This is the first of a two-part series about the Save America’s Wild Horses 2025 conference in Craig, Colorado.
Our weathered but sturdy SUV ambled along a two-track dirt road that cut through vast acres of springtime sagebrush and bunchgrass. We were part of a small caravan of vehicles that had ventured out to see wild horses on The Wild Horse Refuge in northwestern Colorado.
Scanning the landscape from road to horizon, we didn’t have to wait long before we saw a single-file line of 14 horses running in the distance. The lead mare, a beautiful bay, was in front, and the dominant male, a pinto, took up the rear. In-between were a mix of brown, grey, chestnut, grullo, and palomino horses. A rainbow of coat colors, they quickly covered some ground.
We had traveled from near and far for a moment just like this one—the chance to see wild horses running free. “The sound of our vehicles might’ve startled them, or maybe they just felt like running,” said Cindy Wright, our guide at the wheel.
Either way, the horses exhibited all the beauty, strength, and independence associated with America’s wild horses. They gave me the sense that they knew who they were and where they were going. I’m sure my heart wasn’t the only one in our caravan that skipped a beat.
Keeping wild horses wild
The tour was part of the fourth annual Save America’s Wild Horses conference held last May in Craig, Colorado. Call us wild horse lovers, champions, warriors, or guardians, most everyone at the conference fell into this category.
Of different professions and political views and from different regions of the country, we came together out of a shared desire to defend the welfare, rights, and long-term survival of wild equines—including those still free and those in captivity.
Advocates, journalists, photojournalists, conservationists, trainers, and other wild equine specialists filled the first day of our conference with presentations. The next day, we headed out to visit the Refuge.
Established in 2023 by Pat Craig, founder and executive director of The Wild Animal Sanctuary (TWAS), the Refuge has rapidly gained attention as a humane, holistic approach to helping save wild horses while fostering a diverse ecosystem. As a private nonprofit charity, it also saves taxpayers money by reducing the number of captured horses held in long-term government facilities. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) estimates that it currently spends more than $100 million each year to care for captured horses.1
“Pat is a visionary. Nothing stops him when he sets out to rescue animals ….”
—Scott Beckstead, chief equine programs director for TWAS
Craig’s work started back in 1980 when he left college to found the first TWAS facility. At the time, it was a small rescue facility on his family farm outside of Denver. He took in tigers, lions, and other large carnivores penned up in tiny cages in the back of zoos and circuses.
Craig has since grown the operation into the oldest, largest nonprofit wild animal sanctuary in the Western Hemisphere. He didn’t stop there. In 2018, he opened The Wild Animal Refuge in southern Colorado for rescued wild horses and exotic animals. The Wild Horse Refuge is his most recent endeavor.
Craig operates all three facilities under The Wild Animal Sanctuary organization, a Colorado-based nonprofit charity. The three sanctuary facilities encompass more than 40,000 rural acres with well over 1,000 rescued exotic and endangered large carnivores and wild mustangs.
“Pat is a visionary. Nothing stops him when he sets out to rescue animals …. Whatever he’s doing, he gets it done,” said Scott Beckstead, chief equine programs director for TWAS.
A place of peace and freedom
Located in high desert country, the Refuge encompasses 30,000 acres of critical habitat home to a variety of wildlife, including pronghorn, mule deer, elk, coyote, bobcats, mountain lions, and sage grouse. However, after Craig purchased the land, he and his team turned loose some newcomers—approximately 80 Colorado-born wild horses.
Most of these horses were originally from within and around the nearby Sand Wash Basin herd management area (HMA). In 2021, they were captured as part of a large-scale helicopter roundup by the BLM. Over the course of 12 days, the BLM removed a net of 630 wild horses—or approximately 70% of the horses living within and around the HMA—and sent them to holding facilities in Canon City, Colorado.2
By 2023, according to BLM policy, these 80 horses were unadoptable because they were more than 10 years old or had been passed up for adoption three times. Labeled as “sale authority” horses, they could be sold to anyone, putting them at risk of ending up in slaughter pipelines.
