Last Updated on January 21, 2025 by adminahb
By: William E. Simpson II
The devastating grass and brush fueled wildfires in Los Angeles we are all witnessing may be just a glimpse of the upcoming summer in the western United States, unless we start doing something new and cost-effective. Funding and doing more of what hasn’t worked is a guarantee for failure.
And as horrific as the LA fires are, the damages and costs will continue well after the fires are suppressed. UCLA’s new study of toxic wildfire smoke showed that 5,000 Californians each year die prematurely from toxins in wildfire smoke. Over the ten year period of the UCLA Study, 55,000 Californians died prematurely, with resulting economic damages estimated at $450 Billion!
Post wildfire erosion is also guaranteed, which can account for additional severe economic losses and adverse impacts on highways, bridges, homes, watersheds, and fisheries.
Our all-volunteer 501 c 3 nonprofit organization, Wild Horse Fire Brigade, has a remarkable board of directors and advisors, providing a blend of experienced and credentialed professionals that bring specialty knowledge to the table in addressing a very complex issue around natural resource management and wildfire prevention.
Our validated wildfire grazing research, horse rescue, & rewilding and educational programs via media and the world’s first wilderness based wild horse field study course with California State University Sacramento are bringing the message about the value of wild horses to the world!
Instead of what most wild horse Orgs do, preaching to the choir via posting on wild horse social media pages, through a lot of hard work, we are garnering the attention of a whole new audience of Americans, who need to know what’s happening with natural resources and American wild horses.
Recently, the award-winning documentary HORSE of NATURE was ‘Officially Selected’ by AmDoc Film Festival in Palm Springs, CA. This film festival is an Oscar qualifying event! Trailer at https://vimeo.com/998882803/001b27d9c1?share=copy.
Wild Horse Fire Brigade is a California registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit public benefit corporation. Contributions to WHFB are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. WHFBs tax identification number is 26 4567698.
Our all-volunteer team is motivated by our empirical experience, unique understanding, and deep appreciation of the lives of wild horses, and how genuinely important they are to the very survival of the human race as wildfires threaten to incinerate the western states as they grow worse year over year.
That ‘unique understanding’ is only attainable and begins by living among a herd of naturally living free roaming wild horses in their wilderness habitat. That knowledge cannot be gained any other way, as Dr. Jane Goodall proved by living among the Apes in Gombe, Africa.
As with human partnerships, you really learn a lot about someone by living with them, as opposed to just watching them or occasionally chatting at the lunch/break room at the office. The same goes for wild horses. Living with and among them is eye opening! I have done that for over 10 years now, and I am into my 9th generation of wild horses here in the wilderness as their accepted friend, as is Michelle.
Various state and federal wildlife agencies have grossly mismanaged our critically important native herbivore populations (deer, elk, and wild horses). Now, with the huge declines in all those critters that were previously eating millions of tons of grass and brush, that excessive grass and brush has become the fuel for the deadly and super costly wildfires that American citizens are suffering. Sixty six percent (66%) of all wildfires are fueled by grass & brush according to the latest published studies, according to the New York Times.
During the deadly wind-driven 38,000-acre Klamathon Fire, I studied the behavioral ecology of our herd of wild horses before, during, and after that wildfire. No other researcher or Org can make that claim, which is documented and validated by Oregon Department of Forestry District Ranger, Dave Larson, as well as the media.
Wild horses are understudied ecosystem engineers and an important ‘keystone species’ in North America where they all evolved.
As far as ‘nativeness’, wild horses are in fact, according to science, the most native of all large-bodied herbivores living in North America today. Bison, deer, and elk all evolved off the North American continent in Asia and only arrived in North America via Beringia (land bridge between Alaska and Siberia) about 200,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating of fossils in N. America.
The modern horse has fossils in North America dating back to approximately 1.8 million years, which includes American horse fossils dated at about 5,000 years. These more recent horse fossils prove that some wild horses survived the Ice Age of 12,000 years ago, contrary to the now debunked assertions that they went extinct during the Ice Age. We also know that wild horses in the Great Basin make up for about 60% of the diets of mountain lions, according to a new study.
Given the critical value wild horses provide to naturally operating wilderness ecosystems, excluding them from landscapes that are appropriate ecological habitats for wild horses is reckless and damaging to such landscapes.
Interfering with their natural essential life cycles using sterilization, castration, or confinement away from naturally operating ecosystems is undermining the evolutionary level sustainable conservation of wild horses.
There is only one genuine cost-effective solution to intelligently save the remaining wild horses (Bureau of Land Management est. pop. 40,000 wild horses).
Relocating wild horses away from areas of economic conflict, where horses are targeted for brutal roundups, and with the additional potential for reckless human interventions, such as costly sterilization (genocide via PZP & GonaCon) and subsequent roundups, is key. Rewilding them using our Nature Based Plan into appropriate vacant wild lands under existing law allows wild horses to continue to live naturally ‘wild & free’ and unmolested by ignorant humans suffering from their own hubris and greed. Said ‘rewilding’ of the horses allows them to cost-effectively engage and manage the threat from prodigious grass and brush wildfire fuels in appropriate landscapes.
Furthermore, any anthropogenic (human) actions that change the natural ecology and herd dynamics of wild horses are harmful to the sustainable conservation of wild horses. As such, anyone or any organization or nonprofit engaged in ending the natural life cycles of wild horses is engaged in genocide of this important North American species.
There are no honest excuses for ending the natural and genetically essential life cycles of wild horses using chemical sterilants such as ‘PZP’ or ‘GonaCon’. It’s a fake solution being monetized to the benefit of the Bureau of Land Management and the nonprofit Orgs being incentivized to shoot horses with rifles loaded with these EPA registered pesticide chemicals, ‘PZP’ & ‘GonaCon’.
Any person, organization, or nonprofit who engages into or supports the use of chemical sterilization of wild horses is doing harm, and that is a simple undeniable fact based upon published, settled science. It is genocide. More from Dr. Cassandra Nunez, PhD: https://cmvnunez.weebly.com/.
Wild Horse Fire Brigade stands steadfastly against anyone or organization who promotes and/or uses genocide via chemical sterilization on American wild horses. It’s a human abomination and insult to nature and our few remaining wild equines. There are no honest excuses for such draconian actions when a superior management option may be engaged.
Wild Horse Fire Brigade has a proven nature-based model for managing American wild horses in a manner that allows them to continue to live naturally, wild & free, as intended by the preamble of the 1971 Act to protect wild horses & burros.
Our wild horse management model is endorsed by researchers and analysts at the insurance industry org. AM BEST, who went so far as to produce a documentary about our research. View their 8 min. documentary here: https://www.ambest.com/video/video.aspx?s=1&rc=wildhorses323.
We need your help! Private donations are what runs all these critical programs!
Please donate using our secure PayPal account here: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=E5WT67QR5H6X8.
Alternatively, you may send a check to:
Wild Horse Fire Brigade
P.O. Box 202
Yreka, CA 96097
Visit www.wildhorsefirebrigade.org for more information.