I saw one of the families I’ve known for six years on a hill in Green Mountain, moving down to a lower area. Ohiaisa, a gorgeous Palomino, is the stallion of this wildly colorful family.

His lead mare Calypso is a stunning Pinto Bay Roan, who is very much in charge of this family. She stayed back as usual, but gorgeous Dalia, who is now pure white, kept a close eye on me the whole time I was there. She nursed her red Pinto foal and stood quietly next to him. Ohiaisa moved near her, and they stood peacefully together.

I enjoyed seeing the Palomino Pinto mare who was new to me with her cremello foal. And the bay roan mare, Cali, had a look-alike roan yearling and also a roan look-alike foal. I watched them graze and nap, and as they moved off, I told them to stay away from the helicopters.

The next morning, I looked for the horses I had come to know over many years from Stewart Creek. I was used to seeing them near the solar wells in the morning and had seen them in that area three weeks ago, but now I didn’t see any of them. No doubt because of the large number of hunters driving around and staying near the solar wells, waiting for their prey.

Another morning, I had a couple of surprising encounters that delighted me. I was driving toward Osborne Road in Lost Creek, and I saw a huge family at the water hole. I started driving toward the water hole, but they were walking away, clearly having finished their morning drink. I drove around looking for a two-track and came across some salt licks left behind by the ranchers for their cattle.

And guess what? This big family with lots of Pintos was walking in a straight long line directly towards the salt licks. I pulled my car forward out of the way and waited for them to come, standing next to my vehicle. The lead mare, a wary red pinto with a long white tangled mane, was not too sure about me, but they all kept coming, and then when they got to the salt licks, they started licking. There were two pinto colts goofing around, a black pinto mom with her look-alike young foal, two other pinto mares, and then bringing up the rear was a bay stallion with tall white socks, walking slowly and looking all around, protective of his family.

They seemed to enjoy watching me watching them, and there were small scuffles between the horses trying to get at the salt. I got the feeling this was a routine for this family. I’d never seen them before, so it was a delight to get to spend time with them. The stallion began looking to the east, and I looked to see what had caught his attention. It was another family headed to the water hole.

I left this family after saying thank you and goodbye and drove up the road to see the new family. I knew them. It was the Buckskin Pinto stallion Baldur and his red Pinto mare Phoebe and her offspring. I’ve known them for several years, and the last time I had seen them was in March. Phoebe is a gorgeous, very colorful red pinto with her oldest daughter, a Palomino Pinto, and a red Pinto yearling and a red Pinto foal. Plus, the stunning blue-eyed, striding bay stallion, Ronaldo. I first met him before the roundup in 2020, and he lost his family during the roundup. Since then, he’s been a bachelor dogging various stallions, and he’s been with this family for over a year.

There was also a Buckskin stallion trailing them. Baldur was looking older, a bit thinner, and no doubt Ronaldo was seeing an opportunity to get the family for himself. He snorted at me as he usually does, even though the family walked by me unconcerned on the way to the water hole. He stepped high, showing off, and he and the Buckskin stallion went to drink at the water hole while the girls went to the tank to drink. I watched for a while until they moved off, heading to graze.

The next morning, I went down Mineral X Road looking for the Lost Creek gang, as I called them, a loose confederation of several family bands that moved and grazed together. It had rained hard recently, and there was a large puddle on the left side of the road, perfect for horses getting water. And sure enough, there was Rincon and his family nearby.

Rincon is a short but stocky red Pinto stallion who’s always on alert and watching carefully. He has a gorgeous Grulla mare, a gray mare, and now a new black mare and foal. They were looking over my head like someone else was coming, and I was delighted to see my favorite family on the way, Storm and Donata’s family.

Donata is the daughter of Looking Glass, the amazing leopard Appaloosa stallion. He stole Grace, a gorgeous Palomino Pinto mare, from Storm six years ago, and their first foal was Donata, a Buckskin blanket Appaloosa. Now, Donata and her younger sister, Quinn, who’s a Buckskin, are with Storm. Donata has a yearling Appaloosa colt, Connor, who’s a bay blanket Appaloosa, and this year, Rowan was born. He’s mostly white with Palomino markings and Palomino spots, a truly gorgeous little colt. He still sticks pretty close to mom.

They walked down toward Rincon’s family and then stopped to stand for a while. I sat down to watch. First, Rowan lay down for his mid-morning nap. Then Rincon’s gray mare kept getting closer and closer to me, very curious. Then Rincon relaxed and walked by me. Soon, Donata walked over to Rowan, and to my surprise and pleasure, lay down next to him.

Foals always lie down to sleep, but adult horses only lie down when they feel safe. I felt honored. Storm and Connor walked by, and then Quinn. Storm finally went back over to Donata and Rowan and got them up. They watched me for a while, and I said my goodbyes in case I would not see them again. Then both families moved off to graze, and I kept driving.

When I looked down Riner Road, I spotted another group with a bay stallion’s mostly bay family, and there was Looking Glass and his new family, with the beefy gray stallion Sheamus and Anya, his gray lead mare and her foal. Last year, Sheamus had a large family, and Looking Glass was his lieutenant. Looking Glass had lost his own family two years before. But now, he was the lieutenant, and his job was to keep the family together and drive off other stallions. He became part of the family, but this spring, he started slowly moving the gorgeous liver chestnut mare, Shannon, and her yearling colt and foal further and further away from Sheamus. And in August, he was their band stallion. Sheamus lost two other mares as well, one to the black.

Looking Glass was alert and watching, while Shannon, who’s normally quite shy, came toward me so I could see her beautiful face. It was a special moment with these horses who I hope can continue to live out their lives wild and free instead of being rounded up with helicopters and losing the only home they’ve ever known.

The BLM is planning to round up 1,035 wild horses in the Red Desert Complex starting October 15th, removing 931 of them and releasing 104, 50 of them mares to be treated with Gonacon, which is a known sterilant. They’re calling it birth control.

They are only planning to let the public observe the roundup for four days, even though it will likely go on for two to three weeks. And this is a complete departure from past roundups where the public has always been allowed to observe the whole roundup. I have been observing roundups in Wyoming since 2005 and have always been allowed to watch every day of the roundup, weather permitting.

Public observation is very important because the contractors always treat the horses better when someone is watching, standing for the horses. And also, the observers can find out information about where the horses are going, what has happened, injuries, accidents, and deaths. The horses that are removed will be shipped to the BLM facility in Rock Springs.

There’s no way to know which horses will be removed right now. I know none of them should be removed. The herds are still recovering from the devastating loss of life from the brutal winter of 2022 to 2023. Wild horses are always safest in their homes, and they are not in danger of starving to death. If they will allow observation, I will be out there documenting the roundup and will be reporting on the status of the horses. This is the most difficult part of coming to care for and love these horses.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses. If you want to learn more, follow me at www.wildhoofbeats.com for more information and for ways to help America’s wild horses. See you next time.

Carol: Have you ever wondered about the life of Wild Horse Annie and how she got started saving our wild horses? If so, this episode is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker, and let’s get started.

Welcome to the Freedom For Wild Horses podcast, the place to find out about wild horses in the American West and what you can do to help them stay wild and free. If you love wildlife, wild horses, and the freedom that they stand for, this show is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker. Let’s get started.

Today, I’m really excited to interview my friend Terri Farley. She is an award-winning author of many, many wonderful books, including the Phantom Stallion series and also Wild at Heart: Mustangs and the Young People Fighting to Save Them. But she has a new book that is coming out at the end of this month, and we’re going to talk about that. It is Horse Girl: How Velma Bronn Johnston Became Wild Horse Annie and Outsmarted the Mustang Killers of the West.

And it’s a fantastic book and a very timely book to read to get a sense of where all the advocacy work for wild horses got started. And we also have to think about the future. So thank you for being here, Terri. I really appreciate it.

Terri: Absolutely. I’m happy to be here.

Carol: That’s great. So tell me, why did you decide to do this book?

Terri: The roots of this book probably are not only in my childhood but in my teaching and advocacy. I mean, I’ve driven the marketing people crazy because I say it’s an all-ages book, but it really is, and I wrote it that way because so many of us want to stand up for wild horses or education or conservation, but we’re just embarrassed. I mean, we feel awkward when we go to meetings and speak out. We feel awkward on Zoom. We feel awkward, even though our hearts and our brains are full of outrage or information or both.

And Velma Johnston was a brilliant woman. I’ve been really lucky to get into her personal papers. Oh my gosh, a trip in the best way took me right through her life. She was born in a rural area. She was not born on a ranch, although that is the myth that most of us have fallen for, including me, and I have published that misinformation. She grew up in an area just outside of Reno, between the city of Reno and the University of Nevada. But they had a big lot, so they did have backyard horses, like many people. She got polio as a child.

