Every dollar for the horses

We don’t have paid staff.  We don’t have an office. The dart rifles, scopes, vehicles, trailers and gear are scattered across volunteer properties in the Carson Valley. 

Meetings happen at kitchen tables and on ridgelines. The work happens before dawn and after the sun sets, in wind and snow, because the Fish Springs horses don’t keep office hours.  That is not a weakness. That is why a small community nonprofit can keep a wild herd free.

We built this so we could work with the BLM, not just shout at them.  In 2013, Gardnerville-area residents stood up when removal of the Fish Springs wild horses was scheduled and only days away.  Hundreds of neighbors told the Bureau of Land Management they wanted these horses to stay on the Fish Springs Range and in the hills of the Pine Nut mountains, where local memories say they have always been.

  Pine Nut Wild Horse Advocates was created as a 501(c)(3) so this community could do more than protest. We built a partner the BLM could work with: volunteers trained to dart, people who know every band, and a program that keeps the herd at a size the range and the neighborhood can live with. The result was the Fish Springs Wild Horses PZP Pilot Project with the BLM Sierra Front Field Office. That partnership is still the reason these horses are on the mountain. We thank the American Wild Horse Conservation for helping train our team and share their knowledge. 

 What volunteers actually do.

Certified darters deliver humane PZP fertility control to mares on the range. Other volunteers identify horses, track bands, educate neighbors, photograph and share information on social media and raise the money that keeps fuel in the trucks and darts in the rifles. We teach the public not to feed or water wild horses. Easy calories pull horses toward roads and porches, and that is how a beloved herd becomes a “problem” herd. When a horse has to leave the range, we help find a real home or a sanctuary. Fish Springs horses have gone to private adopters and to sanctuaries. They have not been sent into the long-term holding pipeline since we started our program. 

Reproduction on this range is down more than 90%. The horses stay wild. The community still gets to see them. The range is still shared with deer, antelope, coyotes, bear and the other wildlife that belong here. 

What your donation buys.

There is no rent check. There is no salary line.  Even our vehicles were donated.

Donations buy: 

• PZP and darts  
• Fuel and range time  
• Training and certification for volunteer darters  
• Transport when a horse must be moved  
• Community education so horses stay wild and out of neighborhoods
• and more

Equipment lives in garages, barns, and pickup beds. That is intentional. Every dollar that does not go to an office goes to the job. 

Why this saves taxpayers money.  The expensive part of federal wild horse management is not a mare on the mountain. It is a horse that has already been removed. Published BLM and Congressional Research Service figures show the pattern:

• The Wild Horse and Burro program is funded at about $142 million a year.  
• Off-range holding — corrals and pastures — consumes about $100 million of that, roughly two-thirds of the program.  
• About 58,000 horses and burros live in that system.  
• Short-term corrals run about $6 per animal per day. Long-term pastures run about $2.35 per day.  
• Lifetime care for a horse that is never adopted has been estimated from about $15,000 in recent BLM figures to older program estimates near $48,000.  
• When BLM gathers, treats, holds, and releases a mare with PZP, the agency has put the cost at about $2,100 — because that price includes the gather.

Volunteer darting skips the helicopter, the corrals, and the lifetime hay bill. The vaccine itself is a small cost. The labor is unpaid. A mare treated on the range does not become a decades-long boarding contract. Every Fish Springs horse that stays free, or goes to a real home, is a horse taxpayers do not warehouse. We are not asking the public to fund a holding pen. We are asking them to fund a dart and a volunteer who already knows that mare. We will never look like a national brand.  There is a place for large organizations. They have reach a valley group does not.  Our model is different on purpose. We live next to these horses. We name them and still treat them as wild. We dart them, defend the range, and go home tired. 

No office.
No payroll.

Even our phone number belongs to our President and is shared.

Just a community that refused to let the horses they cherish disappear. 

Help us keep them on the mountain?

Pine Nut Wild Horse Advocates
PO Box 2843
Gardnerville, NV 89410  wildhorseadvocates.org
Email: wildhorseadvocates@gmail.com
Phone: 775-720-8200  

Donations support on-range fertility control, education, and the volunteer work that keeps Fish Springs horses wild and out of long-term holding. 

We are proud to show the world it can be done.