💔 It hasn’t been an easy week.

While we’re fighting on all fronts to protect wild horses and burros—filing emergency legal action for the Heber herd and working to safeguard the Salt River horses better—real life in the wild doesn’t pause in our actual neck of the actual woods.

This is Little Girl.

A 17-year-old wild Salt River mare. She is fully blind in one (non existing) eye and going blind in the other one. Yet she is strong, and steady. A mother who raised her babies in the forest and stayed with her family through everything life threw at her.

But unfortunately yesterday, her fight ended.

If you know horses, you can see it in her eyes… the pain she was in. We found her with a prolapsed colon, which is not something a horse can survive—and it’s not a peaceful way to go.

We made the hardest decision we ever have to make… and we ended her suffering, instantly and humanely. She was an absolutely amazing sweet mare, and we did this for her out of so much love.

She didn’t suffer longer than she had to and we are so happy to be able to give her that dignity. It’s what humane wild horse management is all about.

And now there are just 272 Salt River wild horses. This herd has a yearly negative growthrate, because the natural death rate outpaces the birthrate as a result of fertility control. Its reduction without removals, without cruelty, a mechanism that should be implemented everywhere, as opposed to blatant cruel removals and disposal of our national icons.

Little Girl, she lived a full, wild, meaningful life in the wild—exactly as it should be. We were able to protect her, her entire life. She did not have to have foals in her older years. She never felt the pain of being separated from her family, being shuvved in trailers, and trucked to an unimaginable demise.

We are grateful for that, since so many other mares and stallions and babies right now, are not afforded even the slightest bit of decency from the US Forest Service.

Please take a moment to remember Little Girl today and please also take a moment to help protect other wild horses by helping us file legal action for the Heber wild horses🐎 In her honor, please donate towards the filing of a TRO to stop the removal of the Heber wild horses, which is taking place illegally at this very moment!

Donation information:

• Zelle: 6023963978
• Venmo : [email protected]
• PayPal: [email protected]
• Or mail: SRWHMG
  PO Box 64264
  Phoenix, AZ, 85082

🙏Rest in peace Little Girl.

Wishing all wild horses could live out their natural lives in peace on our public lands, like you did.

SRWHMG