Mustang Rescuer Reunites Herds

A former Hollywood producer turned rancher rescues mustangs and wild donkeys from being sold at auctions into potentially abusive environments or to slaughterhouses.

Clare Staples is her name, and when she learned that wild mustangs in the West were being rounded up and auctioned off by the Bureau of Land Management, she realized that this meant horse families were being separated against their will.

Having already passed the age of 50 and searching for a meaningful purpose in her life, she founded the Skydog Ranch and Sanctuary with the goal of providing 9,000 hectares of grazing land where mustangs and wild donkeys, known as burros, can live out the rest of their days in family peace.

In media interviews, Staples has compared her work to that of a detective. In ten western states, horses are rounded up every year to reduce the number of wild horses and donkeys. This often means that a mare and her foal living in Arizona are separated, with the foal sold in Oregon and the mare in Nevada, or something similar.

Staples uses a network of photographers to track down family members and even entire herds, and uses money raised through her nonprofit activities to bid for them at BLM auctions so they can be reunited on her ranch.

«It is something like a wild horse detective agency. We rely on the photographers who go out into the wilderness», Staples told KOIN 6 News. «There are certain herds, predominantly in Oregon, where people give the horses names and they become very well known on these Facebook pages.»

The roundups have been conducted for decades and generate controversy in every state where they take place. Proponents argue that wild mustangs and burros are non-native, invasive species that negatively alter the landscape for sensitive, native species. Opponents contend that the origins of the roundups can be traced back to the interests of livestock ranchers, whose cattle herds — which far outnumber the populations of wild mustangs and burros — compete with these animals for grazing land.

It is true that the ancestors of horses went extinct on the North American continent tens of thousands of years ago, and that today's post-glacial ecosystems never evolved in their presence. It is also true that in many states there are no predators capable of keeping their numbers in check, meaning that the roundup simulates the predation rate of an ecosystem in which predators would hunt them.

It is equally true, however, that the presence of cattle on the same BLM land where mustangs and wild burros live is orders of magnitude greater and more disruptive than that of horses.

How she would like to see it

Rather than relying on the government, Staples took matters into her own hands and created a small piece of the West as she would like to see it — with herds of these charismatic animals able to live in peace.

To date, Staples has welcomed around 260 mustangs and 60 wild burros onto her property, many of whom could only be identified after months of detective work.

«If you are looking for a horse with a tiny white spot above its left eye, Clare will do everything in her power to find that horse using photographic documentation,» says Scott Wilson, a photographer whose work enables Staples to track down members of horse herds that were separated during the roundup.

Although she is firmly opposed to the rounding up of horses, she sometimes relies on BLM staff to point her toward the rounded-up horses, such as the mother and daughter in the video below.

«They were rounded up from Green Mountain, Wyoming, and it was the corrals in Rock Springs that asked us to take them in, as they noticed how bonded and wild they were and did not want them to be separated,» the organization explains.

«Wild horses have such deep bonds,» Staples told the Washington Post. «Who are we humans to think we are the only species that cares for its family?»