Putting the “A” in Advocacy - Arming Yourself with Knowledge to Effectively Advocate in 2025 Virtual Educational Summit January 31st - February 3, 2025
Hosted by Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates, Save Our Wild Horses, and the Wild Narrative Project
Save your spot now! To sign up for Virtual Summit updates please click here:
https://secure.everyaction.com/CddPB23A7k2uHPKwsNSzNA2
Save your spot now! To sign up for Virtual Summit updates please click here:
https://secure.everyaction.com/CddPB23A7k2uHPKwsNSzNA2
Chasing Horses Wild Horses Advocates, Save Our Wild Horses and Wild Narrative Project will be hosting a virtual online educational summit January 31- February 3, 2025! Expert and advocate speakers will be discussing wild horses & burros, public lands, and what you can do to help. The summit will be FREE to the public – the goal is to educate as many people as possible to help wild horse advocates on different topics that may come up as we continue to fight for the freedom of America's wild horses in 2025.
We are excited to announce that one of our speakers is Ashley Avis – director of Wild Beauty Mustang Spirit of the West!
Even more exciting: We will be having a Wild Beauty watch party to kick-off our summit on JANUARY 30, 2025!! **The event will start at 5pm PST/8 pm EST on January 30th and will be followed by a Q&A with Director Ashley Avis!** You can sign up for the documentary watch party here: https://secure.everyaction.com/6d80iuPN8UG-zEgOW5dzGA2 |
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Summit speakers include the following and their Bios are below:
We have invited a wide range of speakers to give our participants a broad view of advocacy and who is involved in wild horse issues. We do not necessarily agree with the views of all the speakers. We expect all participants, speakers and those watching the presentations, to remain respectful and polite at all times. |
2025 Putting the “A” in advocacy - Arming Yourself with Knowledge to Effectively Advocate in 2025 Educational
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Summit Topics include:
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Save your spot now! To sign up for Virtual Summit updates please click here: https://secure.everyaction.com/CddPB23A7k2uHPKwsNSzNA2
Meetings will be held via Zoom and a schedule will be made available to everyone who signs up at the link above. Once the Summit is completed, all of the speaker presentations will be made available on the CHWHA and Save Our Wild Horses YouTube channels!
Virtual Summit Speaker Bios
Executive Director, Western Watersheds Project
Erik cut his teeth in conservation fighting oil and gas projects in Wyoming during the Bush administration, and his signature accomplishment is defeating the 1,240-well Seminoe Road Coalbed Methane Project during that time. He is a wildlife biologist with published research in the behavior, ecology, and population dynamics of Alaskan moose as well as large-scale conservation planning. He spent 13 years as a conservation advocate and later Executive Director of Wyoming-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, and led WildEarth Guardians' Sagebrush Sea Campaign for three years. Over this period, he became of the conservation community's leaders in sage grouse conservation and recovery. He now heads Western Waterdsheds Project, the nation's leading organization in advocating for land health and livestock reform in the West. He is the author of 16 hiking guidebooks and backpacking techniques manuals for national parks and wilderness areas spanning the West from Alaska to Arizona. 
Chad Hanson serves as a member of the faculty in Sociology and Religion at Casper College. He is also a co-founder and the Director of the Wyoming Mustang Institute. In addition, he is the author of several books, including In a Land of Awe, and the forthcoming title, The Wild Horse Effect: Awe, Well-Being, and the Transformative Power of Nature. For more information, visit chadhanson.org or wyomustangs.org
Theresa Barbour, Executive Director - The Oregon Wild Horse Organization is a national nonprofit devoted to preserving native wild horses and their habitats, ensuring that these magnificent creatures remain part of our living heritage. Through our advocacy for legislation and engagement in litigation on wild horse conservation and public land management issues, we strive to create a better future. Moreover, we empower the public with the knowledge and tools needed to champion the welfare of wild horses, burros, and their environments.
Janine Dallow is a wild horse advocate who experienced wild horse round-ups for the first time in 2024. She went to four: North Landers (2 days), Twin Peaks (2 days) , Devils Garden (4 days) and Buffalo Hills (1 day). She will share her experiences with us and talk about the Carter Reservoir HMA in CA/NV.
Heather Hellyer, founder of Save Our Wild Horses, has visited over 50 wild horse herd areas since 2020. A photographer and advocate, she documents the wild horses and the western range they inhabit. Heather will be discussing effective ways to contact your legislators and the BLM's systematic elimination of our wild horse and burro herds.