And some people may not know because the aftereffects last, but polio itself doesn’t last that long. It’s usually days or weeks. But it affected the way she walked. It made her tilt slightly. She could still walk and run and ride. But when she was around 11 years old, her parents found out that there was a low-cost pilot program for kids with polio in San Francisco. So she lived in Nevada, but her parents took her to San Francisco because a lot of the programs that we hear about that are aqua therapy and things like that were for people with lots of money. Well, Velma’s family did not have lots of money.

They took her to San Francisco for this pilot program, left her there, because somebody had to go back and run their freighting business, which was called the Mustang Express, and take care of the other children in the family. Left her there. The treatment that they did was a cast. They put a cast on the part of her body that was affected by polio when she’d been younger. And so she was trapped in this cast, you know, sort of mummified. And she was alone. And she could hear other kids who had polio but were on crutches and weren’t in a cast, so could run around in the halls and stuff.

And all of her dreams of the wild horses that her father would catch and gentle and use for his freighting business, she thought about those mountains. She thought about the wild horses that lived up there. And she thought about having a real ranch, not just two horses in the backyard and looking up at the mountains that surround Reno.

The casting kind of worked. It did help her move better eventually. But what happened is that she was a 11-year-old girl. The rest of her body kept growing as the part that was in a cast stayed still. So this affected the way she looked. This affected the way her body tilted. Her shoulders tilted. Her father disowned her pretty much. I mean, he rarely spoke to her after this, and she had been his buddy in taming these horses in their backyard.

So my point in saying why did I write this book? Nevertheless, she persisted. When she found that wild horses were being slaughtered, she had settled into the ranch life. She was happily married. She had all the animals she’d ever wanted as an adult. She was driving to work in Reno from her ranch outside of town, and she got stuck behind a truck that had horses in the back that were bleeding and falling into each other and falling down and stepping on each other, dripping blood on the freeway.

She followed it to a slaughterhouse and learned from a kind of flippant guy that those horses were out there for the taking and you could just round them up and sell them for dog food and make a ton of money with no overhead. And she was horrified. And so she did start going to meetings. And she hated it. She hated when she stood up knowing that everyone was staring at her face and going, ” What’s wrong with her?”

But she did it. And she kept doing it. And even in the last days of her life, she knew that she was not a beautiful heroine for the horses, but, oh my gosh, she could stand up for them and speak out for them. And that’s what I want people to get from this book, to see it doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t matter if your voice shakes when you’re speaking. You need to take what you do best and what you’ve learned about wild horses and the atrocities that are being committed upon them and speak out. It doesn’t matter what you look like. And I wanted kids to know that because it’s hard, and I wanted adults to know that too. Long answer, but that’s why.

Carol: No, that’s wonderful. I was struck, as I was reading it, how the BLM hasn’t changed. They’re still saying the horses are worthless. They’re starving to death. They have to be removed. They’re a plague on the land. I mean, it’s the same conversation as back then. It hasn’t changed a bit. And the livestock ranchers are still wanting to get all of the horses off of their land. And so in certain ways, things have not changed.

I mean, she changed so that we have laws protecting these horses. But the conversation is still the same, and the challenges are still the same. Wild horses are getting slaughtered now. So yes, it’s a very timely book because it’s really bringing the focus on really humane treatment of wild horses, humane treatment of any animals is so important.

Terri: And opening people’s eyes to what’s going on. I was delighted to see the New York Times article and people reacting to it on TikTok, on Instagram. You know, I got my haircut. People were talking about it there. This was not a rural barbershop. People can’t care if they don’t know. And that is one of the things that Velma realized early on. Because she had heard these small planes going over her ranch, and she vaguely knew what they were doing, but not really.

When Solari at BLM said, “Shoot, those horses are all over where you are,” which they weren’t. She had only seen them once or twice, but they were near her ranch. “You should get a permit. Actually, your husband should get a permit to round these horses up and just sell them. It’s the lazy man’s way to riches.” And today, I’m always amazed that people don’t know we still have wild horses and that they can go see them if they know.

Carol: It’s our land. It’s our land. These are our horses.

Terri: Our land, our horses. And they don’t know that. And so I think education, as it was in Velma’s day, boy, would she have gone crazy with the internet. Whew. She was in constant pain, and so she stayed up late. She drank coffee and wrote letters, letters, letters. And if you wrote to her, you, by golly, got a letter back.

And so she opened people’s eyes. And as you said, that’s what we’ve got to keep doing now and tell people these are your horses. This is your land. People are making a profit from it, the extractive industry.

Carol: The livestock ranchers are the ones that own the holding facilities, which is crazy. Yeah, it was amazing to read about her life and how, despite being in pain, despite hating speaking in public, she continued to do that, and she was so inspiring to people. And she really is the heroine of the wild horse movement. I mean, she started it all. And of course, there were things that she would have loved to have seen in the act that weren’t. And unfortunately, there are aspects of the act that aren’t even being followed. And I think we need like an entire huge team of attorneys right now filing lawsuits. And if we had the money to do that, that would be a wonderful thing.

Terri: And they started chipping away at that act before she died in the last days of her life. But she fought hard to get it passed. She started that very day that she saw the horses being hauled to the slaughterhouse. As she usually, because she lived out of town, out where the Tesla plant is now, but her ranch was about 20 miles out of Reno. But she drove into work every day because when you own a ranch, there are expenses.

And she had wanted to go to college, and she could have walked to the University of Nevada from her home. Her father wouldn’t allow it. He said it was a waste of money for women to go to college, even though she was the valedictorian in her class. The only class she didn’t get A’s in was public speaking. And so she said, “Well, then I’m getting a job.” And he thought that was stupid too. She should just stay home and help her mother keep house. And her mother stood up for her and said she can’t just stay here and waste her brain. Let her get a job.

So she did. And she got a job as a secretary. She could walk to work from her house. They’d put in sidewalks in Reno, and she could walk to work. She tailored her clothes. She would look at Vogue magazine and Harper’s Bazaar, and she would sew her own clothes, high-fashion ladies’ suits, to fit her twisted body and to flatter her face. She did everything she could to look like an executive secretary, even though she started as a very, very low person working in the bank.

They found out very soon, especially on the phone, that during this time when there was a run on banks, Velma could talk people out of taking their money out. She had a wonderful telephone voice. She was a good communicator her whole life. And she explained to people in their own terms why it was safer to keep their money in the bank. So she quickly, despite what she saw as her terrible appearance, started moving up.

And she made friends. And she went to meetings for executive secretaries, and she became an officer in some of the clubs for secretaries. She kept moving up. So she had experience in public speaking, even though she hated it. And so that really benefited her when she started going to meetings.

And one of the coolest things of all is that after she had that first meeting with BLM, with Solari, she went out to her car and, in shorthand, wrote down everything he had said. She didn’t do it while she was sitting across the desk from him. She was horrified that he said, “Shoot, little lady, your husband should get a permit, and you’re right out there in wild horse country.” She wrote it all down.

When she went to the meeting that night, she used BLM members, staffers, words, not exactly against them, but when they would veer off and say, “Well, we’re actually doing this, and it’s not harmful.” Because there were people who were concerned, not many, but there were people who were concerned about these planes going overhead and rounding up the horses. She stood up, her husband had already spoken, but she didn’t think he did quite a good enough job. So when there was an opportunity to speak, and she knew that she had direct quotes to contradict what BLM was saying, she stood up and used their own words against them. And her shorthand came into good use for her whole life. She would overhear conversations and take them down.

And she was an incredibly smart woman. When I go through her papers, oh my gosh, she was writing a book. And I had heard years ago, decades ago, that she was writing a book, but that when she died, her family threw it away. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve been very, very, very fortunate to work with her personal papers because her family kept everything.

And her niece, Dr. Trudy Larson, is a friend, just emailed her this morning. She ordered a huge stack of books, and she wants to go out someplace for lunch and have me sign books. She’s looking for a place that has big empty tables. But Trudy worked with me, and she was Velma’s favorite girl. Velma didn’t have any children, and she would take Trudy out to lunch, and they would wear gloves and go to very nice restaurants. And she actually went to Trudy’s graduation from med school, and she was very proud of her.

Carol: So what are some lessons from Velma that you think are especially pertinent right now?

Terri: I wrote one thing down. Let me see if I can read it. She said, “To fight for what matters,” This is not my shorthand, “you must have an unshakable faith in the very rightness of what you’re doing.” And I think most wild horse advocates do have an unshakable faith in the rightness of what they’re doing.

She also believed that you needed to have the facts to back up what you were saying. That’s hard for a lot of us. Ginger Kathrens is one of the people that I have been with in informal settings with cattlemen and things like that, and she just pulls stats out of her head like no one I’ve ever met. She’s very good at it. I’m not so good with numbers. I’m pretty good with anecdotes. And you need to have the faith in what you’re doing, and you need to have some facts to back it up.

