Mustangs at Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary (Bec Rapacz)
By Bec Rapacz
It’s like thunder.
Either to hear it from afar, or to be a part of it. Sitting atop a rippling back of pure muscle, wind in your face, a stampede of hooves beneath you, is the type of experience that calcifies itself into your brain forever, safeguarded from memory loss.
I never saw the day that I’d write this story. I thought that even if not everyone loved horses, surely there wouldn’t be the kind of calloused hatred or apathy that would lead to their slaughter. I was wrong. Right now, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is fast-tracking wild horses caught in roundups through the auction pipeline right into the hands of buyers who historically only buy livestock for slaughter.
It’s bleak out here.
I fell for horses young. I can’t recall the beginning of our love affair, but I distinctly remember, during yearly road trips out West, waving at every long nose I passed, calling to my parents, “I want it!”
My parents frequently drove us out to South Dakota to visit the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary. A non-profit organization set on 11,000 acres of protected wildlife lands, the sanctuary gives tours of the property and its horses in order to sustain the costs of maintenance and care. If I hadn’t fallen in love by then, this place converted me fully. I baptized myself in the yearling pen’s water tank and was licked clean by the friendly foals. I prayed that one day I would call one of these gorgeous animals my friend.
My prayers were not in vain.
The privilege of living out my dream is not lost on me, and I thank my lucky stars for it every day. At age 8, I learned that my parents, at the urging of my lifelong horse girl grandmother, found a piece of property with a house and a barn in the mountains, and bought it. We uprooted from Boston and made that property our home. We cleared acres of dead forest, pulled out stumps, cleared trails in the woods, yanked poisonous plants, planted grass, set up fences, dug a small pond, and let the horses flow in.
We took on animals that needed last minute homes before they went to slaughter, most of them for free. We took blind horses, club-footed horses, untrained horses, plain old mean horses that didn’t trust people due to traumatic pasts. We acted as a foster care, pouring love into them until we found homes that they fit into perfectly.
We called ourselves “Crazy Girl Ranch.” I was the crazy girl.
My mom and I would race across the countryside, the sound of our horses’ feet like an incoming storm.
My first pony was a fat little hellion who taught me the right way to fall off, over and over again. I was the first person to ever ride her. Her name was Zephyr.
My last horse was a tall, nervous Tennessee Walker who taught me to hold on tight. She ran like the wind. I trusted her implicitly. Her name was Black Nell, after Western legend Wild Bill Hickok’s beloved mare.
Horses taught me about work ethic, confidence, patience, and devotion. They taught me how to be kind. They taught me how to love unconditionally. They taught me how to be a better person.
Horses have been a crucial part of this country’s history. Ancient horses roamed the greater North American continent thousands of years ago and then disappeared. The Conquistadors reintroduced them upon invasion and colonization of the Native’s land. The Spanish horses that broke free and populated the colonized landmass were called mustangos or mestaños, meaning “ownerless” or “untamed.” The name stuck, and America’s wild horse breed remains the Mustang to this day, though much of the Spanish DNA has bred out naturally.
In these mustangs, Native tribes found not only a friend, but a great blessing. They dubbed them “sacred dogs,” as the small, hardy horses were loyal as a dog but could also carry them through battle and help the people follow food migrations. Horses and many Native tribes have an intricately, powerfully woven historical relationship that outshines any partnership in today’s modern horse industry.
But these mustangs are in peril now. The Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 seems to not mean anything anymore. The BLM is supposed to be protecting these animals, but under the Trump administration, the horses are being rounded up on bureau lands and sold to the cheapest buyer. Do you know what the “cheapest buyer” means? Slaughter. I say this because up until recently, as incentive for people to adopt the rounded-up horses, the bureau was handing out $1,000 to each buyer for each horse bought. On March 3, 2025, a federal court ordered the end to that incentive program, thereby paving the way for horses to be offloaded quickly and cheaply; a win-win for the bureau. As soon as this program ended, adoption/sales applications submitted by livestock traders that had previously been collecting dust, suddenly were approved.
