At Montgomery Creek Ranch (MCR) we are dedicated to providing refuge, opportunity, and space to wild horses. Providing sanctuary and training for formerly wild mustangs plays an important role in this issue. We know that we are making a difference for each individual horse so that they don’t have to spend a lifetime in a holding facility, or worse.
But we would also like to never have to rescue another wild horse again.
We wish that federally-protected mustangs and burros could stay on public lands and live out their days wild and free. This is why we support and work collaboratively with organizations that are actively working to protect these animals on the range.
We have a strong relationship with the American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC), the nation’s leading wild horse advocacy organization (full disclosure: our founder, Ellie Phipps Price, is on the AWHC board) . While we have collaborated on many different projects, our work on the Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory provides a great example of how sanctuaries can work together with advocacy organizations to help wild horses.
After the Forest Service rounded up and removed 220 wild horses from the Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory near Alturas, California in 2017, MCR rescued four mare/foal pairs and one orphan after being alerted to the situation by AWHC. In 2018, Suzanne Roy, Director of the AWHC, and MCR founder, Ellie Phipps Price, traveled to Alturas to meet with the Forest Service to discuss how we could help manage and fund a humane fertility control program for the remaining wild horses in the forest. Unfortunately, the Forest Service declined.
In October of 2018, when the Forest Service announced its plan to sell recently rounded up Devil’s Garden mustangs without limitation on slaughter, we joined with AWHC and other groups at a rally at the Forest Service headquarters.
MCR Cofounder, Ellie Phipps Price speaking at an AWHC rally to save the Devil’s Garden wild horses.
We supported the AWHC lawsuit to prohibit the Forest Service from acting on their dangerous plan, and we promoted action alerts on the AWHC-sponsored state legislation AB128, which strengthens protections for California’s horses from slaughter.
We continue to work with AWHC to identify horses at risk of going to slaughter and to rescue horses out of the Devil’s Garden corrals (please stay tuned to see the new mares and foals we are bringing to MCR in September).
The work that we do at MCR provides immediate help to wild horses and burros in need and supports the work of organizations like AWHC. Our collaboration will help generations of wild horses to come.