She also said, and I didn’t write this one down, but it’s in the book, that she knew people would like their heroines to be beautiful. But she wasn’t. And this is when she was in D.C. talking to Congress. That’s how she had climbed despite that inner feeling that she didn’t look good enough. This unlikely woman, when she went to Washington the first time, people expected her to be a cowgirl. Well, she was a cowgirl in every way that mattered.

But as I said, she wore tailored suits and high heels and gloves and always had her hair styled. And people expected her to come in chaps and spit on the floor. She was not that woman. And as advocates, we can decide what kind of persona we want. Or you can just be yourself. But be yourself armed with facts and with the conviction that you know what’s going on, and other people need to know that too.

And almost everyone, I’m not saying I’m great at this, but I will tell you that almost everyone I come into contact with, whether I’m getting my hair cut or I’m taking my grandchildren to a water slide park or something like that, will know something about wild horses by the time I leave. They’ll at least know they still exist and they’re in danger and they’ll know they should contact their legislators to do something about it. Even if it’s just state their opinion. No, we shouldn’t be killing these animals, and they belong to us. They belong to the American public. And our land is being usurped by one fraction of the voters. And the rest of us want those horses left alone.

Carol: Yes, that’s wonderful. That’s really what needs to happen. And I was just really struck by how many people were responding to that New York Times article. I’ve never seen any sort of response like that before to anything. And it just hit, obviously hit at the at the right time. I mean, many of us knew this investigation was going on. It wasn’t news, but it was news to a lot of people. And I even saw congresspeople posting about it. And I was like, wow, okay, good. People are finally listening. And it’s really an opportunity to capitalize on that because people are saying we don’t want to lose our wild horses. So yeah, and…

Terri: We’ve got to keep that momentum going. And I comment on everything I can online, and I try to correct some people who are saying, “Well, they’re starving, so of course we have to.” You know, I mean, you try to gently correct people. My favorite word in talking to people who are resistant, and this has become my word for a lot of things, is rethink. You need to rethink what you “know” about wild horses, about what you know about public lands. And that’s a little less threatening than saying, “Where have you been for the last 50 years?”

But interacting with people once they’re interested, I think is great because they know somebody else is out there thinking the same thoughts. And as I said before, you know, we don’t like to be the loner standing up there speaking our truth. It’s scary for a lot of us. I’ve read that people are more afraid of public speaking than being in a cage with a lion. Well, give me public speaking any day. But we can help people by showing them some facts and telling them that there are so many more of us than the people who are profiting off our public lands.

Carol: And then, of course, I’ve had all these people say and comment on my posts, “Well, this has been going on in other administrations.” And so where were you then? I’m like, “Well, I was right here opening my mouth.” But it’s much more urgent now because the threat, you know, was in Project 2025 to kill the horses in holding. And so it’s a much bigger threat.

Terri: Yeah, and this administration just steamrolls, just goes ahead despite the laws on many things and then worries about the consequences later. Well, the consequences of this can’t be fixed.

Carol: Once the horses are gone, they’re gone.

Terri: Right. Maybe the East Wing can be rebuilt, but once these horses are dead, we can’t bring them back. We’re not going to take a bunch of ponies and turn them loose on the range. It’s not the same thing. These horses are part of our heritage.

Carol: And they’ve evolved in these lands. They’ve evolved to live in these lands.

Terri: Right. Your Shetland pony’s not going to make it, probably. Probably.

Carol: Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s important also showing people that these horses aren’t starving. The Red Desert Complex, they threatened to round up because the horses are starving. So immediately, I started posting more of my images showing the fat horses that are out there. And that starving conversation has been going on for decades.

Terri: And you can’t have it both ways. Are they starving or are they eating everything on the range so that huntable species and food animals can’t eat it? Well, neither of those are true. As you said, they’ve evolved on this land. They know where to go to get their food and get their water. Most of the time, they are able to find what they need to survive. And they’re built for it. And they have lead mares who have maps in their minds, and they know where to go. The stallions fall into the back and take care of the stragglers. And I’ve seen that so many times and wondered, I guess the image of the stallion always leading the herd. Well, it’s not always like that. A lot of times, but not always like that. I love seeing the lead mares bossing people around.

And I did some work with different wild horses on Shackleford Island and with Earthwatch. And for 10 days, we had to pack in our water, which was not fun. And I learned about ticks for the first time. Oh my gosh. I didn’t grow up where there were ticks. But we watched those horses, and the lead mares were so amazing. We would hike out every morning, and there were like eight people on the team, all women. And we would find horses, GPS their location, and then sit down and, for an hour, document behavior. It was a blind study on contraception, as it turned out, but we didn’t know what we were documenting.

And those lead mares not only would decide where they’d go during the day, because there are a lot of microclimates. There were swamp and beach and kind of small foothills. And if a young mare was not taking care of her baby, if it was wandering too close to the swamp or too close to the ocean, the lead mare would go over there and bite her on the butt, so hard. And she’d go, “Yes, yes.” And run after her kid.

So, you know what? I’m fascinated by the, I know you are too, the interactions between or among the members of wild bands. And that’s the kind of thing that people need to see.

Carol: It’s not at all like watching a group of domestic horses in a pasture. These are families. These are horses that have bonds with each other, and different families have bonds with other families. And there’s a whole interaction.

Terri: Well, yes. And years ago, when the Warrior Cats series first came out, I proposed a parallel series about wild horses. And the editor who rejected it said, “Horses don’t do anything but stand around and eat grass.” And I was not going to change her mind because that was her experience.

But I have a friend who is a police officer. She is terrified of horses. I’ve always tried to get her. Her name is Linda, and she is a very active, she was a very active cop, but she was really scared of horses. She said she didn’t want to be around anything whose head was as big as her torso. And she said, “Give me an armed suspect over a horse.” And that included police horses.

I took her out on the range, out on the Virginia Range, kind of near Virginia City. And she ended up sitting down and missing her plane home because she was watching the interactions among these horses. She was fascinated, and she had no idea that they had friends, that they had sibling relationships, that mares, adult fillies, were grown mares, their daughters would hang out with them.

And the word is not humanizing, but I think getting people to realize that just like the specials you see on wolves, these animals have very strong relationships that last for decades. And so when you round them up and you separate their family bands, you know, that is the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life. When I’ve been to roundups, and they’re so different now than they were when I started out. But when they round them up and they immediately separate the stallions from the mares and the young horses that they assume are old enough to be weaned, you’ve got these helicopter contractors making these decisions that, “Oh, well, that horse looks like it’s not nursing anymore,” or, “if it is, we can take care of that.”

The screams are absolutely the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. And when I see the stallions turning on each other because the enemies they’ve known have usually been other stallions. The fights have been with other stallions. So when they’re confined like that and they know they’re in danger and they know their family’s in danger, sometimes it’s just a bloodbath. And that’s what people need to see, that is being done with our money in our name.

Carol: I was at the White Mountain Roundup in Wyoming in 2024, and they took almost the entire herd. And they ended up in Rock Springs. And I went to the holding facility there, and the horses were calling and calling and calling to each other. And it was the most heartbreaking thing you could imagine. And, yes, people need to witness this. People need to know what goes on. And I think there’s nothing more horrible than being at a roundup. And not everybody can even tolerate it. But they need to know what happens. And it’s not the same as when Velma was documenting. Luckily, they’re not shooting them from the sky, but it is still incredibly inhumane and cruel and unnecessary.

Terri: Yeah, one of the things I discovered that I was excited to put in the book was that Velma and Charlie, her husband, who was a lawman and a cowboy by occupation, would go out at night and turn loose horses that people had captured and were keeping in a corral till a big truck could come the next day.

Carol: Yeah, I love that.

Terri: I, that is wonderful. And although Velma didn’t know it at first, Charlie went armed on these things because, you know, when you’re taking what people think of as their livelihood, their easy, lazy livelihood, they may fight back. And some of them did, but she always escaped.

And again, given her physical limitations, what she saw as limitations, she always was standing up in the back of that truck as they were roaring around. She would climb out and open the gates for these horses, try to figure out how to do it because Charlie usually stayed in the truck so that they could have a getaway vehicle.

And I think it is cool for kids to see this. She’s a role model in many ways. Maybe not in this, but it’s a kind of public disobedience, I think, because as she said in her writing, those are our horses. You’ve stolen our horses. I’m not advocating that for today because things have changed. You’re not just dealing with one person in the night. You’re dealing with the federal government. But I think looking at her that way, not just as a lady in a suit who stood up in Congress, she got her hands dirty, in other words. She would go out and observe what was happening and then try to solve the problem. I did get to meet her two times in my life.

Carol: I loved reading that in the forward.

Terri: Yeah, she was amazing. And the last time I saw her, I was directed to her secret office. It’s still there. I drive by it probably once a week. It’s now an insurance office. And I went to her secret office, and on that day, she had two other women who were working there with her. And she had a big yellow banner that said, “Don’t tread on me,” and it had been sent to her as a warning.