Carol Walker started her business photographing horses, Living Images by Carol Walker, in 2000. In 2004 she visited a wild horse herd in Adobe Town, Wyoming and became an advocate for wild horses after viewing her first helicopter roundup. She has three coffee table books about wild horses, an educational blog Wild Hoofbeats and Podcast, Freedom for Wild Horses.
2024 has been one of the most devastating years for our wild horses, with almost 17,000 removed and shipped to holding facilities, and 200 died during helicopter roundups. I attended two roundups this year, both in Wyoming: North Lander Complex in July where they removed 2577 horses and 16 died, and White Mountain in August, where they removed 586 horses, almost the entire herd, and 11 died. In fiscal year 2025 the BLM plans to remove almost 11,000 wild horses, including zeroing out two wild horse herds in Wyoming, Salt Wells Creek, Great Divide Basin, and removing half of Adobe Town. I am a plaintiff in the lawsuit to stop the zeroing out of these herds. AWHC, AWI, Western Watersheds, Kimerlee Curyl and Chad Hanson are also fellow plaintiffs. After the Oral Argument, the judge ruled against us and so we have an appeal to the 10th Circuit Court. We are hopeful that we will win and that the horses will not be rounded up before the judges rule. This lawsuit is critically important, because if we lose and the BLM goes through with zeroing out these herds, they will be able to justify zeroing out many more. Through my blog and podcast as well as through social media, I keep people informed about what is happening to our wild horses as well as tell stories about the horses and their families so people can see how well suited they are to the lands they live on, our public lands, which belong to every American and should not be exterminated to appease the livestock ranchers and grazing associations who want every last blade of grass for themselves. The rangelands are facing significant degradation from the grazing of livestock, but the horses are scapegoated. 
Mary A. Koncel is a longtime lover of equines – both domestic and wild. She received her M.S. in Animals and Public Policy from the Tufts/Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine where she is now an adjunct instructor at the Center for Animals and Public. She has researched and written extensively on various equine topics, including wild horse adoption and the United States Forest Service and its management of wild horses with a special focus on Devil’s Garden. Mary lives in western Massachusetts with her husband and a small menagerie of animals, including Rain, a BLM mustang mare, and Huck and Puck, two BLM burros.
Marilyn Nuske is an Australian Litigation Lawyer, in sole practice in Victoria, and also works in animal rights law predominantly for brumbies and dingoes. As a horse lover she feels despair at the cruelty to which brumbies are being exposed, and draws a similarity with the international position for wild living equine. Her first ever pony was a brumby. She is also involved in the fight to protect Australia’s native apex land predator the dingo. She is a practicing artist and presently painting for a joint exhibition mid 2025, with another brumby advocate.
Michael Standaert is a correspondent with the North Dakota News Cooperative, a nonprofit media outlet serving newspapers across the state with in-depth feature coverage. Prior to moving to North Dakota in mid-2022, he worked as a freelance foreign correspondent in China for 16 years, mostly with Bloomberg Industry Group.
Ginger Kathrens
Producer / Cinematographer, Founder and Board President of The Cloud Foundation. Ginger is an Emmy Award-winning producer, cinematographer, writer, and editor as well as an award-winning author. Her documentary filmmaking trips have taken her to Africa, Asia, Europe, Central, and South America and all over the U.S. On a beautiful spring day in an isolated corner of the Rocky Mountains, a palomino colt tottered out of the trees in front of Ginger’s camera. She named the newborn foal, Cloud because of his striking pale coat. That was the beginning of a decades-long journey that brought the private lives of wild horses to a worldwide audience. Ginger’s Cloud films include the acclaimed Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies, Cloud’s Legacy: The Wild Stallion Returns, and Cloud: Challenge of the Stallions produced for WNET’s Nature Series on PBS. The series documents Cloud from that day of his birth in May of 1995 through his life. Her documentation of Cloud represents the only continuing chronicle of a wild animal from birth in our hemisphere. Ginger is the founder and Board President of The Cloud Foundation, a 501(c) (3) dedicated to preventing the extinction of Cloud’s herd through education, media events, programming, and public involvement. TCF is also determined to protect the hundreds of other wild horse and burro herds on public lands celebrating their unique characteristics and historical significance. As an organization TCF works to preserve all wildlife as well as our public lands. Without public lands, Cloud's story of wild freedom couldn't be reality. 
