Celebrating a Historic Milestone in Wild Horse Conservation
Today marks a significant achievement for the American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign). One year ago, we launched the world’s largest humane management program for wild horses on the Virginia Range in Nevada. Our mission was to demonstrate a cost-effective and humane approach to managing wild horse populations without resorting to expensive roundups or dangerous sterilization surgeries.
We are thrilled to announce that this program has not only succeeded but has surpassed all expectations. We invite you to take an inside look at this historic initiative as we plan to expand our efforts in the coming months.
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In our program, volunteer darters administer the safe and effective fertility control vaccine PZP remotely to wild mares on the range. The vaccine is 97% effective in preventing pregnancy, making it an excellent tool for maintaining ecological balance.
Unlike the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) $81 million-a-year roundup program, our approach is cost-effective and, most importantly, keeps wild horses where they belong: in the wild.
Initially, there were skeptics who questioned our ability to deliver fertility control across such a vast habitat. However, our dedicated team, including incredible volunteers, worked tirelessly, supported by tens of thousands of you.
Over the past year, our mostly volunteer team delivered over 1,700 fertility control treatments (primers and boosters) to more than 950 mares in the 300,000-acre Virginia Range. This represents nearly 80% of the reproductive-age mares in this approximately 3,000-horse mustang population.
The Stunning News? Our team actually OUTPERFORMED the BLM’s own program to administer fertility control!
You can read more about the program in this Reno Gazette-Journal editorial by our Director of Field Operations, Greg Hendricks.
This success would not have been possible without our partners and supporters: the Nevada Department of Agriculture, political and business leaders, including Governor Steve Sisolak, Assemblyman Jim Wheeler, tech company Blockchains LLC, real estate developer Lance Gilman, local wild horse organizations, our dedicated volunteers, and generous supporters like you.
I hope you feel as proud as I do of this work, our team in Nevada, and what we have all achieved together.
Even as we celebrate these accomplishments, we recognize that our work is far from over. The BLM and the livestock industry continue to push for a multi-billion dollar plan to round up and remove more than 100,000 wild horses from public lands over the next decade.
We will continue to fight back using every resource at our disposal. Even during these challenging times, we are committed to expanding our operations in Nevada—home to more than half of the nation’s remaining wild horses—to demonstrate that humane management is possible and to ensure that America’s mustangs remain wild and free.
Thank you for supporting us,
Suzanne Roy, Executive Director