Just last month, Freedom and his family were among hundreds of America’s remaining wild horses that were mercilessly chased down by helicopter over dangerous terrain toward capture pens, where terrible futures and now, far too often, death in a foreign slaughterhouse, await them.
Most of these wild horses were terrorized - frozen with fear. And many of them were severely injured during this latest abysmal government roundup.
But One Wild Mustang, Now Named Freedom, Fought Back.
With dramatic determination, this wild mustang regained his freedom by jumping a 6-foot fence, then breaking through barbed wire, as it painfully tore into his flesh, in his successful effort to regain his liberty. These photos show Freedom’s emotional and inspiring escape.
But tens of thousands of America’s wild horses haven’t been as lucky. They’ve already been rounded up and trapped in internment camp corrals, all across the American West. They are being threatened like never before by the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) accelerating efforts to steal their land, and drive them all into extinction.
The BLM, doing the dirty work of the cattle industry and our politicians, has already removed tens of thousands of America’s wild horses through cruel, unnecessary, and illegal roundups - sending thousands of wild horses to their deaths in slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada, as millions of acres of America’s public lands, which had been reserved by law for them, have been deliberately confiscated.
As Dances With Wolves author Michael Blake wrote in a recent Op-Ed:
"Since 1971, our wild horses have been given no protection at all. They have been shot to death, poisoned, rustled for slaughter, and captured in the tens of thousands by a government charged with protecting them…. The genocide of America’s wild horses has accelerated wildly. Today, these iconic animals are rapidly approaching extinction.
"The BLM claims that the last of our wild horses are being captured to protect them from starvation, lack of water, over-breeding, and disruption of cattle ranching. The only wild horses I have seen in starvation are those in captivity. On many occasions I have witnessed wild horses having to travel twenty or thirty miles a day for water because ranchers and the government have denied them water by fencing off access to streams.
"Simply put, the government’s removal of wild horses from public land is based entirely on greed and money. The public land that allegedly belongs to all we citizens is now being ruled by corporations engaged with the BLM."
Freedom’s story is real. So are these government sponsored wild horse roundup helicopters. So are the older horses, pregnant horses, and young foals, which are being chased to exhaustion and death. So are the more than 35,000 wild horses already crammed into BLM holding facilities, awaiting their dire fate. And so are the thousands of wild horses that have already been cruelly trucked to their deaths in Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses.
If you care at all about these once revered American treasures, which are supposed to be protected by federal law for future generations to come, now is the time to contact both the White House and your legislators on their behalf. They are very rapidly running out of time.
Georg