According to a recent investigation by The New York Times, in the past, the bureau has rounded up roughly 9,500 horses each year and put them up for adoption as a way of keeping the population in check. Less than half of these horses are adopted, and the rest go into holding pens until something can be done with them. The ones adopted often go to Mustang sanctuaries like the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary or Skydog Ranch, the founder of which, Clare Staples, collaborated with The New York Times on its recent article and investigation.
The investigation also found that the bureau has sold 6,331 horses in 19 months. It’s average in past years has been 1,200 horses in a single year. What caused this unprecedented climb in sales?
Under Trump, the price of the rounded-up horses plummeted to as low as $25 per horse, and buyers (who have tried to remain anonymous) scoop them up by the dozen, packing them into double-decker livestock trailers and sending them off to middlemen in unknown locations. The middlemen are due to a law that states adopted or sold horses cannot be sold knowingly to slaughter. If a middleman doesn’t ask questions, then the law isn’t broken. The buyers, one of which is Brandon Jones, a livestock trader in Ohio, refuse to say where the horses are headed. That’s not a good sign.
When interviewed by The New York Times, Jones denied knowing anything about the horses he bought being sent to slaughter.
Slaughtering wild horses is not legal in the United States. Many animal rights advocates believe that these buyers are exporting them to places like Canada, where horse slaughter is 100% legal. Combine this with the recent news of Trump’s lowering of tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of imported beef, the source countries of said beef undisclosed, and something seems fishy. American ranchers and beef suppliers are up in arms, as are wild horse advocates.
It seems this administration’s dedication to American heritage, be it the American ranching industry, or the iconic image of the West’s wild horses, is wafer thin. Hypocritical at best.
It states on pages 528-529 of the Heritage Foundation’s Magnum Opus, Project 2025, a blueprint for Trump’s second term, that: “Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.” The B.L.M.’s plans for adoption, increased corralling, and fertility control weren’t enough. No, these horses must be killed.
The little horse girl in me is quaking with sadness and fear, and the hard-headed farm girl I grew into is sharpening her pitchfork.
In this political climate, it’s not hard to get riled up by something. Protections are being removed from people, laws, land, and animals. In amongst all the injustices we face daily, be it racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or ethnocentrism, we now must worry about something as random as legal loopholes allowing for the slaughter of wild animals. Horse girls: now is your chance. This is a movement you can join. I know most of y’all come from a place of privilege, so it’s time to raise your voice.
I beseech anyone who has remained silent thus far to think really hard about how long you’re willing to let that silence continue. The longer you stay quiet, the more your voice will atrophy. You will lose it.
To call upon my favorite quote, attributed to Malcolm X and Chuck D: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
So, what can be done?
We can stand by the Natives. A California tribe, the Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute tribe of the Benton Paiute Reservation, filed a federal lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management, Department of Interior, U.S. Forest Service, and other senior officials in late June. The lawsuit alleged that the federal government planned to round up 624 horses, roughly 90% of the herd, on sacred land belonging to the tribe. This action would break treaty and law. The federal government steamrolled over the tribe’s lawsuit, and the roundup happened anyway. Ronda Kauk, a member of the Mono Lake Kootzaduka’a Tribe, said, “These horses are living culture. They are one with our ancestors on this land… Their removal is not a neutral management decision. It is an action taken over the objections of the people whose homeland this is.”
Native American tribes have long been proponents for environmental justice and have spearheaded some of the most important conservation movements throughout history. Showing support for them is a way of showing up for the environment and all its inhabitants.
We can also support any of the following organizations that offer sanctuary to wild horses and burros by donating money, no matter how little. The main points of most of these groups are simple: conserve, advocate, and educate. Most of the websites have petitions that can be signed to add your name to growing lists opposing horse slaughter and the heinous treatment of wild animals. Check out the following links to learn more and donate.
Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation
Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary
