Why Donate
Why Donate To Our Mission?
Like you we are shocked and horrified at how some government agencies and even some supposed “advocacy groups” treat our North American native species wild horses. If you’ve checked out our website you are aware that we are a 100% volunteer board who work non-stop, in many cases using dollars from our own pockets, to enable the Wild Horse Fire Brigade to move forward.
Through a proven pilot program with 'Our Herd' at our wilderness research station (Wild Horse Ranch) we have shown that Wild Horse Fire Brigade works by using wild horses to manage (graze) annual grass and brush wildfire fuels in an ecologically sensitive area. Ongoing maintenance of annually occurring grass and brush provided areas of reduced fuels and firebreaks that aided CALFIRE during the deadly Klamathon Fire (Siskiyou County 2018), and can do the same thing on other landscapes.
Learn More from insurance industry analysts at AM BEST: CLICK HERE
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Now we are working on relationships to offer the same program, but scaled-up to use hundreds, even thousands of wild horses in areas that are both economically and ecologically appropriate.
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At full scale we intend to start working with privately-owned wilderness forest land managers (there's 353-million acres of privately owned forest in America) and with multiple nearby counties and cities, where each may have ecologically appropriate wilderness lands suffering from collapsed herbivore populations, resulting in excessive grass and brush. Such areas would allow wild horses, relocated from areas of conflict or rewilded from off-range holding, to thrive in an areas where they do NOT compete with livestock grazing, much less wealthy mining and gas/oil corporations.
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Wild horses can be successfully re-wilded in family groups as keystone herbivores into wilderness areas where they can significantly reduce wildfire as an additional major benefit!
Each year we’re seeing thousands of wild horses (aka 'Mustangs'), brutally rounded up. Tight-knit loving families are segregated into groups (males, females, babies) and then subjected to branding and the adults are genetically mutilated physically or with chemicals and then kept in horrific conditions by the Bureau of Land Management and United States Forest Service.
These highly questionable programs are all publicly funded at great annual expense.
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Contrary to logic, reason and the intent of the 1971 Act to protect and sustainably conserve native species American wild horses, many wild horses (also called 'Mustangs') end-up going to auctions from-where many wild horses ultimately are transported to slaughter plants in Mexico for pet food.
What we uniquely offer is the establishment of a type of natural re-wilding program through the funding we receive, as noted below, that goes directly to keeping wild horses wild and free. We also intend that family bands finding themselves in areas of conflict and subject to potential roundup (or worse), are relocated as intact family bands into economically and ecologically appropriate landscapes, genetically intact (unmolested via castration and chemical sterilization).
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We don't want supporters to be confused about the differences between true rewilding and relocation of wild horses and longterm storage at sanctuaries.
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We believe that sanctuaries perform and important and needed function but should only be used for domestic horses and/or wild horses with health issues that make them unsuited to be rewilded as wildlife back into the wilderness. For some wild horses, sanctuaries can be a kind of stepping-stone or 'halfway house' for healing and evaluation prior to potential re-wilding.
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Wild horses are 'wildlife' and belong in the wilderness and beyond human meddling. This is the core of natural, genetically sustainable conservation.
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Sanctuaries, regardless of how large, are no substitute for re-wilding healthy wild horses into a naturally-operating, ecologically balanced wilderness landscapes among their co-evolved predators.
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Apex predators benefit wild horses genetically through natural selection by weeding-out sick, diseased and elderly horses, thereby enhancing genetic vigor.
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Natural selection also is Nature's way of managing populations without human meddling and spending $-millions in tax dollars to sterilize horses with harmful chemicals, misleadingly couched as 'Fertility Control'.
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The Wild Horse Fire Brigade plan should not to be confused with advocacy groups whose only solution is to continue suing the Bureau of Land Management ('BLM') in an attempt to force wild horses to remain in areas where they are subjected to the wrath of people and agencies who want them gone.
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As we have seen, when horses are forced to remain in areas where they are unwanted, thousands are killed and only some horses that are shot are discovered.
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People and organizations who are profiting from sterilization programs (PZP & GonaCon) funded by Bureau of Land Management ('BLM') grants don't publicly disclose that:
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*Sterilized horses eat and drink just as much as a genetically intact horses. So conflicts over competition for grazing and water resources are not remedied by so-called Fertility Control.
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And the end result has been and will continue to be that even sterilized horses will be subjected to roundups, slaughter auctions, and still others will continue being shot by people who never seem to get caught as has been the case over the past 20-years.
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Again, some large wild horse nonprofits are profiting from $-millions in taxpayer funded grants provided by the BLM, who pays organizations and people to sterilize wild horses, only to later see them killed (shot dead) or removed by roundups.
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Even the process of applying so-called 'Fertility Control' (aka: 'contraception' & 'birth control') subjects wild horses to being 'stalked' and shot-at by people armed with high-powered gas-operated rifles that fire heavy darts filled with a chemical sterilant. This process flies in the face of the intent of the 1971 Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act, which prohibits 'harassment' of wild horses and this process of Fertility Control causes physical injury, and even death according to scientists.
Learn more about this draconian practice and how it creates herds of genetically-dead wild horses with no future generations at these articles:
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Working Towards A Natural Humane Solution
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How Our Donations Are Used:
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Funds are needed to support our ongoing wild horse research, our educational programs and outreach, and our re-wilding initiatives.
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NEW: Wild Horse Fire Brigade is launching America's first university Fellowship program to allow university-level students the opportunity to study and learn directly from free-roaming wild horses in their wilderness habitat at Wild Horse Fire Brigade's wilderness research station, 'Wild Horse Ranch'. This unique student opportunity is being overseen by a university professor, and researchers Gough & Simpson will be the teaching assistants at the research site. Simpson, Gough and Wild Horse Fire Brigade are providing this Fellowship at no cost to the students or the university. In fact, Wild Horse Fire Brigade is using some donations to fund the costs to provide this Fellowship opportunity to university students.
