About

SRWH.blog

Salt River Wild Horse Blog provides a voice for the Salt River Wild Horses of the Tonto National Forest through the following core values:

• Educate through sharing scientific data and boots-on-the-ground documentation
• Protect the wild horses and their environment through support of humane management efforts
• Inspire through community outreach and various interactive multimedia formats

History on the Salt River Wild Horses (SRWH)

The Salt River Wild Horses are a free-roaming wild herd of horses, which have resided on Tonto National Forest Land (in the beautiful state of Arizona) for decades.

This particular wild herd is unique in that a congressional designated territory was not established for the Salt River Wild Horses with the Tonto National Forest under the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, and therefore they are not federally managed by the Bureau of Land Management or the US Forest Service.

This creates a very unique issue for this particular herd of free-roaming horses and an uncertain future. The Tonto National Forest is the 5th largest National Forest in the United States at 2,873,208 acres.

Wisdom and Glory Oct 2016

Round up notice – August 2015 – Public steps up to Save the Salt River Wild Horses

On July 31st 2015, The Tonto National Forest posted a public notice in the Capitol Times of the intent to impound all “unauthorized livestock”. (Specifically the horses that reside in the Mesa Ranger District, which are the Salt River Wild Horses.)

The public took notice and banded together to save the historic Salt River Wild Horses. The local awareness of the potential plight of these iconic horses spread globally. Within a few days of the initial notice, there was an overwhelming public response in support of the Salt River Wild Horses. This resulted in the Tonto National Forest putting a temporary halt on the round up and in December 2015, the Tonto National Forest officially rescinded the notice of intent to round up the horses.

On “May 11 2016” HB2340 was signed into law by Governor Doug Ducey, which provides protective legal status for the Salt River Wild Horses until December 2017. After which time, their long term viability faces an uncertain future.