A San Geronimo Valley nonprofit hopes to connect wild horses to landowners in Marin with the dual purpose of rescuing the animals from slaughter and benefitting local lands and people.
Woodacre resident Jetara Séhart has been raising awareness about the troubles faced by wild horses on Bureau of Land Management lands since 2010. Several years ago, she founded a nonprofit, Love Wild Horses, which has helped facilitate the relocation of roughly 100 at-risk horses. She is now working with a Yale University professor to devise two studies, one that would examine horses’ ecological footprint on grazing lands in Nevada and another that would connect Native communities to equine therapy. She hopes to undertake similar work in Marin.
“We’re not trying to just dump these horses on the land,” Ms. Séhart said. “We want to support and study this land to promote the sustainability and healing abilities these horses have to offer both humans and the earth.”
In the last decade, the Bureau of Land Management has been working to slow increasing populations of wild horses on lands and corrals across the West, in part by auctioning the animals off. Since the bureau created an adoption incentive program in 2019 that provides $1,000 to adoptive owners, adoption rates have skyrocketed. But an investigation by the American Wild Horse Campaign and the New York Times last year found there was no vetting process and few regulations governing auctioneers. People were abusing the system, adopting a few horses at a time, pocketing the incentive allowance and sending the horses to kill pens.
The bureau has since taken steps to ensure that prospective owners are screened and monitored post-adoption, but activists say the problems persist. “Taxpayers are paying too much for this broken system,” Ms. Séhart said. “The B.L.M.’s excessive removal and warehousing of the horses is costing taxpayers more than $1.9 billion annually and is endangering their survival as a species.”
Ms. Séhart began raising awareness about wild horse endangerment through a Facebook page that connected families with horses needing homes. Some of the animals came from B.L.M. auctions, while others had been taken in by people who had bought them at auction. The page grew in popularity over the years, gaining hundreds of thousands of followers. Last year, the nonprofit relocated 20 horses to northern Nevada.
Cintra Agee, an associate professor at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, is overseeing the nonprofit’s first equine rewilding study. The project will seek to understand how the reintroduction of wild horses can impact native flora, carbon sequestration, fire fuel reduction and soil quality. The study is still in the design phase, but it will include engaging Indigenous college students in internships.
Ms. Agee and Ms. Séhart are exploring an additional study that would focus on the effects of equine therapy in Indigenous communities. The opportunity to bring together education, therapy and sustainability through saving horses is what drives the nonprofit, Ms. Séhart said.
According to Craig Downer, a wildlife ecologist who advises the nonprofit, when horses graze a pasture, they cut down the drier, top vegetation that acts as fuel for wildfires. This makes lower vegetation more available to ruminants. Additionally, horse droppings contain more moisture and organic substances like seeds, which can help restore native or endangered plants. When soils are healthy and growing, more carbon is sequestered.
“Horses are essential to balance,” Mr. Downer said. “They can restore an ecosystem and reduce tinder.”
Horses need eight to 12 acres, and Ms. Séhart said she will work closely with landowners to ensure animals are receiving adequate resources and to provide personal care when she can. Though horses can be expensive ventures, landowners can get tax write-offs for their investments, she said.
To contact Love Wild Horses, email Jetara at [email protected].