Securing a Forever Home for America’s Wild Horses

Roughly 85,000 wild horses and burros roam public rangelands across 10 Western states. But their existence is threatened by encroaching pressures including private livestock grazing, energy extraction, and competing interests for the limited natural resources on those lands.

Even more dire, Congress has entrusted management of America’s wild horses and burros on public lands to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which relies on costly and traumatic roundups, herding horses into traps before shipping them to overcrowded government holding facilities – often ending in slaughter and great expense to taxpayers.

Return to Freedom (RTF) was founded in 1997 by Neda DeMayo as a solution-focused nonprofit dedicated to preserving the freedom, diversity, and habitat of America’s wild horses and burros through sanctuary, education, advocacy, and conservation. Through its American Wild Horse Sanctuary in Lompoc, California, RTF provides refuge for up to 500 rescued mustangs and burros, and has integrated regenerative holistic grazing into its approach, using wild horses, burros, wildlife, and cattle to restore soil health.

Central to its work is keeping bonded family bands, bachelor bands, and entire herd communities together. “Horses are sentient beings with strong emotional bonds,” DeMayo says. RTF was the fourth project in the world to implement a non-hormonal, reversible fertility control vaccine for mares in partnership with the Science and Conservation Center in Billings, Montana. RTF safely manages mares living with stallions too old to geld using this proven, humane contraceptive. RTF also preserves some of the oldest historic Spanish Barb bloodlines, the foundation of the Spanish mustang in North America, now largely vanished from the range.

For 28 years, the sanctuary has welcomed visitors from around the world to observe – and in some cases interact with – wild horses. Through workshops, tours, and photo safaris, they gain a deeper understanding of the horses, their relationship to the land, and often themselves.

A Ranch of Their Own

A pivotal grant from the Nora McNeely Hurley Foundation recently catalyzed the transfer of ownership of the home ranch on Jalama Road to Return to Freedom. With its headquarters now secured, plans to transform the sanctuary into the Wild Horse Discovery Center are underway, including infrastructure improvements and pollinator and wildlife habitat restoration. “We want to improve infrastructure to better accommodate education, land, and equine management,” DeMayo says.

Beyond the ranch, Return to Freedom maintains a full-time presence in Washington, D.C., advocating for policy reform and legislation such as the SAFE Act to end the transport of American horses across U.S. borders for slaughter. Closer to home, it manages regenerative grazing projects in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, including a herd of 40 horses rescued from a kill pen and now grazing the hills at Babcock Winery.

With much-needed donor support, RTF’s innovative conservation programs can expand, continuing to inspire visitors learning from wild horses living in natural herds to protect both these iconic animals and the environment we share.