But she had it on the wall, which was just typical. I mean, her name, Wild Horse Annie, came from Solari making fun of her that her face looked like a horse. But she was smart enough to embrace that name so that everyone who heard about her or met her knew what she stood for and probably had heard of her.

But when I met her, she was storming around the office. She was really angry because she had been on Charles Manson’s hit list. Because she was working with the BLM. He considered himself a conservationist and thought that she shouldn’t be working with the federal government. Well, she was working with them like my dog works with squirrels pretty much. I mean, she was going after them every day. And, yes, she was associated with them, but anyway, she was really angry about that. And yet she didn’t want to use her usual tool of writing to him.

But that’s the day when she told me about being shot. According to Trudy, her niece, it is no myth that Velma slept with a gun under her pillow. She’d been threatened numerous times. And even with Charlie there, and she taught the kids who visited, like Trudy, to shoot. She was that kind of a ranch woman, even though she worked in town every day. And she never got shot while she was out on the range.

But after Charlie died and she was gardening, she was bent over weeding, and she felt something hit her neck. And she thought she’d been stung by a yellow jacket or a bee or something. And she went on weeding. And finally, it got infected, and it was swelling. And she went to the doctor, and he took out a piece of lead. And he said, “This looks to me like part of a bullet.” And she said, “Well, I guess I finally got shot.”

And those are the kinds of things I like to put in a nonfiction book so that people don’t see advocacy as just writing emails and maybe going to the occasional meeting. It takes some guts. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get shot. She was a figurehead. Actually, she was a leader more than a figurehead. And she was in danger because people didn’t like her speaking out and having an impact. When she started having an impact, that’s when she really felt like she was in danger, when legislators were starting to listen to her. Things got hot, very hot. And the end of her life wasn’t easy. But I chose to end my book on her biggest victory because I think that’s how she’d want to be remembered.

Carol: Absolutely. Absolutely. And your book is coming out the end of this month, right?

Terri: Yes. Actually, I didn’t know this was going to happen, but people are getting copies that they’ve ordered now.

Carol: Oh, great.

Terri: And…

Carol: They can pre-order and/or order.

Terri: Yes. One of the cool things about this book is the size. It’s a little smaller than my other nonfiction book. And the reason we did that, well, we, I, I’m not a graphics person, but we talked about the unpublished pictures that we found during research. And a lot of them were not blurry, but they weren’t of modern digital quality.

So by making the book a little bit smaller, we got much crisper images, and you can see the wild horse roundups, which are terrible, but luckily, we got those images. And a Dutch photographer came to shoot the Wild West and had heard of Wild Horse Annie and showed up on her ranch for a couple of days and said, you know, “Can you ride?” It’s like any time you do that kind of commercial interaction with a photographer, I’ve done things where they go, “Well, can you get those horses to run past you in the background?”

Well, not humanely. And people who don’t know the land and don’t know the horses like you do. But he showed up, took a bunch of wonderful pictures of Velma and her horses and her husband, who looks just ticked off in every single picture. He was a pretty stoic guy anyway, but didn’t look like this is how he wanted to spend two days of his life on the range.

But I’m very happy with the pictures we got. And a modern photographer took the picture on the cover. And that is a formerly wild horse, a captive wild horse, and he’s in a sanctuary now. But just a beautiful pinto horse, and then we’ve got a little, that little thumbnail.

Carol: I’ll put a picture of the cover on my website.

Terri: Okay, great.

Carol: So that people can see.

Terri: And I do have a website where you can see all of my books. It’s terrifarley.com. And I’m really happy with this book so far. That’s because not all the critics have weighed in yet. But I’m eager. I’m going to have coffee with or something with Trudy, Wild Horse Annie’s niece, so if anybody is going to have criticism, it’ll probably be her. But I used her as a source a lot. And it’ll be interesting to see what all the relatives think. And I hope people get to know her as a human.

Carol: Yes. I believe that they will from your book. Yeah. So look for Horse Girl. And I really appreciate you coming on and talking about it and also about what’s facing wild horses right now.

Terri: Yeah, the fight never stops.

Carol: I know. Okay, thanks so much.

Terri: Thank you. Bye, Carol.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses. If you want to learn more, follow me at www.wildhoofbeats.com for more information and for ways to help America’s wild horses. See you next time.

If you’ve wondered what makes wild horses so uniquely suited to the wild lands where they live, this episode is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker, and let’s get started.

Welcome to the Freedom For Wild Horses podcast, the place to find out about wild horses in the American West and what you can do to help them stay wild and free. If you love wildlife, wild horses, and the freedom that they stand for, this show is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker. Let’s get started.

I met the wild stallion Looking Glass for the first time unexpectedly. I was traveling north on Crook’s Gap Road in the Lost Creek Herd Management Area early in the morning, and I saw a large family of wild horses, all sorrels, except for the gray stallion, who was almost entirely white, marking him as an older horse. He was moving them along, and suddenly, right near my vehicle, a young bachelor stallion crossed the road, his eyes on the family band. He was a gorgeous leopard Appaloosa, meaning his base coat was very light in color, and he had dark brown spots all over his face and body. I am a complete sucker for Appaloosas, and they are rare in the wild.

I had only ever seen them in Stewart Creek, another herd area in the Red Desert Complex, and I had never seen a leopard Appaloosa in the complex. He was intent on the mares and did not even look at me as he walked by, but I was enchanted nonetheless. His eyes were big and brown, and his tail was sparse, typical for an Appy. His neck was not developed, marking him as a young stallion. He was clearly intent upon winning a mare, but I wondered if he would have any luck against the bigger and more experienced stallion. The whole family moved away, with Looking Glass trailing after them.

The next time I saw Looking Glass, the following summer, he had indeed won a mare and her foal, a black mare and her bay foal. He was very attentive to them, but at the same time, relaxed and laid back. That’s his personality. I would often see him on my way out to other areas and would stop and watch him.

One morning, as the sun rose, I got to see him outlined by the sunrise, then running to join his family. That same year, I kept seeing him near another family, the gray stallion Storm’s family, with all his extremely colorful pintos. I would occasionally see the two stallions spar or Storm chase Looking Glass, but it was never serious. They each seemed to enjoy having the company of the other family nearby.

The next year, 2020, in the spring, I was delighted to see that he had added to his family, having stolen Grace, a gorgeous Palomino Pinto mare, from Storm’s band, and another black mare. Grace had become his lead mare, and I could not wait to see if she had a spotted foal the following year. In the meantime, the BLM announced their plans to remove over 2,000 wild horses from the Red Desert Complex starting in October. I was very concerned about all the horses in the complex, including Looking Glass and his family.

As it turned out, although I was observing most of the roundup, I was not there on the bitterly cold day in November when they rounded up the Lost Creek horses. I heard from a friend with great relief that although the helicopter flew over Looking Glass’s family, he would not budge, and they did not capture them.

I did not find Looking Glass and his family in the spring, but in late summer, I was thrilled to find a tiny Appaloosa filly, just days old, at Grace’s side. She was a buckskin with an Appaloosa blanket of spots on her rump, and Grace was very protective of her. When Looking Glass approached to look at his new daughter, Grace pinned her ears and chased him away. I spent an hour with the family that morning watching Donata get used to her long legs and sticking close to her mother as she observed the world and her family.

In October, I got to watch Donata in her first snow. She got a little grumpy with the cold, bucking and protesting to her mother, who ignored her antics. I said goodbye to them after spending the morning with them, knowing that I would not see them again until next year and hoping that they would be well over the winter. I knew that it was likely that Looking Glass would have bred Grace during her week of foal heat after giving birth, so I made an extra effort to find them in July of 2021, which would be about 11 months after Donata was born.

Sure enough, Grace had a new foal by her side when I followed them to a water hole. It was a buckskin filly that I named Quinn. She did not have spots, but she was gorgeous and curious about everything. Big sister Donata was protective of Quinn, and they were inseparable. Every time I saw Looking Glass and his family over the last couple of years, I also saw Storm and his family nearby, as well as Seamus and his family. Seamus is a big, beefy dapple gray stallion with a gorgeous white lead mare, Anya, and several other mares and their offspring, including an elegant, dark liver chestnut mare. There were other families that would sometimes be close, but these three were most consistently together.

When winter came in 2022, no one was expecting how incredibly bad it would get. Snow started falling in December, and it did not let up until the end of April. I could not get into the range to see how the horses were doing. The snow drifts were too deep even on the roads.

In February, I was offered a seat on a plane to fly over the area, which I eagerly accepted. An ocean of snow spread out in front of me as we flew over Crook’s Gap Road, past Crook’s Mountain, and over Arapaho Creek. There were waves on the snow from the wind. We saw several families of wild horses traveling but did not see what they were eating. We could not get over to Green Mountain because the turbulence was so bad, but we saw some horses over there at a distance. As it turns out, some of the drifts had gotten to be over 16 feet high.

