A herd of mustangs have found their forever home in the Wasatch Back, sheltered on the 18 acres of land that make up Wild Heart Sanctuary.

On an early summer morning, a creek snakes through a corner of the land, a rocky, sage-covered incline on another and a worn horse path cuts down the middle, its soft brown trail the only evidence of the nine gentle beasts who live here.

Emulating a wild mustang herd, the lead and lieutenant stallions, Kokopelli and Durango, look after the eight mares — they move as one, to food or water or to investigate the unfamiliar human visitors.

---

---

The pale neck brands on their left side, often hidden by tangled manes, are the only sign of the challenging lives they survived before Sonya Richins, owner of Wild Heart Sanctuary, rescued them.

“We call it the badge of honor,” she said, brushing aside one horse’s mane. “It means they’ve made it through literally a concentration camp: rounded up, holding pens — it’s horrifying what they go through.”

---

---

A small plane flies by, circling above the sanctuary, and the horses grow still, ears swivel and eyes fix on the sky. It’s similar to the sound of a helicopter, which were used to drive many of them off their homelands, separating them from families and forcing them into the unknown. Their unease toward the buzzing plane is another sign of the trauma they’ve endured. 

When Richins, a life-long animal advocate who was “born on a horse pretty much bareback” in Hooper, first found out about the situation between the Bureau of Land Management and their treatment of the mustangs, she knew she had to act.

It was 2005, a world without social media, so she decided to make a short film: “Mestengo,” a 26-minute short that aired during Sundance Film Festival and aimed to show the corruption of the government’s wild horse program.

In 1971, Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act protecting mustangs, a free-roaming horse in the western United States, due to their status as important symbols of the American west. Since then, they’ve been allowed to roam free on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. 

Part of this management now involves population control.

“Most herds on public lands are located in arid environments and lack natural predators that can control herd growth. As a result, herds grow quickly and can overwhelm the food and water available to them. Overpopulation can also damage the land and lead to starvation and thirst for wild horses and burros,” the BLM said in a press release in August 2023.

They employ strategies to limit wild herd populations based on their established Appropriate Management Levels for each individual Herd Management Areas.

Funded by tax dollars, the BLM’s current population control methods include adopting out the animals to private owners and preventing pregnancies through birth control vaccines and castration. In both cases, the animals are “gathered” by helicopter to a holding facility, either kept there or given the fertility vaccine and returned to the land.

Controversy around the BLM’s tactics are widespread as critics like Richins point out inhumane treatment, experimental drugs, a lack of consideration for herd dynamics and inaccurate numbers relating to wild horse population. 

A few years after learning about these issues, Richins took out her 401K, bought land in Park City and started Wild Heart Sanctuary, a 501(c)3, to create a safe haven for the mustangs she loved so much.

“When I first saw those mustangs being sent to slaughter, I made it my life purpose to be their voice till my last breath,” she said.

Wild Heart became the place where Kokopelli, Wind Walker, Noble Moon, Durango, Vashti, Giraffe, Princess Grace, Miss Bliss and Leilani could heal from their trauma and live out their days in peace. 

“When they arrive I say, ‘Number one, this is your forever home. You will never be enslaved or broken. And you will only be loved,'” she said. “We don’t break a horse. They’ve been through so much trauma. I’m not going to break them. I want them to stay here because I don’t want them accidentally back in the slaughter pipeline.”

Each horse came to Richins through serendipitous circumstances, and it’s their stories that she now uses to educate visitors on the reality of the poor treatment wild horses receive. 

Like the dark side of the fertility treatments used by the BLM, known as PZP-22 — part of Giraffe’s story.

After being rounded up and given the drug, Giraffe was sent back to her herd but was ostracized because the scent of the drug was suspicious to the other animals, Richins said.

Messing with herd dynamics isn’t the only way it messes with Mother Nature, she said.

“It makes their whole cycle off,” she said. “They could have a baby in the middle of winter, and it will freeze. Say they’re in Colorado, it will die. … I’m just into letting nature take care of nature.”