Since rescuing the first group of horses, the Refuge has continued to take in horses captured from the Sand Wash Basin HMA. It has also welcomed horses from the Piceance East-Douglas HMA and the West Douglas Herd Area, both just 40 miles south of the Refuge, and a small band from Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. The number of wild horses that now freely roam the Refuge totals more than 200.
“Our mission is to make sure that these animals know only peace and freedom for the rest of their lives. That’s really the bottom line,” said Beckstead.
Water and grass for everyone
Our group first met Beckstead, and his wife, Jackie, the previous day at the conference. In preparation for the onsite tour, he had shared the Refuge’s history with us and told us about the lives of the horses living there.
“[The struggles] of the wild horses came to light here in Colorado with the 2021 roundup [and] really boosted public awareness of what was going on,” he said. “Governor Jared Polis got involved, and immediately there was talk about trying to find [a home] for the displaced horses. Pat started looking for the right piece of property, looking at large ranches all over the state and finally found where we are now …. It’s only 30 minutes from the Sand Wash Basin HMA, so for most of the horses here it was like a homecoming.”
Beckstead explained that although the weather patterns on the Refuge are similar to that on the HMA, the Refuge has much more water and forage.
“Here we are in the high desert, and obviously the winters are very cold and the summers very dry, but we have ample water sources for the horses and the wildlife that live here. Then, when the spring comes, the ground just explodes with grass.”
He said that once released on the Refuge, the horses reunite with old family members, kick up their heels, and gallop with delight when they realize they’re free. Except for emergency veterinary care, they are then left alone.
“We really respect each one of our horses as a unique individual.”
—Scott Beckstead, chief equine programs director for TWAS
“We really respect each one of our horses as a unique individual,” said Beckstead. “We leave it to them to figure out their own social dynamics … and to do their thing out on the landscape without having to worry about people interfering.”
Most of the horses choose to live in bands, each with a lead mare who guides her group to watering holes and grazing spots and away from danger. Each band also generally has a dominant male who protects and defends it. The BLM gelds all the stallions it captures, but many retain their dominant behaviors.
Reestablishing the horse as a keystone species
Not only is the Refuge good for the horses. The horses are good for the Refuge. Because horses and open grasslands in North America evolved together as a single ecosystem, wild horses play a key role in restoring and maintaining the health and biodiversity of grasslands across the West.3
As keystone herbivores, wild horses shape natural processes and contribute to ecosystem resilience. They’re constantly on the go, aerating the soil with their hooves and dispersing seeds in their manure. In addition, unlike livestock, wild equines eat a broad array of vegetation, including cheatgrass—a dry, low-nutrient invasive plant that fuels wildfires. Cattle and sheep are much more selective, often devouring native bunchgrass while avoiding cheatgrass.4
The Refuge plans to continue rescuing horses but only to the point where the horses and land can maintain a harmonious relationship.
“We’re operating the Refuge as a rewilding project,” explained Beckstead. “We’re mindful of the needs of the landscape, the ecosystem, and all of the other species that share this land. We want it to be balanced, and to be balanced, we have to make sure that it’s not overgrazed.”
Right at home
The morning of the tour, Beckstead led one small caravan of conference attendees to the south side of the Refuge. I joined Wright, who led a second caravan to the north side.
A native to the area, Wright knows the area well and cares deeply about the horses. Through their nonprofit Wild Horse Warriors for Sand Wash Basin, she and her sister, Aletha Dove, work with the BLM and other organizations to help ensure that the herd and rangeland stay healthy.5
“No matter where you’re from, once you get involved with the wild horses, they’re magical [and] find a place in your heart.”
—Cindy Wright, cofounder of Wild Horse Warriors for Sand Wash Basin
“No matter where you’re from, once you get involved with the wild horses, they’re magical. They find a place in your heart, and they don’t let you walk away very easily,” Wright said.
