Wife of Texas Billionaire T. Boone Pickens Has Plans to Save Wild Horses

Madeleine Pickens, wife of Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, has plans to create a massive refuge for about 30,000 wild horses and burros to avoid having the federal government kill or sell the animals for financial reasons.

Mrs. Pickens said she wants to buy 1 million acres for the project. Her announcement came after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said it was considering whether to euthanize some of the animals and after reading the plight of these horses on 360 Degrees.

“We have mismanaged the horse situation and I will fix that,” she said. “Everyone is on board with it. They want this project to happen.”

Mrs. Pickens said she is working out the logistics of acquiring the horses, but she believes she can get the process rolling within a year. She declined to discuss a potential location, citing pending negotiations. But she said the refuge would not be in Texas.

As part of her plan, Ms. Pickens said she wants to make the refuge property accessible to the public.

“You shouldn’t be coming to this country to see Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck,” she said. “We are more than that. We are a country that was formed on horseback and we should enjoy it, not slaughter it.”

Tom Gorey, a bureau spokesman, said the agency welcomes her offer.

“Right now we couldn’t be more pleased with her interest and we hope that materializes so that we can get many of these horses out of holding,” he said.

About 33,000 wild horses and burros roam the open range in 10 Western states. In order to protect the herd, the range and other foraging animals, the bureau wants to have about 27,000 horses and burros in the wild. So those too old or considered unadoptable are sent to long-term holding facilities. Gelding mustangs are among some 800 wild animals being penned at the Ridgecrest Regional Wild Horse and Burro Facility.

The agency now has about the same number of the animals in holding facilities as on the range. The cost of keeping animals in the holding facilities has caused the agency to consider euthanasia.

“It is incomprehensible that it would be allowed to happen,” Mrs. Pickens said. “Euthanasia is not an option.”

Mr. Gorey said that while the agency has the authority to euthanize surplus horses, it’s an option no one wants to have to exercise.

The bureau has a program for people to adopt the surplus animals, but Mr. Gorey said that the adoptions of the wild horses has been dropping, going from 5,700 in fiscal year 2005 to 3,700 in fiscal year 2008.

Since 2005, they’ve sold about 2,900 under a law that allows them to sell “without limitation” animals that are older than 10 or have been passed over for adoption three times. Mr. Gorey said they won’t sell to slaughterhouses.

Mrs. Pickens, the child of a British father and a Lebanese mother who grew up in the Middle East and went to school in England and France, said she always had a love for the West and wild horses. She plans to seek a tax credit to get the project started but was unsure of the amount. She’s also creating a foundation to support the project.

Mrs. Pickens said animals brought to the refuge would be sterilized and said the refuge would also be able to accept extra horses the bureau takes out of the wild each year.

“We will never turn an animal down,” she said.

Way to go, Mrs. Pickens!

MICHELLE

U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Madeleine Pickens