Last Updated on December 2, 2022 by Teri Rehkopf
On Saturday Dec. 3rd at 10:00 AM, EQUUS Film & Arts Festival will present a TED-like talk about Wild Horse Fire Brigade at the historical Guild Theater in Sacramento California.
Wild horse ethologist and researcher William E. Simpson II will speak about how wild horses cost effectively manage wildfire fuels, make trees more fire resilient, and how forest ecosystems, watersheds, and wildlife benefit from the presence of these native keystone herbivores.
William has lived among and studied free roaming wild horses in the wilderness mountains on the California-Oregon border for the past 8 years continuously.
Simpson has logged over 15,000 hours of close observational study, a method pioneered by Dr. Jane Goodall during her 1960s study of the Apes in Gombe, Africa, which Simpson calls the ‘Goodall Method‘ in honor of Dr. Goodall.
Some of Simpson’s research has been published in print and in online journals, such as ReWilding Europe’s wildfire focuses journal GrazeLIFE: https://grazelife.com/blog/wild-horse-fire-brigade-lessons-in-rebalancing-north-american-ecosystems-by-rewilding-equids/.
Recently, NPR national featured a story by reporter Stephanie O’Neill, about Simpson’s research on air (and podcast) and in print to its audience of 46 million: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/30/1131042723/preventing-wildfire-with-the-wild-horse-fire-brigade.
The talk begins at 10:00 AM at the Guild Theater in Sacramento California and will last about 45 minutes, followed by a panel Q&A discussion session with board members from Wild Horse Fire Brigade, a California-based 501(c)3 all-volunteer nonprofit organization.
The team from Wild Horse Fire Brigade hopes to see you there!
William Simpson was the local advisor to CALFIRE during the deadly 38,000-acre 2018 Klamathon Fire. Simpson was on the fire line for 9 days assisting CALFIRE and also studying the effects of the wildfire grazing by the local wild horses on the behavior of wildfire and its progression, as well as the benefits provided to firefighters via the natural firebreaks created and maintained by the wild horses.
Please visit www.wildhorsefirebrigade.org.