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While we try to do everything with volunteers, our two full-time, unpaid researchers (Michelle Gough & William Simpson) cannot possibly continue to work as full-time field researchers, do chores required to live off-grid in the wilderness among the wild horses they study, write articles, and then also be expected to answer hundreds of emails and dozens of phone calls weekly. We are in dire need of a social media professional who has the skill set to address the hundreds of questions generated by social media in chats and comments, and we may need to fund that position.
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We need funds for our educational outreach programs and hard-copy materials to various politicians, elected officials, universities and colleges that specialize in wildfire and wildlife resource management.
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Funding is needed to make presentations in person to county commissioners and various relevant organizations located throughout the west. Covering transportation, food and on occasion a hotel room is a bare minimum as volunteers donate their time and presentation skills.
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Ongoing research programs include: Multi-mission drone studies of our local wild horse herd to collect imaging of individual and families of horses for analysis, and to establish the spatial-temporal distribution of Our Herd of wild horses by tagging lead mares with new tech (tiny) radio tags. We have begun the acquisition of the equipment for this study with the purchase of a heavy-lift drone capable of a 2.5-Kilo payload. We are in the process of finding the radio-telemetry GIS package we need to begin this important study, which will be used on our large scale rewilding projects. The estimated cost (based on quotes) just for the radio-telemetry/GIS mapping package is $20,000.00.
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We believe that some of the ancestors of Our Herd of local wild horses were observed and recorded by Sir Francis Drake in 1580, making those wild horses a unique post Ice Age splinter population that was present at the time of the arrival of Columbus in 1492. As such, we believe some these ancestral bloodline genetics may still be present today in Our Herd. We intend (funding permitting) to conduct genetic studies of Our Herd.
Some Accomplishments During the First Year of Our Team Effort
(June 2022 - June 2023)
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1. Established a professionally diverse team of directors and advisors.
2. Engaged in an educational outreach to a large public audience via multiple channels, including local, regional and national media, including NPR, CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, AM BEST TV and others.
3. Investigated the proposed Bureau of Land Management's roundup of the Pokegama HMA Wild Horses and determined it was unlawful and filed a Federal Lawsuit and prevailed in that legal effort, stopping the roundup.
4. Rewilded dozens of slaughter-bound wild horses into Our Herd and studied the family-band social interactions and successful integration of rewilded horses into the wilderness. Some of these horses were rewilded through successful cooperative work between Wild Horse Fire Brigade and numerous wild horse advocates.
5. Continued with William Simpson's wild horse behavioral ecology and ethology research that was begun in 2014, leading to several new discoveries about wild horses, which can provide enhanced natural management of wild horses going forward.
6. Began a legislative outreach into the Oregon Legislature through our supporters in the legislature.
7. Produced over 200 short informational-educational videos that can be viewed without cost on our YouTube Channel.
8. Working towards large-scale wild horse rewilding/relocation pilot programs on large tracts of land (100,000 acres and up) that are economically and ecologically appropriate wilderness using the Wild Horse Fire Brigade model.
9. Working towards implementing satellite programs of our existing proven pilot program using the wildfire-tested, proven Wild Horse Fire Brigade model.
10... and more! See our 'NEWS' page on this website.
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NOTE: There is no substitute for hands-on experience:
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Over the past 9-years of full-time field research with free roaming wild horses in a wilderness area, William E. Simpson II (founder & Exec. Director WHFB) has accumulated over 15,000 hours of close observational study by living among free-roaming wild horses in a wilderness area, and is more than any other researcher or scientist in America today. Simpson calls this close-observational study-method the 'Goodall Method' in honor of Dr. Jane Goodall who pioneered this method during her study of the Apes in Gombe Africa in 1960.
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Mr. Simpson's background and training is very diverse and lends to a deeply integrated understanding of the sciences involved in a holistic approach to enable the natural, sustainable conservation and management of wild horses, and thus maintaining their genetic vigor and diversity in a manner that serves the highest and best interests of wild horses, while also presenting a conservation path that is both economically and ecologically sensible.
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Here is a PDF containing some of their Letters of Recommendation: https://www.wildhorsefirebrigade.org/_files/ugd/b50928_d4424087009e4d319c0915981ebcbf25.pdf
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The success of any wild horse rewilding or relocation project with wild horses is directly and proportionately related the amount of in-depth hands-on experience with naturally-living wild horses, their ethology and behavioral ecology.
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Uniquely, Simpson has also documented successfully treating dozens of unhandled wild horses that came to him of their own volition for help with assorted injuries. This interesting phenomenon has also been seen in wild elephants who knew of humans they could trust:
This Dodo article discusses further: https://www.thedodo.com/elephants-travel-humans-help-1353631970.html
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Your Donations Are Making A Difference!
If you can help via a recurring monthly donation that would be the very best thing you can do as it gives us an idea of what we can plan to fund in the future.
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Two Ways to Donate:
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1. Using a Credit Card at PayPal:
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We are a 501-c-3 “not for profit public benefit corporation, and have a 'DONATE' button on our website that takes credit cards through PayPal - Donate Now via PayPal HERE
Or we have a physical address where checks can be sent:
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2. Using a Check or Money Order:
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Please make checks payable to:
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'Wild Horse Fire Brigade'
404 S. Main St. - Yreka, CA 96097
Your generous donations are greatly appreciated by our team and the Wild Horses!
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We appreciate you contacting us and look forward to your willingness to help the Wild Horse Fire Brigade!​