Horses who had not experienced a winter like this in their lifetimes did not know where to go and became trapped and eventually starved with their families around them. It was a truly grim sight in May once I was finally able to drive into the area. Friends and I estimated that half of the wild horses that remained in the Red Desert Complex after the roundup did not make it through the winter. As the last of the snows melted, I was on a frantic journey to see if the horses I knew had survived. Many had not. I had no luck finding Looking Glass and his family and was extremely concerned that he and his family might have perished.

I was very relieved to see photos on Facebook from a photographer of Looking Glass and his family taken a week ago. Looking Glass was incredibly thin. Grace was very thin, but she had kept Quinn and Donata alive. The other two mares were thin as well, but the good news about all that snow was that the grass was coming up fast and thick because of all the moisture. They would have time and forage to recover. It was the worst winter since 1973, and Looking Glass and his family had survived.

Later in the summer of 2023, I found Looking Glass, but his family was gone. He was trotting after a nervous bay mare with a tiny foal. She was worried about anyone getting close to them, and Looking Glass patiently followed her. I was only able to watch them through my binoculars. He was not injured, but Storm, who had also lost his family, had a huge chunk of hide torn off his flank. It was an ugly wound, but it did not seem to be slowing him down. Later in the fall, I was happy to see that Storm was healing up, and Looking Glass’s new mare had relaxed and was content to stay with her foal and Looking Glass. The day I found them, she was dozing on her feet, standing near her sleeping foal.

Looking Glass was grazing casually by Seamus’s band. This is a typical behavior of wild horses I have noticed, that it’s like, I’m innocent, I’m just grazing, I’m not doing anything. But he was clearly looking up from time to time at Seamus’s mares, no doubt hoping he could make off with one or two of them. I wondered what had happened to Grace and Donata and Quinn and the other two mares, and if they were together. I drove down many roads in Lost Creek looking for them but did not have any luck finding them.

The following spring, I was finally able to find Donata, Quinn, and Grace. They were with Storm. Grace had a new foal, a shy bay blanket Appaloosa with loud spots all the way to his withers. His name is Tyler. They seemed content with Storm, which made sense since Grace had originally been with Storm.

I had no luck finding Looking Glass until the fall. I was looking through my binoculars when I saw a group of horses, and his coat was unmistakable. It was Looking Glass, and he stood head lowered, and I could see a gash down his side and blood on it. I immediately tried to drive closer so that I could get a better look, but there were no two-tracks that would get me anywhere near him, and the tall sagebrush would make walking that far extremely difficult. In the horse ranges on public land, vehicles must stay on two-tracks or on the road and not drive off-road. So I watched him for a while, glad at least that there were other horses nearby, and left the area with a heavy heart, hoping that he would be okay. There was no sign of the bay mare and her foal.

The next spring, I found Storm’s family. Donata was heavy with foal, her first, and Quinn had a small bay colt already by her side. Grace was gone, and it was just her offspring that were still with Storm. I was surprised to find Looking Glass with Seamus’s family. His wound had healed, leaving a long, jagged scar down his side. I couldn’t tell at first if he was dogging the family or acting as a lieutenant, but when I saw them later that summer, Seamus seemed to be accepting him in the middle of his large family, letting him drive off other stallions and making sure everyone stayed together. Looking Glass had no hope of beating Seamus in a fight. He was much smaller and not nearly as dominant, so this seemed to be a good way for him to be part of a family. I wondered how long this would last.

In the meantime, Donata had foaled, a beautiful bay blanket Appaloosa colt I named Connor. Donata was a very good first-time mother, caring for her foal but letting him explore his new world. I did see Grace briefly through my binoculars with another family I was not familiar with and was glad to see her. In the spring of this year, when I found Seamus’s band, I could tell that the situation was changing. Looking Glass was staying on the outskirts of the family with the gorgeous dark liver chestnut mare and her three offspring. They were still part of Seamus’s family, but a bit off to the side.

When I found them again in the summer, Looking Glass had clearly separated the mare and her two-year-old, yearling, and foal from Seamus’s family. They were still traveling near each other, but there was a difference. This was Looking Glass’s family now. They looked to him for security and guidance, and he was quick to spar with other stallions who got too close. There were no spotted foals yet, but perhaps they will come next year.

Looking Glass was again a grandfather. Donata had her second foal, a gorgeous Palomino leopard Appaloosa colt that I named Rowan. He stuck close to Donata’s side and played with his big brother, Connor. His color reminded me of Grace, his grandmother, but the spots were all Looking Glass.

With the environmental assessment from the BLM that dropped this June, the Lost Creek Herd and all of the herds in the Red Desert Complex are at risk of being rounded up and a majority of the horses removed. The BLM said their plans were to do the helicopter roundup either in October of this year or in July of 2027, removing 1,800 or more wild horses as the target goal.

With 65,000 wild horses already in holding facilities and the Wild Horse and Burro Program staff greatly reduced, it seemed to be an even more terrible time than usual to be rounding up and removing wild horses from our public lands where they belong. And there is no way to predict, if they do proceed with a roundup, which horses will be removed and which will remain free, but these horses are survivors. They adapt to weather, to losing family members, and they continue on and thrive in these wild lands like Looking Glass, the iconic Appaloosa stallion. May he always run free. Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses. If you want to learn more, follow me at www.wildhoofbeats.com for more information and for ways to help America’s wild horses. See you next time.

Have you wondered why I keep fighting for our wild horses? If so, this episode is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker, and let’s get started.

Welcome to the Freedom For Wild Horses podcast, the place to find out about wild horses in the American West and what you can do to help them stay wild and free. If you love wildlife, wild horses, and the freedom that they stand for, this show is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker. Let’s get started.

I’ve never been a person who goes on and on about how wild horses are our heritage, a living symbol of freedom, helps settle our country, or are the embodiment of the American spirit. These things may be true, but they are more about the wild horse as a thing, an object, a symbol. Not a living, breathing being with a heart and a soul and a life on our public lands.

Wild horses are valuable to me, not because of what they represent, but because of who they are: sentient beings whose lives touch mine every time I am with them. Spending time with wild horses is the greatest gift I have ever been given in this lifetime. Getting to know individuals and their families is a joy. Being wild is glorious, but there are no guarantees. Sometimes it breaks my heart when horses I have grown to know and love become injured and or lose their lives. But it’s always worth the pain.

I’m going to share with you two stories of wild horses that had a profound impact on me last month. I was in Salt Wells Creek, Wyoming. This is one of the checkerboard herds in Wyoming that we have a lawsuit against the BLM and their plans to zero out this herd. We were told that because of the continuing litigation, BLM has suspended their plans to zero out this herd until summer of 2027 at the earliest.

I had been there for three days, and on this morning, I saw four family bands walking in a line with purpose up on a hill. That almost always means they are on their way to water. There were several small foals in the group, and the mothers nursing these foals need more water than the other horses, so they were very motivated to get a drink in the morning.

As I got closer, I recognized one of my favorite families. This used to be the wild curly stallion Bobby’s family. Bobby is one of the oldest wild stallions in Salt Wells Creek, around 30 years old, and he lost his family this last winter to Sherman, a big, curly sorrel stallion whose calm demeanor seems to be a comfort to his new family.

Black curly colt Tristan, who looks just like his dad, Bobby, has not been kicked out yet, but since he’s two this year, I have no doubt it’ll be soon. It was great seeing the gorgeous curly Palomino filly of Mysterious that I named Gwyneth on my last trip. She has grown and was very spunky as she ran down the hill with her family. The surprise I got was seeing the Palomino Pinto filly Suri, who was born last May to a golden Palomino mare. She was leggy and tall, and at her side was a black foal, a filly. They were inseparable. They stayed close together at all times as they ran down the hill, as the family drank, and after, as they stood together resting.

I even saw the black filly nursing Suri several times, but that’s impossible. Suri was only a year old, far too young to have a foal. I saw the filly nursing, and there was no other mare in the family that the filly belonged to. She was comfort nursing, getting emotional security but not nutrition from Suri. I found out from a friend that Mina’s mother was the same golden Palomino mare who was Suri’s mom, but now that mare had disappeared and was nowhere to be found. Something must have happened to her because she had been a wonderful and devoted mother to Suri. She never would have left her foal behind.

So Suri, her big sister, has taken on the role of foster mom, protecting her and comforting her as she grows. Mina looked in good condition, not thin, and she was vital and spirited, so she’s old enough to be able to get her nutrition from grazing to survive. I had heard of mares taking in a foal who was not theirs to care for, but never a yearling. Suri is an extraordinary filly and will be an amazing mother to her own foals someday, I am sure.