Michelle Gough, M.S. is the Treasurer of Wild Horse Fire Brigade ('WHFB') and part of the research team (Gough-Simpson) that lives-among & studies naturally-living free-roaming wild horses in a wilderness habitat. Along with William, she’s an instructor for the wilderness Wild Horse Ecology-Ethology course offered through CALSTATE. Recently, Michelle and William worked with students from CALSTATE and UC California Irvine to initiate and complete two new studies; a wild horse grazing study and wild horse dung germinability study. Michelle’s M.S. degree included a minor in behavioral ecology. Michelle has spent the last 4+ years living at Wild Horse Ranch, the research site the nonprofit Wild Horse Fire Brigade in the wilderness, and studying the herd of 200 free-roaming wild horses that live in that remote mountain habitat. According to the doctoral dissertation of Yvette 'Running Horse' Collin, Ph.D, the ancestors of the local herd of wild horses were documented by Sir Francis Drake in 1580, making the herd one of the oldest documented herds in North America. In 2023, Wild Horse Fire Brigade signed a 5-year contract with California State University - Sacramento to provide a wilderness study program to teach wild horse ecology-ethology by allowing university students the unique opportunity of living-with and studying wild horses using the 'Goodall Method', a term originally coined by WHFB's founder in honor of Dr. Jane Goodall who pioneered close observational wildlife study with the Apes in Africa. Interestingly, the Goodall Method of study has revealed new insights into the lives of naturally-living wild horses. The research by Gough & Simpson and resulting new insights into wild horse behavioral ecology will be invaluable in the successful implementation of any wild horse re-wilding project.
Victoria Kirchoff
Based in Sydney, Australia, Viktoria serves as Fondation Franz Weber’s (FFW) Representative in Australia and Project Manager for two exceptional sanctuaries: the Wild Horse Sanctuary Bonrook in Australia and the Abused Horse Sanctuary Equidad in Argentina. In addition to her work in Australia and Argentina, Viktoria is in charge of the German edition of FFW’s quarterly magazine, Journal Franz Weber, and collaborates with the team in Bern, Switzerland, on campaigns and social media activities. Driven by a lifelong passion for animal protection, Viktoria initially built a strong foundation in business through roles at a major healthcare company in Basel, Switzerland, and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) in Rome, Italy, where she gained invaluable and diverse experience. Her commitment to animal welfare deepened after volunteering for projects in Thailand and Japan, eventually leading her to transition to FFW—5rst at its headquarters in Bern and later in Sydney. Viktoria holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Economics from the University of Basel and a Certi5cate in Film Production and Digital Media from the University of California, Los Angeles. |
Ashley Avis is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and passionate advocate for the wild world. Professionally, she is best known for writing and directing Disney’s Black Beauty starring Oscar winner Kate Winslet and Mackenzie Foy; along with the critically acclaimed, Critics Choice nominated documentary Wild Beauty Mustang Spirit of the West.
Ashley founded WBF in 2020 alongside her husband and producing partner, Edward Winters to lend a new voice to wildlife protection – using their unique platform to help. In 2023, she received a Special Congressional Commendation for her work on behalf of America’s equids. In addition to filmmaking, her passions include creating new programs for WBF, documenting injustices, rescuing horses in need, and introducing children to the beauty of the wild world. She is next writing and directing City of Angels for Warner Bros. for Oscar-winning producer Charles Roven; and American Wolf for Apple and Appian Way with Leonardo DiCaprio producing. 
