LAS VEGAS — Robin Warren is a middle school student from Las Vegas who is better known as “Wild Mustang Robin” because of her work in advocacy for wild horses.
Warren first started collecting signatures to save horses and burros in July of 2010. Three years later she had collected nearly a quarter million signatures from supporters all over the world on Change.org.
On June 13, the student filed her first petition that will be officially recognized: “The Wild Horse and Burro Initiative.” If she is able to collect more than 100,000 signatures then Warren’s initiative petition will appear on the 2016 Nevada ballot.
The official description of effect of the petition is as follows:
Wild horses and burros are of cultural significance to the state of Nevada. Special designation needs to be created to protect wild horses and burros — the progeny of horses and burros brought to America by Spanish explorers and also horses and burros who served during the mining boom of 1800s — that fossil evidence has proven originated here in North America during prehistoric times.
Nevada has the largest population of wild horses and burros. Wild horses and burros travel across boundary lines because herd management areas have been reduced and are intermingled with herd areas, state, and private land.
The laws now designate wild horses and burros as “feral” or “formerly domesticated with no signs of domestication.” The changes proposed by this initiative — including designating horses and burros determined to be “feral” as also “wild” will protect horses and burros from danger of slaughter and ensure care standards for wild and free roaming horses and burros being held in Nevada. The proposed changes do not affect “estrays” defined as “formerly domesticated horses found with signs of domestication.”
Warren said, “If people knew that the wild horses are treated differently depending on where they are found they would be outraged. Wild horses should never go to slaughter, they are supposed to be protected.”
The student will be collecting signatures the same way she has in years past — in front of libraries and the books that inspired her to become a teenage petitioner.
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