My other story from my trip last month takes place in the Red Desert Complex in Wyoming, in the Arapaho Creek herd area. After the devastating winter of 2022 to 2023, when so many wild horses perished, I have gotten to know an extraordinary wild stallion. He’s a bay dun with a yellowish tan coat. He has a dark stripe down his back and has primitive markings or stripes on his legs, and he has a luxurious black mane and tail. Or at least he did when I first saw him in May 2023. Shortly after that, his mane fell out. This was likely caused by the malnutrition that the horses that survived that winter suffered.

A friend of mine told me his name was Fallen Star, and I thought that suited him. Every time I traveled to the Red Desert Complex, I looked for him and watched his family grow, as well as his mane. He was calm and steady with his mares, and when I approached them to spend time with them, he was tolerant of my presence. I would get to a certain distance and sit down, and the mares would relax and watch me, and he would keep an eye on me, but it was a peaceful time.

Last month, days before I arrived in the area, I saw a photo of Fallen Star, thin, wounded, and alone. Another stallion had taken his family. I was determined to find them and see how he was doing. In the early morning, I drove into an area I would often find him in and saw his mares and their foals with a gray stallion with a short tail. He was keeping them closely together, different than the relaxed, spread-out band I was used to seeing with Fallen Star.

I continued down the road and kept stopping to glass over the land with my binoculars. Finally, I saw him, and with him was his daughter Kamala and a foal. I drove slowly to a point down the hill from where they were resting. The foal was sleeping flat out, and Kamala was standing over her. I remember when Kamala was born. She’s a gorgeous dun who looks just like her father, primitive markings and all, and motherhood suits her. She’d filled out and looked healthy and content.

As I walked slowly closer, I could see that Fallen Star was thin, and he had two wounds on his flank that were ugly but did not look life-threatening. There were also scars on his usually pristine coat, but he looked just as regal and as beautiful as ever, and his mane was longer and fuller than I’d seen last year in the fall. He and Kamala were not concerned about my presence as I sat down to spend time with them. Fallen Star did keep looking over his shoulder toward the area where the gray stallion and his family were, probably a mile or two away. He knew where they were, even though he could not see them.

I wondered how Kamala and her filly had managed to join him. Did they sneak off in the night? Had he made a desperate run and chased them away from the rest of the family and the gray stallion? These are questions I cannot answer.

Eventually, the filly woke up from her nap, and she’s a dun as well, lighter in color than her mother. She nursed and looked around, watching me for a while. Then Kamala started moving down the hill to an area to graze, Fallen Star walking behind them until he threw his head up on alert. He had heard something and charged down the hill with that gorgeous mane billowing in full protection mode. Kamala and her filly ran as well, veering slightly to the right. Finally, Fallen Star stopped running and became more relaxed, moving with Kamala and her foal to a grassy area to graze.

I said goodbye to them and headed back down the road, looking forward to our next encounter. Wild horse families change, grow, shrink, and nothing, not even life, is assured. The BLM has the Red Desert Complex under scrutiny with an environmental assessment out for public comment and a roundup scheduled for either October of this year or July of 2027. None of the horses in these herds are safe. And yet they belong here in the high desert lands in Wyoming. They should stay here and live out their lives with their families under the big open sky.

I will keep fighting for them because they are horses who are individuals, valuable in and of themselves, and they deserve to live free. Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses. If you want to learn more, follow me at www.wildhoofbeats.com for more information and for ways to help America’s wild horses. See you next time.

Carol: If you’ve wondered why there needs to be an audit of the BLM’s Wild Horse sale authority program, then this episode is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker, and let’s get started.

Welcome to the Freedom For Wild Horses podcast, the place to find out about wild horses in the American West and what you can do to help them stay wild and free. If you love wildlife, wild horses, and the freedom that they stand for, this show is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker. Let’s get started.

Hi, I’m Carol Walker, and I am delighted to introduce as my guest, Manda Kalimian, and she is the founder of Rewilding America now. And she has a tremendous love of all animals, but especially wild horses. And so today, we’re going to talk about this request for an audit of the BLM’s sale program and why that’s so important. And also, we’re going to tell you how you can help. So welcome.

Manda: Carol, thank you. I’m so excited to be here with my friend. It’s been a long time.

Carol: Yes. Yes, so you contacted me just a few days ago and said, “We need to do an audit of the BLM sale program.” So why now?

Manda: Carol, I think it always needed to happen. I don’t think you would disagree with that. I mean, we’re long overdue. Let’s start with that. So shame on all of us for not taking the reins in this sooner, myself accountable. But this administration and the way that the Department of Interior is managing the BLM and the horses and the range is just expedited this process, right? The roundups are expedited, volumes of horses coming off the range, no place to put them, no holding short-term, long-term, they’re out of space. And so they’re missing steps.

They’re bypassing protocols and procedures at a greater rate and horses are just, truckloads are just, some even go from the roundups directly to these auction houses. There are no guardrails as to how many horses people can take. So it’s really so much more. I myself, over the last year and a half, I think we’ve worked to rescue 300. Some were Indian ponies, but most of them were horses that we’ve been taking from these kill buyers, and it’s terrible. It’s terrible what’s happened, and I decided somebody has to speak up. We got to do it now.

Carol: It’s become completely inadequate to say, “Okay, we’re going to rescue these horses.” There aren’t enough places to put all these horses. So, really, what needs to be done is something changed at the higher level before these horses get taken to auction.

Manda: Yes. And when you’re standing here and all of these emails and text messages are coming with pictures of horses in these kill pen auction houses, and they all have in red, two days to slaughter, deadline, you know, they promote it this way, deadline with big X’s, two more days, deadline. These people are feeding on the goodness of people like ourselves that actually care. They’re taking advantage of us.

I can’t tell you how many times, okay, how much? $900. $900? That poor horse is limping on three legs. It needs, you know, medical attention. It needs to be helped. I said, “Can you give me a break? I’m going to take three more.” $900 or it gets on the truck. So what do you do? What do you do? You work to find the money to save the horse because it doesn’t matter. It’s a living being, it’s a horse.

And that’s what we’ve been doing with the help of Jenny Sloan. She and her husband, they’re angels. I cannot tell you. I couldn’t do what they do. But without her help, none of this would have been possible. It’s a terrible position we’re in. These people have created a new business. It’s a whole cottage industry that’s happening here between the kill buyers, the shippers, people out there fundraising. I mean, it’s its own economy right here, thanks to the government.

Carol: And it is definitely not a benefit to the horses.

Manda: Benefit? We are busy healing horses from the trauma. It’s not just now the trauma of the roundups. It’s the trauma of being carted from one place to another, dumped off here, then dumped off there. They’re with groups. They come in groups. So I keep the groups together because that’s the only security that these horses have had is these three or four other horses that they’ve been in these kill pens with. It’s terrible. However you look at it, genocide is genocide, right? No matter which direction or face it takes, this is a genocide of a species.

Carol: The new changes to the sale program that happened this last year, where pretty much people can take as many horses as they want. It’s just funneling them faster away from holding, so they can have more room to round up more horses. Of course, there’s no care given to people that purchase them. You know, you might have to sign a little form saying you won’t take them to slaughter, but what does that mean, actually? There is no follow-up, there’s no oversight. And with the BLM staff being cut by 70%, they barely have enough staff to get rid of the horses, let alone care about where they’re going.

Manda: My personal opinion is, my intuition tells me that this is just the way that this administration is unwinding these regulations and making it easier for them to just get rid of horses because, like you and I have talked about, when you’ve said to me, “Well, they just want to kill everybody in holding, take a gun to their head, and be done,” there would be huge public outcry. Optically, that would be very bad. I don’t really know if this administration is so concerned about that, but optically, it wouldn’t be a good thing.

So, having said that, you know, this is sort of like a leaky faucet that they just keep opening up to just kind of keep the flow, make the flow a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more, and that would be a no. It’s enough. And I do realize it’s a very difficult time to try to make changes in Washington and try to get things done, but a government accountability office audit is a simple procedural thing. And it enables us to bring attention to this issue so that hopefully after the midterms, we will be in a position that this coalition that you and I and others are part of, we will be able to forge forward to now create the legislative changes needed.

Carol: And we do have a Wild Horse Caucus in Congress now. And that’s who you’ve addressed your letter to, and that’s a terrific thing. I mean, we need to build on that, obviously.

Manda: Yes, 100%. So, you know, the way I see this is, okay, we’ve got to get their attention before August when Washington goes on break, and we’ve got to start the conversations now so that when they come back in the fall, we can work towards a real collaboration with the caucus and others in Washington to help them. We need to help them. We need to give them solutions for things. We need to give them the information that they don’t have.

We cannot think that, “Okay, you’re the Wild Horse Caucus, we’re bringing this to your attention. Now do something.” I don’t see that. I see that we have to be partners with the Wild Horse Caucus. I’m not a constituent of any of those people.

Carol: Those things to do and make sure and follow up and make sure that it gets done.

