Over 24,000 Americans Demand Release of Captured Utah Wild Stallion

Salt Lake City, UT (April 16, 2015)... Wild horse advocates have sent a petition with over 24,000 signatures to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), urging the release of a captured 25-year-old wild stallion back to the range. The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign) collected these signatures in just two weeks, demonstrating strong public opposition to the BLM's current wild horse roundup and removal program.

The Controversy of Grulla Stallion 3907

The 25-year-old stallion, equivalent to 80 in human years, became a national controversy when the BLM listed him for sale at an April 21, 2015, Internet auction with a starting bid of just $25. Known as Grulla Stallion 3907 to the BLM, he was captured in February during a BLM roundup of wild horses from the Sulphur Springs Herd Management Area (HMA) and is now held at the BLM’s Delta Corrals, southwest of Salt Lake City.

“This proud stallion spent over two decades in the wild, and it is the height of inhumanity to capture and remove him from the only life he has ever known – a life of freedom,” the AWHC petition states. “Today he languishes in a BLM holding pen, his spirit crushed, his life endangered by intensive confinement and possible castration (gelding).”

Public Outcry and Advocacy

This stallion’s plight has captured the attention of many Americans because it symbolizes the BLM’s current inhumane approach to wild horse management. The government’s reliance on roundups and removals traumatizes wild horses, shatters their families, and robs them of their freedom,” said Suzanne Roy, AWHC director, in a letter accompanying the petition to the BLM. “Public opinion and scientific recommendations call for a shift in the BLM’s approach toward more humane, in-the-wild management using the proven PZP birth control vaccine to keep wild horses wild and free on the range.”

The two artists who brought the stallion to AWHC’s attention echoed these concerns.

"We have got to find a way to let the wild stay wild. This amazing stallion and his comrades should be honored with the right to remain on their homeland, free from what a human decides is best," said well-known wild horse photographer Kimerlee Curyl. "How on earth can our decision to put him in a box or small pasture after all his years of instinct and survival have served him so well be the 'right' thing to do?"

"Nothing in my experience says BLM will honor mustang elders, but if round-ups are honestly about overpopulation and range damage, they’ll allow horses like the Sulphur stallion to live out his days in his natural environment," added noted author Terri Farley, whose Phantom Stallion book series has sold over a million copies internationally. Farley noted that elder wild horses convey knowledge essential to the herd's survival and prevent younger horses from breeding too early, decreasing population growth on the range.

The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign) is a coalition of more than 60 horse advocacy, public interest, and conservation organizations dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. AWHC is a campaign founded and sponsored by Return to Freedom.