Earlier this year, during the deep biting cold of February, a group of twenty nine wild horses from the Twin Peaks area of California were bumping their way toward Michigan in a semi-enclosed stock trailer.  The trip was 2184 miles from their homeland where they had lived as their ancestors had for centuries; free.

 Although revered as symbols of freedom and the spirit of the American West, the horses now found themselves on a long journey taking them further and further away from home and freedom.

 Their journey began with the Burns Amendment to the Wild and Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act.  The amendment allows any rounded up wild horse or burro over the age of 10 to be sold—not adopted—to anyone, anywhere for as little as $25.  This amendment opened the door for the Twin Peaks horses to be bought by a woman in Michigan who had plans to sell them to private homes for a profit.

 But when the horses arrived sick with strangles, and obviously untamed, the potential new owners backed out turning her plans for a profit into a nightmarish struggle to feed a lot of hungry mouths that included mares with foals. 

 The once majestic and freeborn horses, torn from their home and families, exposed to strangles and shipped to Michigan, were now confined in small pens in a converted hog barn and reduced to eating the wood of the barn walls in order to quell the pain of hunger. 

 Life for these treasured symbols of the west had become grim.

 When the Michigan Horse Welfare Coalition became aware of the horses condition they contacted law enforcement and then starting calling around to see where the horses could go if they were removed from their situation.   

 As soon as DreamCatcher Wild Horse and Burro Sanctuary - which is only 25 miles from the horses original Twin Peaks home - found out about the plight of the California wild horses, they teamed up with the Michigan Horse Welfare Coalition and with a group of dedicated volunteers began working to do everything possible to bring as many of the horses back home to the west where they belong. 

 Getting possession of the horses was no easy task.  Law enforcement proved to be ineffective and the owner did not cooperate, trying her best to off-load the horses to anyone—other than animal welfare groups— regardless of their intent, including to a horse trader in Florida who admits to sending horses to auction which means only one thing….slaughter.   Fortunately the shipment to Florida was stalled giving the team more time to acquire horses and arrange transport.

 But even transport posed a challenge for not many shippers were equipped to carry truly wild horses.  Eventually Bob Hubbard Equine Transport offered to help and retrofitted one of their vans so the horses could ride home in comfort.

 With transport in place the push was on to get as many of the horses as possible for this first trip.  A week before the ship date of September 9^th, 2011, the final count was three geldings, four mares and one mare/foal pair.

 So once again the horses began a journey.  This time they headed west.  Back to the familiar sights and smells of sage, juniper and high desert grasses.   And back to freedom, for DreamCatcher is a 2000 acre natural habitat sanctuary where wild horses get to be wild once again.

 It seemed fitting that these symbols of freedom arrived back home on September 11th.  As the horses burst out the trailer everyone who had gathered to welcome them home gasped with joy as they watched the horses do what they had not been able to do for over a year; run free. 

 As one of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln once said “freedom is the last, best hope for earth”.  Everyone could feel that hope as the horses thundered across the expanse of their new home.

Postscript

 DreamCatcher and the Michigan Horse Welfare Coalition continue to work on bringing more of the Twin Peaks horses back from Michigan.  Another shipment is planned for early spring. 

December 8th of last year - while many of us were thinking about the holidays - a large group of wild horses were crammed into a forty foot metal transport for a three day journey to Kansas.  The horses had been rounded up a few months earlier from the Twin Peaks area of California.  Torn from their families, the horses were branded, sorted by age and gender, exposed to strangles (which is a horrible, sometimes fatal and always highly contagious disease) and kept in areas with no shelter until the BLM determined who was adoptable, who would go back to the wild and who would disappear into the long-term holding facilities in the Midwest where this group were now headed.

Amongst the terrified, cold and strangles compromised animals bumping along the nation’s highways toward the Midwest, was a grey gelding whose body bore the many badges of fights over mares and territory.  His name was Braveheart.  In the world he came from he was a king.  In the world he was traveling in, he was reduced to a number among countless numbers of wild expatriates; a transport crammed with paupers, bereft of family, land and identity.

For Braveheart, the journey was ironic.  For unlike his companions in the cold transport, Braveheart had been slated for sale to a Sacramento area family who were then going to sponsor him to live out his life at our 2000 acre DreamCatcher Wild Horse Sanctuary a few miles from his original Twin Peaks home.  He was to live out his life, in relative freedom as an intact stallion. 

And it is this irony that made Bravehearts story of immediate significance for we are involved in a historic legal battle with the BLM over, you guessed it, the Twin Peaks roundup and resulting annihilation of important Twin Peaks DNA.   The Sacramento family and DreamCatcher wanted to keep Braveheart from being castrated and sent to long-term holding.  

Communication with the BLM went on for weeks with Bravehearts sale put off until January 2011 due to the strangles outbreak.  In well documented communications, the purchasing party had been led to believe all was well for the sale.  But when January rolled around they were horrified to discover Braveheart, without notification to them, had been castrated and shipped to Kansas. 

When the Jones’s family demanded an accounting of what happened to Braveheart, the BLM abruptly denied he had even been rounded up.  For the Jones’ this was a call to action. For weeks they wrote and emailed up the BLM chain of command, demanding to know where the grey horse had gone and that he be returned so the sale could be finalized.

What the Jones’s did not know, was within a few days of arriving in Kansas, during one of the worst winters in years with blizzards and 23 degree below zero weather, Braveheart’s body - compromised by the long journey - could not hold up.  He was dead by December 15^th.

It only took the BLM a little over five months to do what twenty some years in the wild could not do; bring a majestic part of the American west to his knees.  

To the Jones family - who had no contact with wild horses before this incident – what happened to this one lone horse was just plain wrong.   Now, like a growing number of Americans, they want to see BLM wild horse policies change.  After all, the wild horses belong to the American public and live on public lands set aside for them by law.  The BLM are only stewards of that which the public deems important enough to be protected.  Its time the BLM is held accountable for that stewardship.