Placitas WILD Horses

Placitas Wild began in 2003 as a loose-knit group of Placitas citizens concerned about the division in our community over the free-roaming horses. Originally, PW was an informal organization that provided some food and water to the wild horses that roamed the thousands of acres of public and tribal lands north of our homes. During droughts volunteers convinced homeowners abutting the range lands to allow us to put water troughs at the edges of their property that we filled daily. Other volunteers discreetly left hay for the horses to forage.

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The Placitas horses and their ancestors have roamed for centuries across lands belonging to the state and federal governments, sovereign Indian lands and private land. Their presence has created jurisdictional issues that Placitas, as an unincorporated community, has not been able to solve. Sandoval County attempted to help enable solutions that included administration of birth control to stabilize herd growth, but we are all up against the unyielding power of government bureaucracies. As an organization, we must be prepared to challenge and change entrenched governmental policy.

 

As our Sandia Mountains grow more and more in danger of becoming biologically "dead,” strangled by development and gravel mining, cut off from the Jemez Mountains and the Galisteo Basin to the north, it has become impossible to simply feed the wild, roaming horses. Their habitat continues to shrink from gravel mining, housing developments and prolonged droughts. Island landscapes inevitably lead to loss of species but as the wild horse population continues to grow in Placitas, the high demand and low supply of both food and water, severely damages the health of these horses. 

 

Placitas Wild officially organized as a NM corporation in 2015. Placitas Wild’s mission has always been the need to provide care for these horses. While we started caring for them on BLM lands and the lands of the San Felipe Pueblo, we have now transitioned into a Haven for wild horses who still struggle to find a permanent home on private lands in Placitas.