Princess Grace and her three-month-old daughter Miss Bliss were rounded up by helicopters and brought to holding pens in Delta, where thousands of wild horses are held in captivity until they are adopted out or die, said Richins.

“They stood there six months in negative 30-degree weather, 40 miles-an-hour winds, just barely surviving,” she said.

For a long time, the rhetoric around wild horse management involved talk of overpopulation and concerns for the land health, but critics like Richins call attention to a lesser-known fact: Livestock are allowed to graze on areas where horses are rounded up on the basis of preserving land health.   

For example, the Onaqui Mountain herd management area located in west Utah includes 206,878 acres of BLM lands. Of those acres, the appropriate management level for the wild horses on this land is estimated at 121 to 210 animals — roughly 1,000 acres per animal. 

In 2021, the BLM announced a gathering of Onaqui horses due to drought concerns and noted a population growth of 265 adults above the management level. Following the gather, mustang advocates noticed land allotment authorization documents showed approval for at least 527 cattle on the same land deemed unfit for a smaller number of horses, and regular visitors to the area reported thousands of sheep grazing on land once used by the horses.

“They’re so not overpopulated, and they never have been, that’s what the cattle man and the BLM say. It’s about an average of 1,200 acres per horse out there,” Richins said. “Once they remove the horses off the land … cattle are going in there. I mean, hello, who’s owning our land?”

When it comes to soil health, cattle are one of the worst animals if allowed to graze unchecked, Richins said, but wild horses have a regenerative relationship with the land.

“We have to have the wild horses in the wild for the biodiversity of the soil and the land,” said Richins. “While they’re going out in the wild all day, traveling all over, they eat the top of plants, just the top. Like a bumblebee, they pollinate the earth. And then they go to the bathroom, so they reseed the earth. Without them out there — dust bowls. There will be nothing left.”

The horse trails they create by traveling to and from water are also natural fire breaks, she said, where the worn path can stop a wildfire from spreading, and wildifre crews use them to help manage fire.

While wild horses eat the tops of plants, intuitively knowing to keep the root intact so it can continue to grow, cattle pull root and stem and eat everything, said Richins.

“When you leave the land if cattle have been there, it’s just holes and mud and poop everywhere, like no plants can even grow,” she said. “They’re just ruining our whole wild lands by what they’re doing. And the biodiversity of our soil is so important right now.”

She gestures to the 18 acres at Wild Heart Sanctuary, lush with green vegetation which the animals graze on each day.

In the last 10 years, Wild Heart have created programming for individuals to come and spend time on the land with the horses, whether through yoga, qigong, nature walks or art therapy. 

“All horses are in tune with us. It’s just being in that zero space, we call it, where you just try to clear your mind,” she said. “When you’re in that zero mindset, they can’t stay away from you.”

Operating entirely on donations, one of Wild Heart’s more critical fundraisers is on Wednesday, June 26, an evening benefit concert performed by local duo Cactus Buds and a silent auction. Tickets are $90, and all proceeds will go toward supporting the rescued mustangs. Their goal for the evening is to raise enough money to pay for the year’s hay, roughly $20,000.

“We’re going to really try for monthly sponsorships, because that way you can depend on that coming in, even if it’s five bucks,” Richins said.

Tickets are available for purchase at wild-heart-sanctuary.com/event-details/wild-heart-sanctuary-benefit-concert-with-cactus-buds. Donations can always be made on the website at wild-heart-sanctuary.com/support, which help cover expenses including holistic medical care for the senior animals, like chronic medication, herbs, essential oils, acupuncture, veterinarian care and pain management.

Visit the website wild-heart-sanctuary.com to learn more about the nonprofit and the herd, and for ways to spend time with these animals whether by volunteering or participating in on-site experiences.

“They’re managing them to extinction,” said Richins. “People with mustangs now, we will probably be the last ones to have that generation of mustangs.”