It was on the Refuge’s north side where we spotted the horses running in the distance. We continued on, following one dirt road after another. The area’s expansiveness became clear. No paved roads, no signs, no structures. Just acres and acres of land and blue sky.
We saw more groups of horses, and even from far away, Wright could identify each band and call out individual members by name. She first knew many of these horses as foals in the Sand Wash Basin HMA.
After lunch, Wright took us to a watering hole on the south side. Here, she parked some 100 feet away and turned off the engine. A couple bands of horses soon arrived, drank their fill, and milled about. As they watched us, we watched them, and I could see that they had adapted well to their new home. They were fit and content.
A few bold ones came right up to our vehicles. “These guys are from a band of bachelor geldings we call the Naughty Nine,” Wright laughed as they smelled and licked the SUV hood. When one came near her window, she rolled it up to prevent him from having any human contact. Now that the horses are once again free, the Refuge wants them to retain their wildness.
Galloping ahead
Like the line of horses we saw galloping through the sagebrush that morning, Craig and his team at the Refuge know who they are and where they’re going. They plan to continue expanding the Refuge’s acreage by purchasing adjacent rangeland. They also foresee offering training and adoption events for rescued horses that they believe will be receptive to domestication.
“But really, we want to educate the American public about the plight of our wild horses,” said Beckstead, “We want to celebrate the horse and all that the horse has done for our nation and for humanity, because that debt that we owe this species is incalculable.”
Learn more about:
- The Wild Horse Refuge near Craig, Colorado
- The Wild Animal Sanctuary near Keenesburg, Colorado
- The Wild Animal Refuge near Springfield, Colorado
- Wild Horse Warriors for Sand Wash Basin
- Save America’s Wild Horses 2025 conference
Notes
1 Streater, Scott, “BLM ramped up wild horse removals. Costs soared,” E&E News, March 25, 2025, https://www.eenews.net/articles/blm-ramped-up-wild-horse-removals-costs-soared/
The BLM’s approach to managing wild horses and burros on public lands is controversial and will be addressed in the second part of this series.
2 U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management, “2021 Emergency Sand Wash Basin Wild Horse Gather,” n.d., https://www.blm.gov/programs/wild-horse-and-burro/herd-management/gathers-and-removals/colorado/2021-sand-wash-basin-wild-horse-gather
3 Ancestors of the modern-day horse began their evolution in North America more than 50 million years ago. The timeline of when they disappeared from the continent is debated, but recent DNA evidence extracted from permafrost fossils in the Yukon in Canada suggests that the Equus lambie species, the last known Equus species in North America, went extinct approximately 5,700 years ago. Equus lambie is genetically the same species as Equus ferus, the modern-day wild horse.
Before disappearing from North America, horses crossed the Bering Land Bridge and spread through Eurasia and other regions. Conventional history says that Spanish colonists reintroduced the species to the Americas in 15th and 16th centuries. However, based on indigenous oral traditions, many tribes argue that they’ve always had horses, although no fossil evidence has yet been found to support this claim.
Murchie, Tyler J, et. al, “Collapse of the mammoth-steppe in central Yukon as revealed by ancient environmental DNA,” Nature Communications, December 8, 2021, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27439-6
Elbein, Saul, “Native Americans used horses far earlier than historians had believed,” The Hill, March 31, 2023. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3927037-native-americans-used-horses-far-earlier-than-historians-had-believed/
4 Downer, Craig, “The path forward for the restoration of wild horses and burros and their natural habitats,” The Nevada Independent, October 11, 2022, https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-path-forward-for-the-restoration-of-wild-horses-and-burros-and-their-natural-habitats
5 Wright and Dove also served on the Colorado wild horse working group, established as part of the Colorado Wild Horse Project to recommend long-term solutions for managing Colorado’s on-range and captured wild horses. They now serve on the advisory committee tasked with advising the Colorado Department of Agriculture on how to best implement the recommendations.