Manda: Correct. We need to build an alliance with these people. Let them know that we are not fighting against them. We understand things are complicated and difficult in Washington, and we want to help. We need your help, and we are going to help you. We’re going to provide you with information, provide you with everything that you need so that you can feel confident to go forward with this initiative.

Carol: Giving them evidence of the horses ending up in these slaughter auctions and showing there were 66,000 wild horses in holding at the beginning of the year and it dropped significantly. And that’s because these horses are being funneled out of the system. There are online adoptions every month with almost 1,000 horses in each one. And so horses are getting shipped and sold, and it’s like gangbusters. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

Manda: As I said, yeah, of course, this administration, they need to start getting rid of these horses. They cost taxpayer dollars and I mean, the administration right now is taking all the money from the parks, all the national parks here. Any of their money that come in from tickets when you go to the park and everything, I think it’s something like $65 million a year. That’s the money that is being taken to use to paint the reflecting pool in Washington. So imagine, there’s no money for health care, and we’re painting the reflecting pool with the park’s money. What money are they paying for the horses?

Carol: From what I understand, there’s been kind of a halt on roundups in Wyoming. They don’t even have the funds to do more roundups, and we know that’s a priority to do roundups, and they need to empty these holding facilities so they have room for the horses to do more and more roundups.

Manda: That’s unfortunate because I am sure they will find the money if they want. You know Wyoming better than anybody. I’m sure, you know, the people in Wyoming are…

Carol: Putting a little pressure on the BLM right now.

Manda: Yes, I would think so. I would think so. It’s just all upside down, and we have to do what we can do. But the important thing from my perspective is to do something. It’s not to not do anything, not to be like, “Oh my God, it’s overwhelming,” because it is overwhelming at times. I see things like this last week in the news, they’re bringing back cyanide bombs.

Carol: Yes, which kills all the wildlife. It’s not just the predators that they want to get rid of.

Manda: Everything. Everything. I mean, think about horses, I mean, everything.

Carol: It’s not horses. Think about people walking with their dog.

Manda: Did you know that is one of the things that had triggered them to ban them initially several years ago? Because there was a man walking with his dog. So sometimes you know, you sit and you see all these things lately, and it is overwhelming. You’re kind of overwhelmed with what to do. How do I do it?

And then I get a text and a call with a picture of three horses, three beautiful horses that deadline, 24 hours, or I hear about a group of women that are feverishly out there trying to raise money. And I mean, it’s a lot of money at $800 or $900 a horse for 10 horses.

Carol: Plus transport.

Manda: Yes, yes, imagine that, that they’re raising money for these 10 horses, would I take them? What do you say to that? You know?

Carol: All the horses that end up at slaughter auctions.

Manda: There’s not room for all of them. I’m squeezed to the end. I constantly look for other locations and places, and working with other people that will take a small band of horses. And this actually has helped us bring awareness to other people about what’s happening with the horses and why horses can be environmentally valuable. So we see value that way. And also people are seeing value from an eco-friendly tourism kind of thing. People want to see horses. People come to locations to see horses. Has that been your experience?

Carol: Oh, absolutely. And it’s become more and more popular. I mean, last year alone, I was fielding a whole bunch of emails from people wanting to go visit the Salt Wells Creek horses, and could I tell them where to go?

Manda: And this is something that you and I have talked about. We have to build out this model where you and whoever else you feel you can offer camera safaris and other opportunities that, first of all, value the horses. And then also offer some economic return in exchange to the landowner.

Carol: So the horses are seen as valuable instead of pests, taking grass out of the mouths of cows and sheep.

Manda: Exactly. I mean, this is all an old story that’s never been changed. And we need to be the leaders here in changing a new POV. We need a new point of view, a new perspective to this. I think fighting the old fight over the old arguments don’t get us anywhere. We’re 55 years into this, no?

Carol: I’m 26 years into it.

Manda: Right? The Wild Horse and Burro Act is 55 years old. So, I mean, it’s time for change. It’s time for a new perspective on things. And we need to just put our heads down, think about those horses. That’s the only thing that matters. That’s why we do this. And we need to work together for the solutions that can make a change for the lives of the horses that we can help and save so that we can ensure there will always be horses here in the United States, wild horses in the American West.

Carol: Absolutely. The audit is a way of uncovering the corruption and what’s happening to these horses so that it can be changed.

Manda: So would you say from your experience that this is the proper first step to get things moving for change?

Carol: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s funny because some people say, “Oh, all the advocates need to get together.” They all have to do things the same way. No, everybody has a contribution. Everybody has their perspective, their experience, and it’s all valuable.

Manda: I’m so glad you said that because I was thinking one of the things that I wanted to, I did want to mention with you was that’s exactly right. Everybody can do something, whether it’s just reposting something that you see that you want to share, or more. For me, sharing the proper information, fact-based information. I’ve always shied away from all of these things because there’s so much flying information that goes back and forth that is not accurate. I always want to be known, good, bad, or indifferent, that anything that I know that I can share is fact-based, based on science, based on factual information that, good or bad, this is what it is.

Carol: I think that’s really important too. And I always try to share from my own observations as well because I can talk about what I’ve seen, what I’ve seen out there, what I’ve seen with the horses at the sales, and I can talk about that and I know it’s true.

Manda: Yes, yes. And you’re a photographer. Photos don’t lie. Photos don’t lie. That’s the truth. So yeah, so everybody has to take a deep breath. We’re going to take a deep breath. We all have to like come from a new place and a place that, okay, you know, we don’t have to love each other and all of that, but we all do have one thing in common. We all love the horses and we’re here because of the, you know, it’s all the right reasons that in our hearts.

I have to tell you about a horse that we rescued out of one of the auctions this last year. I always think about him. I don’t know, he always comes to mind. So Jenny sends me a picture. These are the ones that are there now. And she sends me a picture of one, and she said she was told he’s twisted. He has some issue where one side of his face hangs. His lip is hanging, his eye hangs, his ear is sideways. And they don’t know what happened to him, but something happened to him. So, of course, sometimes when they come like that, they don’t even give them auction numbers. They just mark them direct ship, like nobody’s going to want it. So we’ll just ship it directly to the slaughter.

So I saw this horse, and I said, “Absolutely not. Absolutely not. We have to take him.” And we took him to the vet, and it seems that, you know, I mean, he has some neurological damage. They think on the pole of his head. He might have been tied with a rope to a pole tightly and left, and he was fighting and pulling so hard that he damaged whatever the nerves were in his face. And so he has this sort of droopy, like, stroke half of his face. But other than that, he’s fine. He can see, he eats, I mean, there’s nothing other than that, and whatever his PTSD was.

So we had him. We gave him tender loving care. My Jenny, she’s amazing. And she runs a program for kids. There were eight, I think, horses that we had rescued that she thought were more people-oriented. They liked people. They wanted to be around people. That’s the thing. Some you do assess when you get them. Some of them just don’t want to be around people and that’s good. Those are good horses that want to live a free life. And then there are others that have spent so much time going here and there. They’d be fine out in the wild, but they enjoy being fed, and people.

So she determined which of the ones we have want to be with people and she works with kids. She has a whole program that she works with children and they come. So she had all these horses and the kids come and they pick which horse they want to work with, which calls to them. But this one young man went over to the area where the other horses were, and he saw Twister, and that is the horse that he wanted. And she called me, and I said, “What do you think?” And she said, “Well, I mean, he seems to be fine. He likes the boy.”

So this young man has been working with that horse. And that young man is healing whatever happened to that horse in his life, and that horse is going to heal that boy, whatever that boy needs. And this, it makes you keep going. It makes you keep going. This poor horse, rounded up, lost his family, tortured in some way, and has a physical deformity, is the horse that this young man wants to work with, loves. And that’s what love is. That’s what life is. That’s why we do this.

Carol: That’s why we do this. Yeah.

Manda: That’s why we do this. I’m sorry. I always just…

Carol: Oh, it’s wonderful.

Manda: These are the things that make you keep going. These are the things. And, you know, so now we’ve just have to dig in and there are a lot of things we can’t change. But there are a lot of things we can. And we can’t give up.

Carol: And just because something’s not changing instantly doesn’t mean it’s not going to change.I think we just need to keep working. Your petition that people can sign to let the Wild Horse Caucus know that we care about what’s happening to our wild horses.

I’ll have the link in here on my website with the podcast where you can go to sign this petition. And can read this wonderful letter that went to the Wild Horse Caucus. This is one way that you can help. And also, you can share. Share from Rewildingamericanow.org.

Manda: Rewildingamericanow.org. Or right on the social media.

Carol: On social media and go to their website as well. And right on the website is a link to the petition. So you can just sign it right there.