Christine Kman, Co-Founder and President of Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates (CHWHA)
Christine is a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in journalism. In December of 2022, when Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) announced their plans to eliminate the entire herd of horses from the park, Christine went to work sounding the alarm with their followers and alerting the media. She also began working with state and federal legislators asking them to advocate with CHWHA for the state’s only wild horse herd. CHWHA’s efforts paid off! In April of 2024, TRNP announced that they would be abandoning their Environmental Assessment process. Christine’s hard work and efforts have caught the attention of The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Times in London. Bis-man Magazine featured Christine in their August 2024 issue as a “Woman You Should Know”. Christine has also been chosen for inclusion in the Marquis Who’s Who in America for 2024-2025. Knowing it will just be a matter of time before the park makes a similar attempt again, CHWHA has continued pursuing state and federal protections for the TRNP herd. In October of 2024, the wild horses of TRNP faced another threat from the park. CHWHA once again led the fight to save this historic wild horse herd. CHWHA is working with North Dakota’s state legislators on legislation in the 2025 session. They also are working with North Dakota Senator John Hoeven’s office on federal protection for this herd. You can learn more on their website at www.chwha.org 
Gayle Hunt first encountered the Big Summit wild horse herd during her first job with the Ochoco National Forest in the early 1980s. The Forest Service, at that time, was much more aligned with the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act than they are now, and treated the horses humanely and protectively. On returning to the same Ranger District in 1992, things had changed. After observing attitudes and practices, it became necessary to establish a non-profit organization to both assist the Forest Service and to hold the line against efforts to eliminate the herd. Currently, the organization, Central Oregon Wild Horse Coalition, is active in local rescue, litigation, genetic research, and advancing Native status of all wild horses.
Craig Downer is the Founder and President of nonprofit 501c3 Andean Tapir Fund and it's breach Wild Horse and Burro Fund. He continues to work as a wildlife ecologist and has conducted several field studies including the Sulpher Spanish mustang herd in western Utah and several other herds in AZ, NV, CA, and Utah, all of which resulted in professional results.
Jen Britton and Christain Hunold
Ginger Fedak has spent decades teaching about and advocating for domestic and wild horses. Her work has appeared in The Observatory, AlterNet, Countercurrents, CounterPunch, LA Progressive, and NationofChange.
A lifelong animal advocate and “horse person,” Ginger began her professional career at age 14 mentoring under a natural horsemanship trainer (before the term “natural horsemanship” was coined) and teaching horsemanship and riding lesson classes. She continued with these endeavors and eventually began her own business, Sun Pony Ranch, with two partners. The exceptional horses she trained taught children and adults natural horsemanship and the horse/rider partnership with emphasis on consideration and understanding of, and for, the horse partner, with communication as key. In her adult life, Ginger has had dual careers as a horse professional and a research scientist. In her research scientist capacity she worked for a major medical university and later at a medical diagnostics company, developing testing and performing clinical trials for FDA clearance. With this background, she has the understanding of the science behind equine fertility control, and she has also completed the intensive 3-day PZP training from the Science and Conservation Center. Ginger earned her B.S. in Range Animal Science and Range Management from Sul Ross State University in west Texas. This has helped her in her career as a horse ranch owner, and in understanding of range conditions and issues for both wild equines and livestock in her long-time wild horse and burro advocacy work. She retired on October 31, 2023 as the Wild Horse and Burro Senior Campaigner for the non-profit group In Defense of Animals and continues to teach natural horsemanship classes on weekends. 
Holly Bice, President and Founder of the Bice Policy Group, is a seasoned government relations and strategic advocacy professional with a proven track record of success, having achieved numerous wins in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures during her career. She has in-depth expertise in Appropriations and the Farm Bill and over a decade of experience lobbying on animal welfare, agriculture, judiciary, and natural resources issues. One of the few truly bipartisan lobbyists in Washington DC, Holly has a reputation for bipartisanship and collaboration, bringing together Republicans, Democrats, and diverse stakeholders to reach meaningful results, even on the most difficult issues. As a trailblazer who enjoys a challenge, she succeeds where others say it is impossible.
Holly has the expertise and connections needed to navigate the complex landscape of the U.S. Congress, federal agencies, and advocacy to protect her client’s interests and advance their priorities. She also develops and executes winning strategies on messaging, media and public relations, grassroots engagement, coalition-building, grasstops mobilization, and legislation to achieve results for clients. With a background leading the government relations departments at non-profit organizations, she particularly understands the challenges that nonprofits face and knows how to make their voice heard. Her work ethic, persistence, and passion for her clients’ issues is unmatched in the arena of DC lobbying and advocacy. 
