Lompoc-based nonprofit fighting to protect wild horses from being shipped to slaughter

The slaughter of wild horses has long been illegal in the United States, but the auction of wild horses can quickly muddy their fate. 

Over the past few years, tens of thousands of wild horses have been shipped to Mexico and Canada for slaughter—often for human consumption. Most of those horses were legally bought at auctions hosted by the Bureau of Land Management, and many were roaming free just months before their slaughter. 

But Neda DeMayo—president of the Lompoc-based nonprofit Return To Freedom—is trying to fight this deadly export process.

“The biggest threat to wild horses is by far politics,” DeMayo said.

DeMayo is fighting to have Congress pass a bill that would hold the buyer of the horse responsible for selling the horse to slaughter. She recently returned from Washington D.C., and the bill now has 239 co-sponsors with bipartisan support—the most ever for a horse protection bill. 

The bill is the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act. It would permanently ban the slaughter of wild horses for human consumption in the United States and ban the shipment of wild horses for slaughter in neighboring countries.

The hurdle is getting it on the House floor. 

Overpopulation and land management

Wild horses in the United States are managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a multi-use agency that has to balance land use with natural resources, livestock and recreation—uses that wild horse protection often conflicts with. 

The Bureau says that there is an overpopulation of wild horses on the land they manage.

“That’s where the rub is,” DeMayo said.

Through the lens of land management, protecting wild horses doesn’t often outweigh the needs of energy extraction and livestock grazing.

Currently, American wild horse populations are primarily managed through round-ups. Helicopters fly in, locate the herds and then guide them to trap zones. Once in those trap zones, a horse’s fate becomes uncertain. 

Upon capture, most are transported to short-term holding facilities where they are soon auctioned or adopted. Some are moved to long-term holding facilities, which is extremely costly. 

In July, the Bureau of Land Management strengthened the protections for horses when they are sold. For the first time, buyers can be held accountable for selling horses to slaughter. 

A New York Times report in August highlighted how large numbers of horses were essentially disappearing following these auctions. 

Now, buyers cannot “recklessly or negligently” sell a horse to slaughter following the purchase of one or multiple from an auction. The minimum auction price for a horse has also been raised to $125 from just $25. 

But whether these buyers are held accountable is up to enforcement. If the SAFE Act passes, the protections would be much stronger. 

Though there is a backup plan if the SAFE Act doesn’t pass.

Language has been added into the Build America 250 Act—a transportation bill—that would ban the shipment of equines to slaughter. In May, the amendment that includes the horse protections passed the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, but it awaits a full vote on the House floor. 

Fertility Control

Return to Freedom’s work isn’t all politics though—DeMayo’s nonprofit is pioneering fertility control treatment for wild horses. 

DeMayo understands the Bureau of Land Management’s multi-use mandate, so she is trying to push a fertility control method. The aim is to reduce and control the wild horse population so that horses don’t have to suffer. 

The treatment is contraception for mares—female horses.

“RTF has long supported fertility control as a humane and practical tool to slow (not stop) herd growth and phase out the agency’s antiquated and often deadly practice of trying to control populations by capturing and removing wild horses and burros from the range in controversial helicopter roundups,” the nonprofit wrote in a late September press release.

The nonprofit strongly opposes permanent sterilization of wild horses. Instead, the contraception is through Native PZP, a non-hormonal immunocontraceptive vaccine. 

As wild horses lose their natural habitat, there aren’t enough private owners to take them all in. Even sanctuaries like DeMayo’s, can’t take more than a few hundred horses. 

DeMayo emphasized that the current management of wild horse populations is unsustainable—and it’s costing tax payers. The BLM spends over $100 million each year between the round ups themselves and the holding facilities for wild horses. 

The sanctuary

DeMayo’s Return to Freedom main sanctuary in Lompoc and satellite sanctuary near San Luis Obispo are home to 400 wild horses and 29 burros. At the sanctuaries, the nonprofit focuses on preserving bloodlines and keeping families of horses together with the aim that herds can keep living as they would in the wild. 

The Lompoc sanctuary is even home to a celebrity horse, Spirit, from the 2002 Dreamworks movie, “Spirit.”

Return to Freedom also focuses on education, through bringing people to the sanctuary to learn about and experience the horses up close. But operating the sanctuaries comes at a cost—DeMayo said the nonprofit’s monthly expenses reach over $240,000. 

DeMayo told the News-Press that the BLM recently announced a $30 million investment by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to “expand and accelerate” fertility control treatments.

However, over 70,000 horses have been captured from the wild since 2020 and only around 7,800 horses have been given fertility control treatments. 

The Bureau of Land Management estimates that there are around 85,466 wild horses and burros living in the wild as of March 1, 2026. To stop the slaughter shipments, DeMayo looks to the SAFE Act or the transport bill to be a meaningful protective measure.

But legislation won’t fully solve the risk to horses from the multi-use land mandate and the expenses of round ups. So DeMayo and Return to Freedom look to fertility control treatment, as a way to humanely reduce the population of wild horses over time without thousands of horses being shipped away.

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