In 2003 150 wild mustangs were starving in Nevada. Lifesavers rescued them.
In 2010 170 wild mustangs were being auctioned for slaughter in Nevada. Lifesavers rescued them.
In 2011 31 orphaned foals and 8 nursing mares were waiting to be shipped to slaughter at a Nevada feedlot. Lifesavers rescued them.
In 2010 158 mares and foals from the Paiute Reservation in Nevada were to be sold to slaughter. Lifesavers rescued them.
In 2010 66 horses, young and old, from a bucking stock breeder in Nevada were sold at a killer auction in Nevada. Lifesavers rescued them.
Just little dots on the horizon these rescued wild horses are now in Wild Horse Paradise in South Dakota.
Some of the 180 horses, previously rescued from slaughter, running on the grassy hills of their South Dakota home.
This is a dream come true for these rescued mustangs - to live freely on a grassy open range. Free and wild.
Please help us set free 100 more rescued mustangs so they too can live the life they deserve in Paradise.
Your contribution of any size will make a difference in the lives of horses rescued from slaughter!
Please Donate By Clicking on the Photo Below
Imagine if you will....
A beautiful landscape of grass, water, trees, hills, boulders, antelope, deer, and wild horses all living together in harmony. Grazing day after day, sipping from the fresh water ponds and wells, standing in the shade of a natural gulch or a cedar tree. Doesn't this sound like a dream?
Well it isn't a dream - it's reality. It's our Wild Horse Sanctuary in South Dakota where 180 horses already call it home.
As you may know we have partnered with a rancher on the Pine Ridge Reservation. We are leasing land from him so our rescued horses can have a natural habitat and live ... like horses on the open range ... just like they did before the BLM, and other agencies and individuals, so cruelly removed them and put them in holding corrals, split from their families and the only life they knew, the only home they had....until now.
With your generous gifts over the past couple of years you helped rescue more than 400 wild and domestic horses from livestock auctions in Nevada where the horses would have been sent to slaughter had we not been there to save them.
And we always had a plan for them. The plan was always to release them again to a wild range where they could be safe. Where they could graze and take care of themselves with little human intervention. Our plan is unfolding as we speak.
It has become impossible to afford the cost of keeping horses at our California ranch any longer. The price of hay and overall operations is much more than the amount of donations we are able to bring in month after month.
Only by the grace of God have we been able to make it this far.
Even though we have 180 horses in South Dakota, some of them just recently relocated, we still need to move a lot more... 100 more... up to the grassy range where it costs us 60% less each horse to live up there than in California.
Look at the photos of the horses there now. It's every captured wild horse's dream - to be released somewhere just like this...where there's plenty to eat, lots of water, and no one will chase them with helicopters, or send them to a gruesome painful death at the slaughter houses that sell horse meat to foreign countries to eat.
We have done a great thing - you and us at Lifesavers. We have saved hundreds of horses from being butchered...now we have to finish the rescue by keeping our promise of safety and comfort.
Please help us send as many as 100 more horses to this beautiful place they can call home...home on the range.
We need to ship the horses this summer - before fall sets in so they have time to acclimate to their new home and their bodies can prepare for winter by growing a nice furry coat to keep them warm. It gets cold...but they do fine there. They are wild horses and they adapt perfectly.
We hope that by next year we will be able to start a tourism program that will bring in some extra funding to help pay for the horses' lease.
Our ultimate goal is to purchase several thousand acres on that same range that would serve as a guest ranch where visitors can come and see the wild horses, take photos, camp in a tipi, learn about Native American history and culture.
We can hold our Horse Inspired Growth and Healing workshops for at-risk kids, veterans, rehabbers of substance and alcohol abuse, and so on.
But - first things first - let's get the horses up there and settled in. Then we can build the next layer of the dream.
We need $480 for every horse that we send. We will spend 3 times that amount to feed them in California.
We will still have horses in California to feed because they are not suited for the South Dakota lifestyle. We have old horses, domestic horses that need to be cared for, and young ones that have never been in the wild and might not do well. They will need your help too.
The great thing about this plan is that it is a win - win plan. Horses get to move to a beautiful natural habitat where they will be admired from a distance as they playfully run across the hills and lounge in the summer sun AND we make a financially sound change that saves our organization thousands of dollars every month.
One day soon we want to be able to invite every one of our supporters to come and see the horses in South Dakota, to have a picnic out on the sanctuary, to take photos worthy of framing, and to learn about the history and culture of the Lakota tribe that live on the Pine Ridge reservation.
If you think about it you will realize that what the Native American Indians experienced back in the 1800's when they were forced off of their homelands and into camps and then onto reservations to live the way our government demanded they do...well isn't it exactly what is happening to our country's wild horses too? Yes, it is.
Please help us reach our goal this season - to move another 100 rescued horses from outrageously expensive California to a dream-like paradise for horses in South Dakota.
Your most generous donation will help us feed the horses we still have in California and move some very deserving wild ones that will never be suitable for adoption to a natural habitat that is perfectly suited to bring them happiness for the rest of their equine lives.
Enjoy the photos I have attached for you showing the horses we have rescued and the ones we moved to South Dakota so far.
Thank you for your continued support - if not for you - these horses would have been dead and eaten by now. Yet instead they get to live on bringing joy to those who get to view them in their own little Paradise.
$1175 will buy two tickets to Paradise - two lucky horses will be able to move to South Dakota to live wild and free
$675 will give one horse freedom on the plains never to be in danger of slaughter again.
$110 will pay for the travel documents, vaccinations and microchip that each horse needs before moving to South Dakota from California.
Any amount will be appreciated! Thank you!
(Oh - and hope springs eternal - $1,000,000 would allow us to buy that 10,000 acre ranch in South Dakota rather than have to lease land every year. The perfect horse sanctuary and guest ranch.)