Cynthia Smoot is a veteran broadcast journalist who has spoken up for our wild horses on the air, in public forums and on Capitol Hill. She's also a media coach/host/public speaker for the Tampa, Florida-based Bronzite Media Group
A lifelong student and admirer of horses and all equines, Scott Beckstead grew up with horses on his family’s farm and spent much of his childhood and youth on horseback in the mountains of Idaho. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Utah State University and his JD from the University of Utah, Beckstead worked as an attorney in private practice for 17 years on the central Oregon coast before going to work full-time in the animal protection sector as a legislative lobbyist, agriculture policy director, and equine welfare specialist. During his time on the coast he also served as the mayor of Waldport, Oregon from 2002 to 2007. Beckstead became known for his special expertise in the field of animal law, and has taught that subject as well as classes on wildlife, animal agriculture, cannabis, and polar law at Willamette University College of Law as an adjunct professor of law since 2010. In 2000, he co-authored Animal Law, the first casebook on the subject. Because of his familiarity with horses, livestock, and farm animals, Beckstead provides training to law enforcement agencies on how to handle and work with those animals, and how to investigate equine and livestock cruelty and neglect. He currently serves as Chief Equine Programs Director for The Wild Animal Sanctuary, overseeing the organization’s work to save and protect equines both wild and domestic. Beckstead is married to Jackie and has four children, two grandchildren, and an assortment of pets.
William E. Simpson II is the Founder & Executive Director of Wild Horse Fire Brigade ('WHFB') an all-volunteer 501-c-3 nonprofit public benefit corporation. WHFB is dedicated to the sustainable genetic conservation of American Wild Horses using a proven nature-based solution, titled 'Natural Wildfire Abatement and Forest Protection Plan, also known as the 'Wild Horse Fire Brigade'. That proven plan allows wild horses to live naturally, wild and free as a part of the American landscape as intended by the preamble to the 1971 Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act. William spent his formative years on the family ranch, and attended Oregon State University and Lane Community College where he worked as a scientist in several doctoral projects ranging from marine biology to agricultural production. William, together with his partner Michelle Gough and the nonprofit WHFB, own and manage one of the largest herds of free-roaming wild horses living in the western wilderness today, numbering 200 horses. The ownership of the herd came about due to William's unique approach to using existing law. In 2018, William served CALFIRE as the technical advisor for 9-days on the fire-line of the deadly Klamathon Fire. During that wind-driven wildfire, William documented the beneficial effect of wildfire grazing by wild horses during the fire, as well as wild horse behavior during the fire, thereby advancing that science with empirical, first-hand data. That wildfire and the impacts of the wild horses is now the subject of an award-winning documentary, HORSE of NATURE. William's research into the environmental benefits of wild horses as ecosystem engineers and wildfire mitigators has been the subject of dozens of feature articles in publications such as; The Atlantic, NPR National Science, GrazeLIFE, The Guardian, National Institute of Health ('NIH') and many others. William was the keynote speaker at the Guild Theater in Sacramento CA during the EQUUS 2022 Mustang Summit. William's most recent speaking engagement was a presentation to the faculty and students at California State University's Environmental Science Department. Over the past decade, William has been a guest on dozens of TV & Radio shows, including CBS, ABC & NBC, and is recognized as an expert in wild horse ecology and management by horse advocates, government officials and university professors. In 2019, William was nominated to serve on the National BLM Wild Horse and Advisory Board by a sitting U.S. Congressman (Greg Walden) and numerous other elected officials. In November 2024, William was nominated at the Robert Kennedy MAHA People's Nominations, a collaborative with President-elect Trump to fill an expected 4,000 government agency appointments, to serve at the Bureau of Land Management ('BLM'), possibly as the head of the national Wild Horse and Burro Program.
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For more information please visit:
Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates
www.chwha.org
www.facebook.com/ChasingHorsesWHA
https://www.instagram.com/chasinghorseswha/
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCeyTpwa2Y1yUsTaJ4TU-eNw
Save Our Wild Horses
www.saveourwildhorses.net
www.facebook.com/saveourwildhorses
www.instagram.com/saveourwildhorses/
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/@saveourwildhorses7261
The Wild Narrative Project
https://wildnarrativeproject.org/
www.instagram.com/wildnarrativeproject/
Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates
www.chwha.org
www.facebook.com/ChasingHorsesWHA
https://www.instagram.com/chasinghorseswha/
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCeyTpwa2Y1yUsTaJ4TU-eNw
Save Our Wild Horses
www.saveourwildhorses.net
www.facebook.com/saveourwildhorses
www.instagram.com/saveourwildhorses/
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/@saveourwildhorses7261
The Wild Narrative Project
https://wildnarrativeproject.org/
www.instagram.com/wildnarrativeproject/