Manda: Yes, there’s a big pop-up on the homepage. It’s very simple. It says petition. You click it, you fill it out. It’s easy, easy, peasy. And we ask, I mean, this is a very important first step because going in, we have to show strength and strength in numbers. So share everything, rewildingamericanow.org, reach out to me, Carol, anybody you don’t have the link. Where can I find it? And just share, share it to anybody. You don’t have to be a horse person to think that what’s happening is bad, and I’ll add my name to that.

Carol: Absolutely.

Manda: And that’s how we educate people about what’s happening so that they care.

Carol: They care, and they see where they can make a difference.

Manda: Yes. And you know what else I have found? It has been my experience. People are in a city. They don’t really have horses in their life or they’re not around horses. But when you say, “I’m sorry, those are your tax dollars. Is that the way you want your money spent? You know, allowing horses to go to slaughter?” You bring up a new perspective to people.

Carol: And as far as the hope part, I started my journey with wild horses 22 years ago, not 26, 22 years ago. And social media has been a huge game changer because people have been able to share pictures of horses, tell stories about horses, show what’s happening to the horses. And I really believe that if that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have thousands and thousands of people who care about them and are willing to do something about it to help them. And I think they would have been gone by now.

So there is hope. We are making progress. It’s just maybe not looking like instant progress right now. But I think it’s still very important to keep working to help them and keep educating other people about what needs to be done.

Manda: 100%. So it’s education, collaboration. We have to bring education and collaboration together. And we just have to remember we may not all be like-minded about everything, but the one thing that we are like-minded about is that we all want to save these horses.

And Carol’s beautiful photography has been a huge component to helping bring awareness to people everywhere, right? You travel with your photos, you do shows, I know. So yeah, no, it’s great. We and I met, oh my God, doing photography.

Carol: Yes, that’s how we met.

Manda: I bought a camera to do that. That was my last photoshoot, first and last. So I mean, yes, now people have iPhones.

Carol: Yes, people have iPhones. People can go see the wild horses if they want to. And they can go visit eco-sanctuaries, sanctuaries where they can photograph the horses, which is a really good way to do it because it’s usually a little less, a little easier to approach the horses when they’re at a sanctuary. So that’s part of the good news about being able to bring people out there and let them know what’s going on.

Manda: You know what that makes me think about right now? Maybe we should put some really amazing photography together, some of your photography, and send some amazing images to these members of the Wild Horse Caucus. I mean, do they really see images of wild horses in the wild and see the beauty of them? I don’t know. I think that you have to see things to understand it. That might be a very good and interesting opportunity to do that, to share some images.

Carol: To send that with our petition. Yes.

Manda: Yeah, 100%. Those beautiful images while we have images of the horses how they’ve ended up, they could see the disparity. That might be a really good thing to do. Yeah, I love that. This is nice chatting with you on a Saturday morning. I appreciate this.

Carol: Thank you so much for doing this. And as I said, go to rewildingamericanow.org and sign the petition. We’ll keep in touch and give an update as to how things are going.

Manda: Of course, yeah. And if you have any questions, reach out, right? info@rewildingamericanow.org, questions, ideas, thoughts, but right, we’ve got to get those signatures, and we’ve got to get the government moving so that they put BLM on alert. Before the audits complete, even if they know that there’s conversation that an audit is going to be had, don’t you think they’re going to tighten their belts a little bit and try to…

Carol: Absolutely.

Manda: Yeah. So we don’t have to wait for the audit to be complete. We just have to, you know…

Carol: Demand it and get it going.

Manda: Yes, just this alone is going to put them on notice. Right? So we’re we’ve already got the ball rolling. We’re good. We’re going. We’re going.

Carol: Thank you so much, Manda.

Manda: Oh my God, thank you, Carol, for having me and for helping and for your friendship.

Carol: Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses. Please go to rewildingamericanow.org to sign the petition to audit the BLM’s wild horse sale program.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses. If you want to learn more, follow me at www.wildhoofbeats.com for more information and for ways to help America’s wild horses. See you next time.

Have you wondered what is going to happen to our wild horses in the midst of all the changes going on right now on our public lands? If so, this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker, and let’s get started.

Welcome to the Freedom For Wild Horses podcast, the place to find out about wild horses in the American West and what you can do to help them stay wild and free. If you love wildlife, wild horses, and the freedom that they stand for, this show is for you. I’m your host, Carol Walker. Let’s get started.

With the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Director, Steve Pierce, nearing confirmation by Congress, we cannot forget that while in Congress, he advocated for the selling off of public lands to pay down the deficit and reduce spending. Our wild horses in this country reside on public lands, which have been managed for “multiple use,” but there is a movement right now by the administration to pander to extractive and grazing interests.

Earlier this month, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum canceled seven livestock grazing allotments in Montana for bison being used by the American Prairie Reserve, supporting conservation of this bison herd. I guess grazing permits are now to be used for livestock only.

Currently, there is a comment period until July 13, 2026, for a new proposed grazing role that would no longer allow input from the public on grazing leases and policies. It would also weaken BLM oversight of grazing and its impacts, and it would redefine grazing to exclude all animals except cattle and sheep who are being raised for food.

At the center of an increasing scandal over ethics violations and conflicts of interest is Interior Department’s Associate Deputy Secretary, Karen Budd-Falen. The Campaign for Accountability, which is a government watchdog group, sent last weekend letters to the House and to the Senate asking for congressional investigations into Budd-Falen for ethics violations. She’s a longtime rancher and attorney with her and her family having major financial holdings in many western ranches in Wyoming and Nevada, including grazing lease permits on BLM land.

During Trump’s first term, she was banned because of conflicts of interest from working on anything to do with grazing policy. But now, in his second term, she has returned to the Department of the Interior. She’s been working on grazing policy, as well as being involved to the changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, regulations.

At the end of 2025, in a video conversation with Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, Budd-Falen said, “There are around 1,300 vacant allotments for the Bureau of Land Management right now. By the end of next year, every single vacant allotment will be filled by a rancher who will be able to get their cattle in there grazed. We’ve added some categorical exclusions so that if you have places like in northern Nevada, where my father-in-law’s place is, we added categorical exclusions so you can move cattle in there temporarily. Get some of this grass grazed off that will also really help the wildfire situation.”

There is no concern about standards for land health or wildlife or wild horses, but only a rabid desire to derive the absolute most use for grazing on our public lands. And then she goes on to talk about wild horses, quote:

“And we are also gutsy enough to take on the wild horses and burros. We’re taking revision of the Wild Horse and Burro regulations. I know we’ve got the sideboards that we’ve got from Congress. We’re going to live within the sideboards. David Bernhardt’s trained me that you got to live with the statutes you got. But there’s a lot more wiggle room than we’ve been able to do, and we’re going to take that on.”

Of course, in Project 2025, we were warned that the intention was to remove the guardrail against slaughtering healthy wild horses or selling them to slaughter, which has been banned in every interior appropriations bill for many years.

Budd-Falen again, “You can sell horses in the east. People want to buy wild horses there, but we don’t spend the money to transport the horses from California or Nevada or Wyoming to the eastern states where people will buy them, which is a perfectly legal thing to do. We’ve got our spending priorities all mixed up. We’d rather just put them in short-term holding and feed them hay for the rest of their lives. Look at the numbers. It’s not that hard. So let’s send them someplace where somebody wants to buy them.”

This is exactly what has happened this year with the BLM expanding its sale authority program. Now, instead of being able to purchase four horses per year per person who are over 10 or who have failed to be adopted three times, which is the definition of sale authority, each person can now purchase four horses every six months and can apply to purchase even more. The BLM has ramped up its online sales to now hundreds of horses being offered for sale and adoption through its online corral every month.

They are shipping thousands of horses around the country to sale and adoption events in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee, where there are kill pens nearby, and it’s been documented that horses purchased are sometimes taken the same day to slaughter auctions.

How can you make room in the holding corrals so that more and more horses can be rounded up and removed from their homes on public lands? Sell them quickly, for now, or slaughter them. And that is the long-term plan.

The BLM is planning to round up and remove over 14,000 wild horses in 2026, even though there are over 58,000 wild horses in holding facilities at this time. Plans are in the works for a new grazing rule, now open to public comment until July 13, 2026. The livestock lobby is the biggest reason for wild horse roundups.

Under this administration, wild horses are the very last thing of importance in the use of our public lands. In fact, the President’s fiscal year 2027 budget does not have the prohibition against killing wild horses and burros or selling them for commercial slaughter. And this is the second time in a row that this was omitted. This was corrected in the fiscal year 2026 budget, but has not yet had the prohibition added for 2027.

So now is the time to speak up to your senators and representatives to ask them that the prohibition against killing wild horses or selling them for commercial slaughter be prohibited in the fiscal year 2027 budget. And then to ask for a congressional investigation of Karen Budd-Falen and ask for her removal from the Department of the Interior.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Freedom for Wild Horses. If you want to learn more, follow me at www.wildhoofbeats.com for more information and for ways to help America’s wild horses. See you next time.