In 2000, Return to Freedom collaborated with the US Fish & Wildlife Service to relocate more than 50 wild horses in their intact family herds from the refuge. They were threatened with a helicopter roundup. Due to pressure from Return to Freedom a far more humane horseback roundup was carried out instead. Today the Sheldon refuge plans to continue to remove all wild horses from the refuge.

Seven stallions arrived at Return To Freedom in 2000. Some arrived with mares in harem bands and some as part of a small  group of males called ‘bachelor bands’. These horses are descendent from a combination of draft horses who worked hard to develop ranchos in Nevada’s Great Basin and cavalry horses raised in that region during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Many of these horses were turned loose and left to survive the rough terrain and varied weather of the Sheldon Refuge area alone. They have returned to a natural state and survive some of the most inhospitable regions of our federal lands in the Northwestern United States.

The Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge is 575,000 acres in the Northeast corner of Nye County, Nevada.