Julia Brandreth Photography

 

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'
Freeze Brand' is part of my ongoing investigation of the wild horse removal campaign by the US government from public lands. The brand is a white identity code burned into the horses neck with the date and location of their removal and incarceration.

Considered the "living symbol of the historic and pioneering spirit of the West", the wild horse was protected by the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. Over the past thirty years, this law, created for the protection and preservation of wild herds, has been quietly and systematically dismantled in favor of commodities such as livestock and hunting reserves. The wild herds designated domain, one 80 million acres to be shared with other wildlife and grazing animals, has been reduced to less than 30 million acres. Recent science has matched the DNA of the modern horse to the horse of 55 million years ago confirming that the horse originated in North America. The wild horse, presently classified as 'feral', should be reclassified as a reintroduced native species.

The Federal Bureau of Land Management manages the herd program hiring independent helicopter contractors for the roundup paying them with millions of tax dollars. To date, 70,000 horses have been rounded up and trucked to holding facilities. Many horses perish during this exodus and families are forever disconnected. At the government processing facilities they are branded and gelded and foals separated from their mothers. Some are adopted, others are sent to slaughter but most are held indefinitely in holding pens.

There are more horses in government pens than there are roaming freely on public lands.

The decimation of the wild herds is symbolic of a larger issue dealing with what it means to have public lands managed in a consumptive and disposable society. The landscape is being redefined and redesigned for corporate use and environmental protections are being overturned. As a result, our collective memory of history and nature is fading. We are losing our connections with ourselves and that which supports us, the planet earth.